Restoring Buffalo to the Dakota Plains::

Ecological Restoration

Finally, buffalo are seen to be an important ecological resource for the Lakota. The philosophical concept of relationship expressed in the Lakota phrase mitaku'oyasin underscores every aspect of the buffalo restoration project. The concept is articulated in the idea that everything is a part of everything and the process of life is cyclical. Thus it follows that the Lakota, the buffalo and the natural environment are integral parts of each other that cannot function in isolation. A Lakota acvtivist put it this way:

"[Y]ou have to be part of [the natural cycle] in your life as well as your death. And that's what makes you part of it. So you go [die], you become part of the earth itself, which is the Mother Earth, and that's how you get to be part of that. And then the plants grow out of that, buffalo eat that, and we eat them again, and it goes around full circle. Of course there's all the others' involvement too" (1998).

In order for the people to be healthy, the meat they eat must be healthy, and this means that the land upon which the buffalo graze must be healthy too.

"And so everything has to be healthy, and all their [the buffalo] relatives have to be healthy because they all contribute to that health of that environment. You take them away, you take a few of them out of there, it starts to degrade the environment. So that all becomes important. So when we talk about restoring buffalo, we're talking about restoring all of those things as well" (1998).

Ecological or prairie restoration is an important component of buffalo restoration. For restoration of buffalo to be successful, it isn't enough that only buffalo is restored. The entire natural habitat must be restored to its original condition in order for everything that composes it to thrive. This is a theme that came up again and again throughout my research into the Lakota environmental philosophy.

The method is simple: let the buffalo roam free, or at least as free as available land allows. Activists have noticed that restoring the buffalo to the prairie has allowed the natural grasses to return. For the most part this is due to the transference of grass seeds in the buffalo's fur. The buffalo graze on the move. Occasionally they will roll around in the ground, then move on, maybe miles and rub themselves in the earth again. The seeds are transferred and new grasses grow in another part of the prairie. Because buffalo move faster than cattle, the distribution of pressure on the land is less intensive. Moreover, their split, pointed hooves break up the surface of the land as they move, thus encouraging soil aeration and fertility and literally allowing the land to breathe.

The presence of relatively free-roaming buffalo on tribal lands has seen gradual restoration of creek bottoms. Because cattle graze intensively, much of the vegetation around creeks have been eroded. The presence of buffalo has seen regeneration of growth. This is because buffalo do not cluster for long periods of time. Their impact on a particular piece of land is minimal.

Wherever there are cattle, there are humans. Wherever there are buffalo, humans tend to keep their distance. With humans rarely around and with enough land on which the buffalo are free, other species have been found to return to the land again: burrowing owls, lizards, prairie-dogs, mice, snakes, badgers and birds of prey attracted to this variety. Said one Lakota man: "If we provide those bison with the large amount of land that they need in order to restore their society, then that opens up the possibility for all of those other and lesser-sized species to come into that area and be undisturbed" (1998).

The problem of checkerboarding and the lack of tribally-owned lands, even on the reservation, can be alleviated, say activists, by using some of the profits generated from the buffalo industry to buy up privately-owned land. This will free up more land for the buffalo. This has been done, but progress is slow.

One outcome of the desire to restore the people and the natural habitat to health has manifested in the production of an organic garden at Eagle Butte, on the Cheyenne River reservation. Run by the Community College on behalf of the tribe, it grows and provides organic vegetables freely to elders, schools, the women's shelter and the jail. An incidental, though highly important, function of this program is to encourage relations between the elderly and the young. When I visited the program, both age groups were busy canning cherries, plums, beets, tomatoes and cucumbers - working and laughing together, with the young learning from the old. At other times, the gardens were being tended by the young and the kitchens being looked over by the elders.

Lakota environmentalists articulate fundamental differences between Lakota and Euroamerican environmental perspectives. One educator and activist, for example, differentiated for me between holism and dualism:

"Dualism is like the European way of understanding the way the world works, and that is that nature is in this larger circle and man is a smaller circle, but he's outside of that, managing it from afar. But the opposite of that is holism, and that describes the Lakota and pretty much Native perspective, where man is a smaller circle, just one of many smaller circles inside that bigger circle of life. And they're a part of that, they're not apart from it. The larger circles needs all of those integral parts inside in order to be whole. Whereas man is not a separate function from the rest of it" (1998).

He went on to critique a particular western environmentalism that persists in operating within a dualistic paradigm:

"You see that in the way that the environmental organisations in this country view how they want to fix environmental problems. They always have this idea that they want us. When they want to restore land to its former pristine state, what they will do is they will buy up a certain piece, or they'll have a certain piece, and they will try and make everything whole inside of there, but there will also be a boundary around it that says, 'Humans can't go in there,' or, 'Humans aren't part of this, so stay out!' That's not so with us. The opposite is true. That if we're going to restore this piece of land then the Native peoples have to be a part of it as well" (1998).

The Lakota concept of land stewardship incorporates all of nature, including humanity. It is based on reciprocity: what you take, you give back. In this way the land can replenish itself and maintain its natural balance. As all species, including humanity, are related, the entire ecosystem remains healthy and vibrant. Lakota environmentalists argue that humanity has had to intervene to a larger degree than before in managing the land in a way that encourages its renewal, because of all the unhealthy activity that has been unleashed upon it. Indeed, it has become incumbent on all indigenous people to ensure that balance is maintained in their own 'God-given' localities. The survival of the Lakota, for example, depends upon the survival of the land. Thus it is that bison restoration is seen to be a part of a larger process of restoring the prairie to its natural state. This, in turn, is seen to be a major tool for revitalising the Lakota Nation.

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