Images of albino animals often fascinate the public. But the extraordinarily rare white bison has special meaning in indigenous cultures. And the recent birth of one sparked great interest in multiple environments.
“There are prophecies about white buffalo calves being born in a time of great change,” says Jason Baldes. He is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and executive director of the Wind River Buffalo Tribal Initiative. “We have stories of the Eastern Shoshone people hunting and chasing white bison more than a century ago.”
Sacred animal
Buffaloes used to roam freely from Alaska to Mexico. Their number ranged between 30 and 60 million. The population dropped to 325 animals in 1884. But scientists and conservationists have since rescued the bison from the brink of extinction.
“This will help raise awareness about the importance of the sacredness of white buffalo farming. And also its existence as wildlife,” says Baldes, who is also a National Geographic Explorer. The extraordinarily rare white bison has important meaning to these communities. “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and a warning,” Chief Arvol Looking Horse told the Associated Press. He is a spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Oyate of South Dakota.
Baldes has been working to return the bison to the tribes that want them. «We call ourselves the buffalo eaters. And this, despite the fact that they disappeared from our diet for more than 130 years », he says. “Most buffalo exist today in private herds and ranches,” he says; “They are essentially ecologically extinct.”
Importance
One way to remedy this is to buy land and release bison on it. So far, the Intertribal Buffalo Council has managed to acquire 25,000 wild bison from 65 herds on tribal lands. More recently, in Wind River, Baldes helped secure approval to convert 6,879 hectares of cattle pasture into bison habitat.
“Often the limitation of tribes is land,” he says. Restoring bison to the landscape is of utmost importance. Not only because of the ancient ecocultural importance that this species has for Native American tribes. «They increase plant and animal biodiversity. That should be reason enough,” says Baldes.
