#first nations

[tilbageidanmark]

Santa Dance

[triumph-of-adaptation]

[reasonsforhope]

Bison Ranchers Return Thousands of Animals to Native Lands and Witness Total Rejuvenation of Ecosystem

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet.

"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.

Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.

That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.

“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.

“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”

As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.

Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.

The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.

Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.

Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.

Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.

Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.

“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"

-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.

[closet-keys]

The struggle of colonized people the world over is integrally connected to the defense of water.

My followers who are settlers on Turtle Island may be familiar with the English translation of the Lakota saying "mní wičóni" -- "water is life." This declaration of the centrality of water to all of existence on this planet has been used for a long time, but became known widely outside of Lakota communities as a political slogan following the direct action by water protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Right now First Nations activists are struggling against the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline as the "Build Canada Act" proceeds. Descendants from many colonized African nations who were abducted into chattel slavery in the United States are subject to the destruction of their access to clean water repeatedly, with one infamous example being the water crisis in Flint Michigan.

When we discuss the genocide of Palestinians by Israel and the United States, we must always remember that control over water is central to settler-colonial projects.

[pastel-kaleesh]

You are not progressive if you call Two Spirit a "native version of nonbinary/genderqueer/bigender/agender". Two Spirit is Two Spirit.

[safije]

Katie Harris is photographed with her Appaloosa. Harris made most of the horse trappings as well as her own traditional outfits herself, including the bead work. Some of the trappings are passed down from older generations but the girls like to make their own to continue the tradition.

By Erika Larsen

[seanastinhopeunquenchable]

Sean Astin, Dom Monaghan, Billy Boyd and Elijah Wood with the totems they were gifted for their characters (Orca for Frodo, Bear for Sam, Beaver for Merry and Raven for Pipin) created by First Nation Musqueam artist Wesley Wyse. At Fan Expo Vancouver.