Why reintroducing bison is revitalizing the Prairies and Indigenous culture, identity

On the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation west of Brandon, Man., schoolchildren are throwing pumpkins into a bison pen, a ceremony and sign of respect to an animal that has deep spiritual significance for Indigenous culture and identity.

Community leaders are also educating a new generation about how the bison, known in these parts as buffalo, has important implications for the future of the Prairies – rehabilitating natural grasslands and conserving water in a time of climate change.

"The significance of the buffalo goes back hundreds of years. These animals have saved our lives," said Anthony Tacan, a band councillor whose family is the keeper of this herd.

"They provided food and weapons out of the bones, tools, the hides for clothing, the teepees. It did everything for us. So going forward, we decided it's our turn to give back. It's our turn to look after them."

The bisons' territory, which includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan, parts of Alberta, and stretches down to Mexico, used to  be home to tens of millions of them. The lives of many Indigenous peoples were intertwined with the herds and the hunt. 

But after colonial settlements, the bison were "eliminated, slaughtered off this continent to the point where they almost went extinct," said Hila Shamon, a research ecologist with the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute who is based in Bozeman, Mont. 

Only a few hundred were left at the start of the 19th century, she said.

"We don't really have wild bison anymore."

Their disappearance coincided with a time of government assimilation policies for Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States.

It also had consequences for grasslands and the Prairies, which are now considered at-risk ecosystems.

Shamon says half of the Great Plains have been converted to agriculture, and millions of acres are still being lost every year.

In Manitoba, 80 per cent of the mixed-grass prairie has disappeared, affecting the plants, insects and animals that rely on it as a habitat.

Once an area is cultivated and put into an annual crop rotation, it's difficult to restore.

"The native grasses are gone. The microbes that are so essential for everything that's living within those soils is gone. And we're just losing it at an unprecedented rate," Shamon said.