The Winona LaDuke Reader (History & Heritage) by Winona Laduke

Author:Winona Laduke [Laduke, Winona]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Motorbooks International
Published: 2002-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

Buffalo Nation

Appeared in SIERRA, May/June 2000.

In February, 1999, Rosalie Little Thunder and Joseph Chasing Horse led some 40 Native people on Tatanka Oyate Mani, the Walk for the Buffalo Nation, from South Dakota’s Black Hills to the stone archway of Yellowstone’s northern entrance. It was there that Yanktonai Lakota Gary Silk danced for the buffalo as Horace Axtell, a descendant of Nez Percé Chief Joseph, prayed and sang with his sons, their clear voices resonating to the mountains. Through sleet, wind, and blizzards, Little Thunder and the other Tatanka Oyate Mani participants walked a 507-mile spiritual journey along seemingly endless yellow lines through the Northern Plains, jostled by barreling semi-trailers, and prayed for the restoration of the Buffalo Nation.

To Native America, the buffalo is the elder brother, the teacher. In Lakota culture, it is said that before you kill a buffalo, you must perform the Buffalo Kill ceremony. You must offer prayers and talk to the animal’s spirit. Then, and only then, will the buffalo surrender itself. Only then can you kill the buffalo. “The First People were the Buffalo People, our ancestors which came from the sacred Black Hills, the heart of everything that is,” explains Chief Arvol Looking Horse, one of the Lakotas’ most revered holy men. “I humbly ask all nations to respect our way of life, because in our prophecies, if there is no buffalo, then life as we know it will cease to exist.”

There is a similar teaching in my own culture, the Anishinaabeg. During midwinter ceremonies, an elder’s voice will rise as the drum quiets. “The buffalo gave their lives so that we might live,” she will say. “Now it is our turn to speak for the buf-falo, to stand for our relatives.”

The fate of the buffalo has vast implications for native ecosystems as well as Native peoples. Buffalo determine landscapes. For thousands of years, the Great Plains, the largest single ecosystem in North America, was maintained by the buffalo. By their sheer numbers, weight, and behavior, they cultivated the prairie. It is said that their thundering hooves danced on the earth as they moved by the millions; their steps resounded in the vast underground water system, the Ogallala Aquifer, stimulating its health and seeding the prairies. And their destruction set in motion the ecological and economic crisis that now afflicts the region.

In the mid-19th century, 50 million bison ranged the prairie. There were then more than 250 types of grass, along with profusions of prairie dogs, purple cornflower, prairie turnips, mushrooms, and a host of other species listed today as endangered or protected.

This natural balance has shifted considerably. Biological diversity has plummeted. Those 50 million buffalo have been replaced by farms and 45 million cattle. Due to massive cultivation and irrigation, the Great Plains’ topsoil is eroding and its ground-water dwindling. The prairies are teeming with pumps, irrigation systems, combines, and toxic chemicals. Much of the original ecosystem has been destroyed, and what remains is in a precarious state. No other biome on the continent has suffered so much loss.

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