Restoring Buffalo to the Dakota Plains::

Health Renewal

"[A]fter the removal of the buffalo, after we got put on reservations, after they started giving us commodities which entailed flour, grease, canned meat [...] - all this fattening food […] - and our Indian men […] couldn't go out and hunt no more, we just started eating and eating, and our metabolisms are so young yet that it just can't break it down. So a lot of our people get diabetes, hypertension, all that" (1998).

The belief among the Lakota is that by restoring buffalo to Lakota lands, health is restored to the people. A major goal of restoration projects is to get buffalo meat back into the community so that physical health improves. Buffalo meat is low in fat and high in protein. Since the Lakotas have become dependent on a western diet, with its high-fat/low-protein formulation, the levels of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity have concurrently increased, say Lakota activists.

Education is being used to promote the nutritional value of buffalo meat among school children. In addition, tribes such as Cheyenne River are giving as much of the meat as they can manage to powwows, ceremonies, tribal and outreach programs, jails and schools in order to get it into the diet and thus affect the nutritional habits of their people. On Cheyenne River, this is limited to around eighteen buffalo a year because of the size of the herd (currently around 1000).

But it is important that, in order to improve the health of a nation, the meat must be as natural as possible. This means that buffalo must be reared on natural grasses, in as much space as possible, out on the prairies.

Referring to the wakan power inherent in buffalo, one buffalo activist shed a Lakota light on the common phrase, "You are what you eat": "If [buffalo meat] is the mainstay in your diet, then you actually start taking in that power within your own self, also. So you become part of that" (1998).

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