[PEN-L:235] Bring back the buffalo

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tribes seek to restore spirit by restoring buffalo
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   BY JODI RAVE Lincoln Journal Star

   CROW AGENCY, Mont. Leroy Stewart grew up in the Big Horn Mountains,
   always with his grandfather, always close to the land. The grandfather
   was a ranger who spent 40 years with the tribe's buffalo herd nestled
   then, as now, in a canyon-enshrined, 22,000-acre pasture deep amid
   plunging walls and rugged mountains.

   The mountains here on the Crow Indian Reservation in southeast Montana
   have their share of snowfalls, thunderstorms, rivers, valleys and
   ponderosa pine. They offer elk, bear, deer and eagles. And they also
   offer something else.

   "You respect the mountain," says Stewart. "It's got a spirit."

   One night about three years ago, he says five buffalo appeared in a
   dream. They led him to two sitting bulls one black, one white. The
   black one said: "We know where your heart is."

   Stewart went with his instincts. The next day, he walked away from his
   job with a chemical manufacturing company in Billings.

   Like his grandfather before him, he has been working with the buffalo
   ever since.

   And he is far from alone in revering the animal that once provided the
   Crow with daily sustenance, an animal that came to define his people.
   In fact, many American Indians across the country, says Stewart, share
   a common maxim: "Without the buffalo, we wouldn't be a people."

   As such, there has been a phenomenal resurgence this decade between
   man and mythic animal, a spiritual and cultural reawakening that has
   taken root and spread quickly throughout much of Indian Country.

   To wit: Six years ago, only a handful of tribes the Crow in Montana;
   the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara in North Dakota; and the Oglala and
   Cheyenne River tribes in South Dakota were tending to 2,500 buffalo on
   40,000 acres. Today, there are 35 tribes in 16 states managing more
   than 15,000 buffalo on 100,000 acres of tribal land.

   "I know some individuals whose lives were completely turned around by
   just coming and watching the buffalo, or by working around them," said
   Gilbert Mesteth, manager of the Oglala tribal herd on South Dakota's
   Pine Ridge Reservation.

   The remarkable turnaround did not occur by accident.

   The InterTribal Bison Cooperative, a buffalo-networking organization
   for tribes based in Rapid City, S.D., is largely credited for bringing
   about the revival. Founded in 1992, membership in the ITBC has grown
   from 17 member tribes to 45. And it's still growing.

   An event unfolding this week in Denver underscores the dramatic
   growth: Today through Wednesday, the ITBC is hosting its first
   national conference, "Sacred Buffalo: Back From Oblivion." Keynote
   speakers at the conference include American Indian scholar Vine
   Deloria Jr., a Lakota who teaches at the University of Colorado, and
   N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa novelist awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
   "House Made of Dawn."

   Among those attending the Denver conference is Louie LaRose, manager
   of the Winnebago tribal herd in northeast Nebraska. The herd, he said,
   is connecting the past with the present.

   "It's like opening the door to lost information," said LaRose.

   The historical link between Plains Indians and buffalo is a
   well-established one. For centuries, the animal provided spiritual
   sustenance and daily necessities: skulls for sacred Sun Dances, brains
   to tan hides, hides for tipi covers, stomach liners for cooking
   vessels, hooves for glue, meat for pemmican, fat for soaps, bones for
   knives, blood for puddings.

   Now, say native people, it is their turn to take care of the buffalo.

   In doing so, the buffalo, too, are allowing Indian people to survive
   in a new way. Although Indians no longer need horns for ladles, there
   are a multitude of contemporary uses: The low-fat, nutritious buffalo
   meat helps diabetic patients; the growing herds provide food and new
   jobs and the jobs' sorely needed income. Most importantly, perhaps, it
   is fueling a spiritual and cultural rebirth.

   "It's just indescribable, but when you get together with (Great Plains
   tribes) from the West, you see the spiritual tie to the buffalo and
   the land," said Patricia Cornelius, manager of the Oneida Tribe's
   newly established buffalo herd near Seymour, Wis. "We all have one
   thing in common: to help get the buffalo back to the reservation."

   For many American Indians, and a growing cadre of white ranchers, this
   buffalo revival seems somewhat miraculous.

   Just a century ago, an animal that once roamed the continent at will
   was hunted to near extinction. In a slaughter of epic proportions, the
   buffalo were reduced from an estimated 50 million to fewer than 500 in
   the wild by 1890.

   "Even before we lost our herds, and these other tribes lost their
   herds, we never lost the sense of value of the buffalo," summed up
   Joseph Medicine Crow, an 85-year-old storyteller, anthropologist and
   Crow tribal member who lives in Lodge Grass, Mont. "It goes back to
   legendary times. In Crow legend, it's said buffalo were once human
   beings."

   In fact, many tribes share a kindred relationship with the buffalo.
   The Lakota, for example, believe before their people emerged from an
   underground world in the Black Hills, they and the buffalo shared the
   same spirit. For thousands of years afterward, the buffalo or tatanka
   "his greatness" in Lakota took care of them.

   Now, say many native people, it is time to return the favor.

   "We need to do something for the buffalo who sustained us," said Rocky
   Afraid of Hawk, a member of the Cheyenne River Reservation's buffalo
   program near Eagle Butte, S.D.

   "There's a song out there that says the buffalo are depending on you,"
   he said. "They want our help."

   And they're getting it.

   Buffalo prayers have been said at North Dakota's Fort Berthold
   Reservation, home of the Three Affiliated Tribes the Mandan, Hidatsa
   and Arikara since 1983. That year, a traditional buffalo-calling
   ceremony was performed for the first time since the 1800s.

   The drama-like ritual used to be done annually for the well-being of
   the people. Alyce Spotted Bear, then chairwoman of the Three
   Affiliated Tribes, remembers the year following the ritual's revival.
   In 1984, the tribe was allowed to round up 35 buffalo from Theodore
   Roosevelt National Park, animals that became its first herd.

   Today the tribe grazes 235 buffalo on 13,000 acres east of Mandaree,
   N.D. "We belong with the buffalo," said Spotted Bear, now a guest
   lecturer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

   LaRose, from Nebraska's Winnebago tribe, recalled how his people first
   brought buffalo back to his reservation. Some tribal members initially
   opposed the idea. Buffalo were a Sioux thing, they said. The animal
   had no place in their tribe. LaRose said he had to remind them the
   Winnebago have a buffalo clan.

   Thanks to some financial help from the InterTribal Bison Cooperative,
   the Winnebago now have 61 buffalo on 200 acres. Since starting the
   herd four years ago, LaRose has come to know the animals, giving many
   of them names like Ceva, Tonner and Mike Bison.

   "When I get in the middle of them, I feel insignificant," said LaRose.
   "I kind of feel like Mike Tyson after he's lost a fight."

   The buffalo's return has been foretold by spiritual leaders such as
   Black Elk, an Oglala holy man. But the buffalo won't come back on
   their own, said LaRose. It will be up to Indian people to help them.

   "Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the enormous task that lies ahead.
   It's a lot bigger endeavor than just putting the animal back in the
   fields."

   Meanwhile, the sacred animal already is having an effect on the mental
   and physical health of some tribal members, LaRose said. Winnebago
   adult and youth community service workers are required to work with
   the buffalo. The impact they have on the youth, he said, can be
   measured by changes in both attitude and clothing.

   "By the end of the year," LaRose said, "they end up being better
   students. And if they come here wearing baggy pants, well they don't
   wear those baggy pants anymore."

   Beginning Oct. 2, the low-fat, low-cholesterol buffalo meat will be
   given to the Winnebago's diabetic tribal members one-third of whom now
   suffer from the disease.

   Almost overnight, an active lifestyle and a diet of lean meat, fruit
   and vegetables gave way to a sedentary one filled with sugar, starch
   and fat.

   "That was the end," said LaRose.

   Instead of changing their diets, "The approach was, 'Oh, we'll cut
   that foot off.' Pretty soon we had all these Winnebagos rolling around
   in wheelchairs," said LaRose.

   On the Oneida Reservation, the tribe's 1-year-old herd of 15 buffalo
   grazes on 60 acres of lush dairyland near Seymour, Wis. They have been
   a particular hit with the old people.

   "There are certain elders that go out there everyday and look at
   them," said Patricia Cornelius, the tribe's buffalo project manager.

   While tribes such as the Oneida are tending small herds for the first
   time, the Crow and Lakota maintain some of the largest and oldest
   Indian-owned herds in the nation.

   At the Crow Reservation, buffalo have been an integral part of the
   tribe since 1934. The herd numbered 1,500 in 1965, when the U.S.
   government ordered it eliminated for fear Crow buffalo might spread
   the cattle disease brucellosis.

   Over time, the herd was built back up to 1,200 and now numbers about
   800.

   The large herd now is used primarily for tribal purposes. Annually,
   the Crow find honor in donating between 80 and 130 buffalo for feasts,
   ceremonies, weddings, powwows and school events.

   Although South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux also donate meat, skulls
   and robes, the tribe is unique among the reservations: Its buffalo
   represent a profitable enterprise.

   "We had a self-sufficient economy at one time," said Fred Dubray,
   director of Cheyenne River's Pte Hca Ka, or "All of the Buffalo,"
   program. "When they destroyed the buffalo, our economy then became one
   that was dependent on the federal government.

   "We need to heal from the damage that was done not just in a financial
   sense, but in a cultural sense, which were one and the same to Indian
   people."

   Today, Cheyenne River maintains 1,000 buffalo on 20,000 acres near the
   Missouri River, a significant increase from the 80 it had in 1990.
   Last year, the buffalo program contributed $27,000 to the tribe, which
   disbursed the money among 18 reservation communities.

   And even higher dividends may be in the offing.

   The tribe recently acquired the nation's only portable slaughterhouse.
   Bought with a $1.5 million federal grant, the unit was specially
   designed by Swedish engineers, who modeled it after a slaughter unit
   used to butcher Scandinavian reindeer.

   With a five-man crew already in place, Dubray said plans are under way
   to further market the tribe's range-fed, stress-free buffalo meat,
   possibly "the best red meat in the world."

   To increase marketing, the tribe needs more land to expand its herd, a
   problem not unique to Cheyenne River, said Dubray. As tribal herds
   increase, so do the needs to educate people about buffalo management.
   Tribal member Jim Garrett, an instructor at the Cheyenne River
   Community College, has responded by developing a bison management
   curriculum for the tribal college.

   "We need trained professional managers," said Garrett, adding that the
   cultural method of management will be taught as opposed to Western
   animal science.

   Nine other tribal community colleges have expressed interest in
   developing similar bison-management programs, he said.

   "This is basically our last chance," said Dubray. "If they (buffalo)
   can't make it, we can't make it."

   Dubray also firmly believes if the tribe can rebuild the herds, they
   can rebuild the structure of the tribe itself. "I think these buffalo
   can help. They have the power to do that."

   On the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota, the
   Oglala Sioux run 500 buffalo on 30,000 acres. The tribe is unique in
   that it also has a sharecrop program, allowing tribal members to raise
   private herds.

   "It's not just individuals who are interested," said Gilbert Mesteth,
   tribal herd manager. "We have a waiting list. Some communities and
   voting districts want to start herds. We only have a limited number of
   buffalo to put into this program. But one of our goals is to have
   buffalo on this reservation rather than cattle.

   "It's easier to start small and start slow. Maybe by the next
   generation, or the one after that, we will accomplish that goal."

   Another goal is to provide enough buffalo to meet the dietary needs of
   the people within five to 10 years. "The people on this reservation
   know the buffalo belong to them," Mesteth said. "The buffalo are for
   the people. We want to bring them back so our own people can be
   strong."

   Jodi Rave covers Native American issues for Lee Enterprises newspapers
   and is based at the Lincoln Journal Star . This report was produced in
   cooperation with the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal and the Billings
   (Mont.) Gazette.
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   Copyright © 1998, Lincoln Journal Star and/or Associated Press. All
   rights reserved.




Louis Proyect

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