By 1889, only about 1,000 bison remained, many in zoos or privately owned herds, according to the U.S. government, to eliminate the bison in the mid- to late 1800s all but succeeded - a genocidal swipe aimed at bringing these largely nomadic cultures to heel and opening up the West to Euro-American expansion, farming and settlement. But that was before a concerted campaign, backed by the U.S. They were a keystone species in the vast ecosystem and a foundational food source for more than a dozen Native American nations living there. “That means that you don’t have to worry about hunger, you don’t have to worry about inadequate housing … all these worries that come with oppression and poverty.”Īt their peak, an estimated 30 million bison grazed North America’s Great Plains, the region that drapes the center of the continent, from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. “You just have a peaceful feeling,” Terkildsen said. That’s what it meant,” said Monica Terkildsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota and WWF’s tribal liaison on the neighboring Pine Ridge Reservation, who was at the Oct. It was land where their ancestors had run for thousands of years, where they had been central to the success of the Great Plains’ nations, anchoring their cultures, prescribing their movements and filling their bellies. They seem to fit into the landscape, as if they’d always been there and always would be. Then, they slowed and wheeled to the left against a backdrop of a few lonely trees on a blanket of tan grass stretching to distant hills. Out in their new pasture, the animals loped, moving in unison as if one organism. The thunder of 400 hooves as they crossed through the gate gave way to the whir of cameras and ululations from the crowd, perhaps 20 people gathered to see the return of the bison. The bison circled four times around the holding pen, before the lead animals took them into the 3,400-hectare (8,500-acre) pasture, their new home on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S. Over the next five years, the leaders of the Wolakota Buffalo Range project hope to expand the herd to 1,500 buffalo, which would make it the largest owned by a Native nation.The project is a collaboration between the Sicangu Oyate’s economic arm, REDCO, the U.S.state of South Dakota, released 100 American bison onto part of an 11,300-hectare (28,000-acre) pasture. The Sicangu Lakota Oyate, the Native nation living on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S.
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