The American Buffalo

Female reporter: The city of Denver has again given bison from its mountain park to tribal nations.

Denver used to auction off the animals to keep the herd healthy, but in 2021, it made the decision to give the buffalo to indigenous lands.

City of Denver Speaker: Next, I'd like to introduce Jason Baldes from the Eastern Shoshone and senior tribal buffalo program manager and also a board member of the InterTribal Buffalo Council.

[Applause] Jason Baldes: Good morning.

[Speaks Shoshone] I want to say good morning to each and every one of you.

Thank you all for coming.

I want to thank the city of Denver.

I'm really pleased to be part of tribal buffalo restoration and how important it is for our people.

Thank you very much.

Good morning.

[Applause, drum beats thrice] Voice-over: My name's Jason Baldes.

I'm a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, and I'm a board member of the InterTribal Buffalo Council.

[Distant drum beating, men chanting in native language] Jason: Every time you make eye contact with a buffalo, it's telling you something.

They know a lot more than we give them credit for.

[Drum-beating, chanting continue] [People trilling] [Trailer clanging] [Overlapping chatter] Whoa.

Ha ha!

They're all fuzzy!

They are.

I'm naming this one... Boo Boo.

Boo Boo?

Seriously?

Boo Boo?

So Arapaho signature for those ones.

OK. [Overlapping chatter] What's that?

Okey-doke.

OK. Yeah.

All right.

George?

Great seeing you.

Come see us.

Very good to see you again.

Thank you very much.

Good to see you again.

Yeah.

Be safe, be safe.

Jason: Prior to colonization, buffalo was our life's commissary for many of our tribes.

It was our food, our clothing, our shelter, but also central to our cultural, spiritual belief systems.

So it's been missing for a long period of time, and so, you know, to restore that animal to our communities means that we can begin to heal from atrocities of the past, from, you know, loss of land, loss of culture, loss of language.

It's foundational to who we are.

Jason: We're here on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The Shoshone Tribe's buffalo are here.

[Drum beating] [Chanting] [Others join in chanting] [Drum-beating and chanting fade] Jason: We started with 300 acres for the Shoshone Tribe.

We've been able to raise the dollars to buy back land to make it 2,000 acres here for the Shoshone Tribe.

The Arapaho buffalo are on a thousand acres south of the river.

The goal is to continually reacquire these lands that were illegitimately taken in the first place, when our reservation was opened up for homesteading.

Takes millions of dollars to buy back these lands now, but we can rematriate them, get them back, restored to the tribes, as opposed to seeing our lands continue to diminish.

We now have over 150 buffalo collectively between the two tribes and then established the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative to be a local face here to raise money to buy land, and then also help facilitate the cultural, educational, nutritional reconnection of youth and community to buffalo.

It wasn't our goal to feed, but because of the tough winter, and because we are on a limited landscape, we have to do that.

But the goal would be-- is, down the road, if we restore them to larger landscapes, that they can exist on their own without intervention of man or genetically manipulating them or ranching them, that this is an opportunity to see something different, see them protected under tribal law, but also exist as a wildlife species on the landscape, where they can effectively create ecological change.

We have tremendous wildlife habitat potential on this reservation, perhaps more than many, and so buffalo fits right into that picture.

It's the only one missing from the landscape on this reservation that was here before Lewis and Clark arrived.

A lot of this work that drives me goes back to being a kid and hunting with my dad, talking about why we can't hunt buffalo.

My dad was a biologist, and I went on a trip with him to Africa, into Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda and witnessed the wildebeest migration.

That was kind of an epiphany for me.

So when I returned home, I had a newfound appreciation, I think, for my home and my people, my community, and realized I needed a science background to gain the academic credentials to focus on tribal buffalo restoration.

And so it's always been a vision of mine, is to be able to hunt buffalo with my dad, my sons, my grandkids in a way that was taken from us.

You know, that buffalo was gone for a bit over a hundred years, but that's a small window of time compared to the millennia that we've had the relationship with this animal.

It's in our DNA.

[Engine rumbling] Most of America has been plowed up, paved over, fenced in, fenced out, and so, you know, what happened to the buffalo similarly happened to Native American people.

We're now on remnants of our once former vast territories, and that's a history that, you know, American people need to understand.

[Indistinct chatter] OK. Ha ha!

Jason: Our people, we're still suffering.

We have, you know, high rates of diabetes and heart disease and other health-related issues from the removal of buffalo from our diet.

Woman: These are buffalo roasts that we smoked for probably about six hours.

Native people started to starve to death because they wiped out our buffalo, they, you know, pretty much wiped out one of the most important staples in our diet, you know, for Plains Indians, and so... they decided at that time, you know, to bring in rations, and that was flour and lard and coffee, sugar.

And so that's what the Indians started to eat because that's all they had, and so that's when, I believe, that was the beginning of the end for our health as Native people because they took that part of our life away.

They stripped it from us, and that's why what Jason's doing is important, because it's bringing back some of those ways that we can learn to thrive on again.

Jason: The InterTribal Buffalo Council now has 83 member tribes across the country.

That organization is 30 years old and has restored 25,000 buffalo to 65 herds in 20 states.

[People trilling] Jason: A lot of ITBC's work has been to lobby in DC for more federal support.

We're also working closely with the Department of Interior and USDA on things like making it easier to get buffalo into our federally funded programs and schools, to have our own tribal meat inspectors that can do the federal meat inspection so that we can get, you know, certified meat back into our programs.

[Birds chirping] Mention those herds managed by DOI.

Jason, voice-over: Restoring that buffalo is foundational to who we are, and so many tribes have that in common.

I encouraged Menominee to join up as a member tribe of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, and they did.

You know, these guys, they got together, these young men, and found the resources to put up the infrastructure that they needed, and we were able to get some animals, 10 buffalo, to come here today.

I was able to fit it in my schedule to be here for the release and come up and see my new Menominee relatives.

[All singing in native language] Man: We're here to witness the rebirth of a relationship with a relative of ours, the [speaks Menominee] in our language, the buffalo in English, that we've had for thousands of years, and we'll welcome them back here to our land, you know, welcome them home.

[Singing continues] I don't know.

It's been a long time.

I don't even know if there is a memory of it anymore.

It's been so far-removed from our people, but today, November 12th, is the day we're going to celebrate.

[Singing continues] Man: Want to say that I'm grateful for the brothers and the people that got to come here and help and support and be able to help make this, um, make this here happen today, so I'm real grateful and honored to be here, so-- but I want you to know I love each and every one of you guys and thank you so much.

We love you.

[All whooping] [Whooping continues] Jason: I cried.

It was as emotional today for me as it was when we Shoshone received our first animals.

Like, when that first hoof hits the ground and you can see that footprint, it's like you finally realize that they're home and they won't ever leave again.

And so it's like that-- it was like that today.

We--I shed a few tears.

It was very emotional.

I know exactly how they feel, and to know that their future is gonna... this changes their future and the direction that they can go, and they're just gonna-- they're just gonna get better.

[Closing theme music playing]