'We're trying to get back to our way of life:' Northern Arapaho Tribe gets its own buffalo herd - ABC FOX Montana

More buffalo arrived on the Wind River Reservation last week, joining the more than 30 that already call the land home.

The Northern Arapaho Tribe on Wednesday welcomed its first 10 buffalo to the reservation. The reintroduction of the important mammal to the tribe – and many others – comes after the reservation’s other tribe, the Eastern Shoshone, has grown its wild buffalo herd to 33 since reintroducing them in 2016 after a more than 130-year absence.

“We’re trying to get back to our way of life, our culture,” said Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office Deputy Director Crystal C’Bearing. “One of those ways … is to bring the buffalo back.”

The yearling buffalo came from the National Bison Range in Montana, she said. While her office received short notice that the buffalo were coming to Wind River, C’Bearing said Wednesday’s release was well-attended by all ages.

Once common across much of North America – numbering between 30 million and 60 million – buffalo were nearly exterminated after years of overhunting and habitat loss. The loss in buffalo helped force many tribes onto reservations and ushered in assimilation.

Like other tribes, the Northern Arapaho used buffalo in many ways, from ceremonial use to tools, C’Bearing said.

“That was our way of living,” she said. “It was our food, our shelter, our clothing.”

The buffalo will be a useful tool in helping educate younger and future generations about Arapaho culture and language, C’Bearing said. More cultural awareness and pride could also help reverse other problems like addiction and increase consumption of traditional foods.

“We really believe bringing them back will help,” she said. “I’m excited for the future. I just hope we keep building our herd and taking care of them.”

While the buffalo – five cows and five elk – currently occupy about 50 acres near Kinnear, C’Bearing said the herd will soon move onto about 600 acres, with the plans to slowly grow the herd over the coming years. Eventually, she hopes the buffalo can essentially be free-range wildlife.

They’ve also been vaccinated and tested negative for brucellosis, which C’Bearing said hopefully calms any fears from ranchers and others about the buffalo spreading disease to livestock, a common concern from those wary of buffalo reintroduction.

The concern even helped derail an effort in the 2000s for the Northern Arapaho to bring buffalo back to the reservation, she said.

“There’s that misconception out here,” C’Bearing said. “They came healthy. They came in really good condition.”

About 21,000 wild buffalo have been reintroduced in North America for conservation purposes, with hundreds of thousands more farmed for meat and other uses, Jason Baldes, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s buffalo representative and tribal partnerships coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation has previously stated.

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Tribes have played a role in helping wild buffalo gain a foothold in North America again. Earlier this month, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe signed an international buffalo treaty with two other Indigenous nations from the U.S. and Canada.

About 30 Indigenous sovereign nations have now signed the cross-border agreement, which calls for collaboration and cooperation in restoring bison to tribal and public lands.

Calling the Northern Arapaho’s move “most definitely positive,” Baldes said in an interview Friday that the decision “helps move the conversation forward” around re-establishing wild buffalo on Wind River and elsewhere.

Not only are buffalo important culturally to many tribes such as the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone, but they’re also vital ecologically, he said.

Baldes said he hopes the tribes’ two separate herds can continue to grow and eventually be co-managed by both tribes as wildlife, roaming the hundreds of thousands of acres of suitable habitat on the reservation.

Buffalo, he said, can also help heal divisions between the two Wind River tribes and draw them closer, in addition to helping revitalize culture and language.

“Buffalo are seen as a way to help us heal,” Baldes said. “We all need healing.”

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