Dec 22, 2025
Santa Dance
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Santa Dance
It is not nearly common enough knowledge that most Native tribes in the U.S. don't actually own all of the land within their reservation. There are millions of acres of reservation land that tribes don't legally own and they have no control over how that land is used. Like, there are a lot of different concepts tied in with the land back movement, but a major one is literally just getting reservation land back into tribal ownership.
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day
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.
From Ethnographic Materials ML:
Ainu culture, an indigenous group originating from Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.
The intricate, geometric patterns on their robes are emblematic of Ainu heritage, often created through embroidery or appliqué.
Traditional Ritual: The individuals are captured performing a traditional gesture, possibly part of a ceremony like the iyomante, a ritual aimed at sending spirits back to the kamuy realm.
Historical Context: The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan, traditionally living in harmony with nature as hunter-gatherers, though they faced significant assimilation policies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
It’s a good day to pay reparations. Natives may reblog with your own payment links.
National Day of Mourning 2024
https://www.herringpondtribe.org/
Support the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and its efforts to protect their homeland and many programs.
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The Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers are a group of musicians, educators, and artisans from the tribal communities of Mashpee on Cape Co
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