Dr. Zoltán Grossman,
Geography / Native American & World Indigenous Peoples Studies,
The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz

(Bison bison bison)
Up to 6.6 feet tall,
10 feet long
Cow 1000-1200 lbs.; bull 1,500-3,000 lbs.
Gestation 285 days; live 15 yrs wild/30-40 captivity
Bulls polygamous; homosexual courtship common
Replaced earlier, larger longhorn Steppe Bison (not adapted for hunting)
Related to Wood Bison (Alberta) and Wisent (European Bison)
Can run 35 mph (up to 10 mi), outrun and outnmaneuver a horse
Can leap over fence; really dangerous
Eat more before a storm, and lay with their head into the wind.

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“For it was the White Buffalo Cow Woman who in the beginning brought us our most sacred pipe, And from that time, we have been related with the Four-Leggeds and all that moves. Tatanka, the buffalo, is the closest four-legged relative that we have, and they live as a people, like we do.” --Black Elk, 1863-1950

50 million head in 1850 (most numerous herd on Earth)
Bison (Greek for ox-like animal) or Buffalo (French boeuf or beef).
Bison migration routes becamse Indian trails, pioneer traces, railroads

Hunters used hides, meat, leather, teeth, guts, beard, sinew, grease, dung, hooves, marrow, tendons, horns

No horses:
Buffalo jumps or natural corrals
(population controlled)
European epidemics reduced hunting, fire management, so bison population exploded (helped by larger-scale rainfall)
With horses and/ or firearms:
Native hunting easier;
Drought in 1840s-60s: population again declines.

“"[T]he country in every direction around us was one vast plain in which innumerable herds of Buffalow were seen attended by their shepherds..."
-- Meriwether Lewis, 1805

Bison stood in way of tracks, enabled easy hunting;
Hides used for industrial machine belts

"These men (the buffalo hunters) have done...more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary....Send them powder and lead if you will, but for the sake of lasting peace let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo are exterminated. Then your prairie can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy who follows the hunter as the second forerunner of an advanced civilization.”
--General Philip Sheridan,
Commander of the Armies of the West, 1875

"...Where there were myriads of buffalo the years before,
a sickening stench, and the vast plain, which only a short twelve months before teamed over with animal life, was a dead, solitary, putrid desert.”
--Col. Richard Irving Dodge, 1873

One hunter took hundreds or thousands of bison

Native land loss
Bison range loss
Strategy to control land, using railroads
No buffalo left on reservations by 1890
750 bison in U.S.
23 in Yellowstone
500 in Alberta, 1902
(Wood Buffalo NP, 1925)
1869
1883
1883-85

“Beef Issue” on Pine Ridge Reservation to replace Lakotas’ buffalo meat (same time as allotment begins);
39 million lbs. at 35 Indian agencies, 1880

• xxxxx

270 million acres federal range leased for cattle
Lack adaptability
Most dependent on feed crops, hormones, etc.
High Plains prairie less biodiverse; 20% species remain
Less able to withstand blizzards (1886, 1906, 1996)
(Bison head and snout can plow through snowdrifts)

“Many would argue that the ecological future of the Great Plains is intertwined with the psychological and spiritual relationship the prairies and the peoples of the prairies have with the buffalo, and with
American culture and mythology. Cattle culture’s takeover of the prairie and the subsequent destruction of the buffalo herds is a multifaceted mistake, and one whose significance is becoming increasingly apparent.”
--Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations , p. 147

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• Founded 1992
• 57 tribes in 19 states
• 12,000 bison
• Reintroduction of tribal lands and cultures
• Technical assistance
• P.R. and outreach
• Marketing
• Community-based coops
• Fight diabetes through good fats to control sugar and insulin levels http://www.itbcbison.com

“We really believe that we need to go on as tribes. We can succeed as individuals, but in that process we lose our [collective] identity
[as a tribe]. We are a collective. That is how we are like the buffalo.
--Fred Dubray,
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150,000 bison now raised by non-Native ranchers;
Programs to recover native grasses
National Bison Association www.bisoncentral.com
Great Plains Buffalo Association www.gpbuffalo.org/
“Bison are handled as little as possible. They spend their lives on grass… with very little time in the feedlot. … not subjected to drugs, chemicals or hormones.”

“Research by Dr. M. Marchello at North Dakota State University has shown that the meat from Bison is a highly nutrient dense food because of the proportion of protein, fat, mineral, and fatty acids to its caloric value.
Comparisons to other meat sources have also shown that Bison has a greater concentration of iron as well as some of the essential fatty acids necessary for human well being. Readers' Digest magazine has even listed bison as one of the five foods women should eat because of the high iron content.” --National Bison Association

White population of
Great Plains older; youth moving out
1/4 U.S. now
“frontier” status
(<2 people sq. mi.)
Native population recovering, increasing
Rutgers proposal to take down fences, bring back open bison range w/ core areas, corridors
(Frank & Debra Popper)

Founded in 1908 by President
Theodore Roosevelt
The Tribal Self Determination Act allowed for a tribal role on the
Range. Due to bison’s “special geographic, historical, and cultural significance” it is plausible to transfer management of the range.
Since 1992 talks have been in the works with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service for the Flathead
Tribes to assume this responsibility.

visionwest.com/icera.html
Because the Range is now supported by taxpayers and is a federal property, there is much sentiment, mostly aroused by the Citizens Equal
Rights Alliance (CERA) opposing tribal management.
They believe the tribe will do a poor job of managing the
Range and will discriminate against non-Indians when hiring staff, add tourist centers and another Hwy 93 entrance to the Range.

PEER adage
Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility
(PEER) also thinks the transfer would be detrimental to the existing management
Montana Wilderness Association stated in July of 2003 that the tribe has an “outstanding long-term conservation record.”
Montana
Wilderness
Association

to “protect” cattle herds from brucellosis
`

Montana shot 1,944 (1/3 herd), 1994-97; auctioned ~500

Rosalie
Little
Thunder
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/
Some bison transferred to tribes; would have taken more

http://www.muscodabison.com/
Photos by Michele Shaw

Ho-Chunk bison raising connects tribal health, economic development and cultural revitalization. It symbolizes the rebirth not only of the bison, but also of the Native culture that once depended upon them.

The "Bison Prairie 1" staff is dedicated to organic methods of raising bison, and to having minimal human contact with the herd

The bison are not able to roam, but are moved among fields in "intensive rotational grazing."
The herd is moved once a week to paddocks that are 15 to 25 acres each.

grasses of the Wisconsin River Valley.
The grasses have had difficulty overcoming alfalfa, which is of concern because a bison can only handle 10% alfalfa protein.

maintain good health in the herds and the crops.
It takes about four acres per animal to maintain a healthy herd.

Calving season is from April to June, with a predicted death rate of about one-sixth of newborns. To track the bison, each animal is inserted with a microchip for up-to-date inventory control

In the yearly roundup, the new animals get their chips inserted, and all the animals are subject to a thorough checkup.

The round-up is important for health monitoring, yet is done only

The herd is providing enough meat to entitle each tribal
The site provides meat for elderly meal sites, community activities, family and culturally related activities, and other programs.

Bison Prairie I also offers other opportunities for the public and tribal members. There is also a youth cultural education program that includes building a traditional shelter, canoeing, archery, and other culturally related activities.

Guided tours of the ancient effigy mounds on the property.

Wisconsin River

1,300-foot wingspan
Ghost Eagle in Wisconsin
River Valley

A symbol & allegory of Native survival and continuity

Sauk County,
South-Central
Wisconsin
Glacial outwash plain south of Baraboo Hills
Ho-Chunk farm fields on rich soil
Fire management of vast prairie for hunting
Native Americans removed, 1830s

Built in WWII on some of
Wisconsin’s richest farmland.
Flat area with access to water and labor.

Sited Nov. 1941 over sites with poorer soil
Accepted after Pearl Harbor
Some of 90 landowners not paid fair price
7,400 acres evacuated; buildings torn down

Made propellant for shells, bullets, rockets
Open during WWII,
Korea, Vietnam
Mothballed 1975
(Goc 2002)

Nitrates contaminated groundwater (uninhabitable)
Army clean-up begun
Prairie grasses, birds, wildlife flourished above

Claims of Tribe (1,500 acres),
Federal (USDA) over State (DNR).
No local claim, but ex-resident families want to have say
Choice between conservation/ tourism and reindustrialization

Tribe proposed prairie restoration, bison herd, cultural site protection
State wanted full DNR control of contiguous site as park
Tribe can pressure Army clean-up; critiques DNR track record
Agricultural use on site

Ho-Chunk not treated as “local”
(2nd highest tribal population)
County gov’t opposed tribal role, feared casino
From federal land to trust land
(no loss in local taxes)
Tribe largest employer in county

State, tribal, federal governments divided ownership, possible joint management?
“Uses and activities … contribute to the reconciliation and resolution of past conflicts involving the loss and contamination of the natural environment, the displacement of Native Americans and Euro-American farmers, and the effects of war.”

Ownership proposals
Most polluted sites in north/ central zone
GSA acreage decision, 2003:
DNR 4,700
USDA 2,000
Ho-Chunk 420
(in NW corner)

Heider farm in Janesville,
Wisconsin