The Battle for Yellowstone by Justin Farrell

Author:Justin Farrell [Farrell, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Science
ISBN: 9780691164342
Google: 3XGYDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 23528849
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.8: A bull bison visits buffalo remains just outside YNP. BFC describes this as the mourning process for his relatives. Photo by BFC.

Another key lesson humans need to learn from the buffalo is the intense concern for every member of the community, especially when members are lost. This is seen most powerfully in the BFC’s description of buffalo mourning rituals. When buffalo are killed during a haze, hunt, or slaughter, buffalo have what the BFC calls a “Wake of the Buffalo,” or a “Mourning Ceremony” (Figure 3.8).

Thus, after 44 wild bison were killed in February 2013, the BFC released a statement explaining in stirring detail how the herd conducted its communal mourning ritual:

Two days later we watched as more than a hundred buffalo approached these killing fields. They found the remains of their relatives strewn across the land like fleshy boulders left behind by glaciers. We watched in sorrowful awe as the buffalo approached the gut piles. Their tails shot up in the air as they ran from remain to remain, discovering what was left. Enormous bulls bellowed like roaring dragons, mouths agape, bodies arched, and pawing the ground. The buffalo placed their faces close to the flesh left behind, nuzzling their muzzles into the earth where the buffalo had fallen. They sniffed at fetuses still sheltered in their mother’s flesh whose lives were ended before they were born. The buffalo circled and scattered, ran to each other and away again. Sparring, bumping, running, pawing and crying out in their deep emotion of their discovery. Watching, we could only think of it as a wake, a mighty wailing of the buffalo. Back and forth they ran, frantic, between the gut piles that had been their friends, their family. Like chieftains in their own right, fathers of their clans, the mature bulls lingered the longest, as the mothers and grandmothers led the young ones on in an ancient procession, their deliberate footsteps slower in their sorrow.

In this statement, the BFC challenges those who rationalize buffalo killing or explain away the process of animal mourning, arguing that “the depth of relationship the buffalo share is timeless, intense, and far beyond most people’s willingness or ability to accept or understand. Indeed, it is easier, more convenient, to ignore or pretend that it doesn’t mean anything.” In this rational “blindness” we deny ourselves “the honest power of love, the gift of respect, and the aid of wisdom.” The buffalo serve as a model of the sacred power of communal bonds and “[the buffalo] are patiently waiting on the brink for us [humans] to catch up.” Beneath these beliefs about, and descriptions of, buffalo mourning ceremonies is the narrative that in modernity we have lost deep interpersonal connections, and with them, the deep sense of care and respect characteristic of intimate communities. The buffalo mourning ceremony is one example of the buffalo guiding us toward more communal ways of life. As one BFC leader put it, “It’s time we get back to community and taking care of one another.

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