WIND RIVER RESERVATION—The shot rang out, and the buffalo collapsed on a slope of silvery green sagebrush still damp from the previous night’s rain.
The rest of the herd, in a field below, startled and then began milling. The lumbering animals slowly organized, moving toward the fallen bull. They surrounded the body, nudging and prodding it as if they were urging the bull to stand back up and join them.
“This is the most heartfelt part,” Jackie White, Food Bank of Wyoming’s tribal relations specialist and a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, said from her vantage point in a nearby truck. This is how buffalo behave after a harvest, she said. It’s like they are mourning.
Later, after the bull’s body had been attached to a special trailer lift and transported to a patch of ground closer to the field, White stood before a group of sixth grade students from Arapahoe Schools to talk about the significance of the harvest.
“We pray for that sacred buffalo that gave his life so we can have life,” she said. The animal will be carefully processed to waste as little as possible, she said. The meat will be ground, packed and eventually placed in more than 650 boxes that food banks will distribute to Wind River Reservation residents in November.
Elders will also receive chokecherry jam in the November boxes. The jam comes from an August harvest of the berries, a cherished traditional foodstuff of the tribes, picked in Colorado. The effort yielded 300 pounds of chokecherries, which were sorted and frozen. White will be in Longmont later this week to help prepare the jam.
Having traditional foods in the November boxes is an important way to celebrate Native American Heritage Month, White said.
“I wanted something special for our elders,” she said. “We have so much love and respect for our elders. They are our knowledge keepers.”
This week’s buffalo harvests, which took place Monday and Tuesday, also doubled as a way to educate Native youth on traditions.
Nathan Friday, who harvested the bull Monday morning at the Northern Arapaho buffalo site, burned cedar in a ceramic vessel. Jason Baldes, Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative Executive Officer, invited the students to “cedar” — a ritual that involves kneeling in the smoke — before paying tribute to the animal with a physical gesture.
“Even if you don’t help later, I want you to come up right now and touch that buffalo,” said Baldes, who manages the Eastern Shoshone herd. “Because this is your relative.”
One by one, the kids knelt on the ground, smudged themselves with smoke and then walked to the buffalo to rest one or two hands on its thick coffee-colored hide.
Reconnection
This is the second year of fall buffalo harvests in conjunction with food bank distribution.
On Monday at the Northern Arapaho buffalo site, Cottonwoods flashed orange and gold on the banks of the Wind River, which ran a muddy red in the wake of a storm that smeared nearby peaks with snow. About 40 students, along with teachers, Buffalo Initiative staff and volunteers, participated in the harvest.
A second harvest followed Tuesday from the Eastern Shoshone’s herd side, with students bused from Fort Washakie to participate.
The events connect several important Native threads, White said. The first is the traditional knowledge of elders. The second is the work of the Buffalo Initiative — a nonprofit started in 2022 that has worked to return buffalo herds to the tribes — which dovetails with tribal food sovereignty goals. The third is the transfer of knowledge and skills to youth.
“This is really something significant for us,” White said. “So we all come together to help educate our youth. It is our hope and our prayers that our kids will take something good with them so they will continue to learn the culture and the traditions and how significant that sacred buffalo is to us.”
In that vein, she said, it’s more than a harvest. It’s a prayer, a ceremony and a learning experience.
Ancestors
Eastern Shoshone members Jason and Patti Baldes started the Tribal Buffalo Initiative to catalyze reconnection to buffalo. Both tribes have a buffalo site, and herds have grown since the early days.
On Monday, well over 100 buffalo occupied a field on the Arapaho site. Adult buffalo grazed while the lighter-colored calves lay partially obscured by yellow grass.
The animals’ meat, hides and bones were key to the survival of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, the tribe’s Buffalo Manager Dennis O’Neal said. “We’re here today because of them … They don’t need us, but we need them.”
Though buffalo are no longer crucial for shelter and subsistence, O’Neal said, for modern Indians the animal provides both healthy food and an opportunity to get outside and exercise. The bull harvested Monday will feed a lot of people, he said.
Harvesting a herd member, O’Neal said, “we don’t take it lightly.”
The buffalo is in the songs, ceremonies and lodges of tribal people, Baldes told the students, stressing the gravity of the event to them.
“This buffalo … he’s been missing from your lives for a long time. Been missing from our lives for a long time,” Baldes said. “We’re all very fortunate that this buffalo relative is still here for us.”
For the most part, the middle-school-aged kids did not goof off or squirm. After they each had a turn touching the buffalo, field dressing began. The animal’s blood was spilled into a large cup. As several adults set to work skinning the buffalo, the students passed the cup around. Most drank from it.
How wonderful that these youngster are able to witness this experience. The real relationship between Americian Indians and Buffalo is very hard to really understand by non tribal people.
I am very pleased with the effort to reintroduce Buffalo on Tribal lands.
Thank you for the article and thanks to the those that are helping to accomplish this reunion.
Great story Katie!