Restoring Buffalo to the Dakota Plains::

Conclusion

The Lakota that I spoke with believe that they and the buffalo are indigenous to a particular terrain: the Dakota Plains. In fact, their relationship is so powerful that they are biological kin through the act of creation at the beginning of time. So intertwined are their destinies that there is a Lakota prophecy which stipulates that the end of the buffalo will lead to the end of the Lakota. As a spiritual practitioner from Rosebud Reservation told me: "[T]he buffalo itself has a relationship to the Lakota people to such an extent that if it dies we die" (1998). An activist on the Cheyenne River Reservation described the situation in a slightly different, but related, way:

"So then that's what they say, now [the buffalo have] gone back again, they're gonna go back again. So some of the spiritual leaders now say that, 'Well, there's still buffalo in the earth, and they could come back but they don't wanna come out because we haven't healed ourselves […].' And so then Black Elk, and people like that, talk about, in prophecy, that as soon as the sacred hoop is healed, the buffalo will come back. So there's all this cultural understanding that the buffalo aren't going to come back until we heal ourselves. We have to mend that sacred hoop. And then they'll come back. So the way the elders talk is that they're there - they're ready to come back, if we will just honour our part of it. And then they talk about the seventh generation that will take place. And they're talking about now […]. And I feel that way myself. I think that we've come a long way. I think that we are healing and I think that that's why these buffalo are coming back, in a small way. But it's slow because we're slow at doing it. It's really exciting when you think about it in that way because you become part of that, part of that whole long process that people like Black Elk talked about a few years ago" (1998).

The US government were astute in recognising the intensity of relationship between the Indians and their primary source of life. If the buffalo hadn't been virtually wiped out, many Lakotas wonder whether it would have been so easy for the US to have herded the Indians onto reservations. Certainly Indian tribes on the Plains contributed to the decimation of the herds that had once numbered in their millions: their methods of hunting were meticulously planned and systematic, often leading to hundreds, even thousands, of buffalo being driven off cliffs at one time. Meat and hides procured in such ways were used for subsistence and trade. But such methods never inhibited the buffalo from renewing their numbers each year. When the traffic of trespassers upon Indian lands increased from the mid-1800s, the virtual extinction of the buffalo was swift and dramatic.

Today, Indian tribes all over the west are working together to restore buffalo to their lands once again. For the Lakota, these efforts yield other benefits also. Restoration of the buffalo allows the Lakota to restore the land to its original condition; it promotes a greater capacity to provide for themselves economically; it facilitates cultural renewal; and it allows them to become healthy again. One participant even situated buffalo restoration within its larger, political context. She saw restoration as part of a pan-Indian resurgence movement that has intensified over the past twenty to thirty years. For her, buffalo restoration is a part of the nationwide effort of indigenous peoples to take control of their own political, economic and spiritual development.

At the end of the day, these are welcome side-effects of a project that is striving to restore the Lakota-buffalo relationship - to complete the circle and to mend the sacred hoop.

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