Buffalo Harvest and Release

[soft music] ♪ ♪ - We ask you to pity this one today, Grandfather.

[speaking Siksika] narrator: For the Blackfeet, bringing back buffalo is intimately tied to bringing back culture and being able to survive off the land in a sustainable way.

- Been asked to sit here and to pray.

- Today we're going out to harvest an animal.

It's really critical that Blackfoot and buffalo are connected in the way that we have been connected since time immemorial.

- We smoke with you, we pray because we're gonna take this one's life.

- The hunters will smudge themselves.

The gun will be smudged to purify and make sure that it shoots true and that we cause the least amount of suffering and pain to that animal.

- Rest blessings upon those, Grandfather, in which we-- who uses this one.

- We eat the buffalo, and every time, there's gonna be a prayer for that sacrifice of that animal.

And afterwards, I'll go out and lay some tobacco and say another few words of prayer for that animal.

♪ ♪ - Imagine when there was 30 million of them.

- Oh, man.

- Can you imagine?

- I have.

I have.

- It would just be just black.

It would be like the ground rippling under your feet.

We got to make that happen.

♪ ♪ - See the one with the tail up?

Right above her, a young bull.

- It's really important to have the young, the next generation, be a part of this ritual and to relearn that culture and those ways.

♪ ♪ - We've actually got two young bulls right there.

♪ ♪ I like him.

♪ ♪ I'd say, in the last ten years, that it's gotten to where we can do that, you know, go out and do the harvest and the culture.

Bringing it back's a big thing.

♪ ♪ [gunshot] Hey, hey, hey.

Oh, that's a nice bull we got.

That's a three-year-- three-year or four-, that guy.

OK, you guys stay in for a second.

Let me make sure.

♪ ♪ So we're gonna pull this hide.

You can step around this side of him.

OK, we got to cut slower here, huh?

♪ ♪ - Your dad did good.

He went down fast.

Did you see that?

- Yes.

You crying?

- Am I crying?

- Yeah.

- Oh, I always cry.

It's just such a beautiful being, you know.

I never get used to taking one, but there is a recognition and a humility that you are taking a life to feed yourself, to maintain and revitalize culture, to make sure that the young people, who have not lived with buffalo, understand who they are, their identity... - Nice animal, huh?

- Mm-hmm.

- And to do it in the right way from a place of prayer and celebration and gratitude.

- You was in there.

You cut the throat.

Your blood's on your hands.

You can take honor and you can say a prayer.

- Mm-hmm.

- Thank you, son.

- Buffalo, they say from all the animals that they get good nutrition in the grass and they have a good winter.

- He had a lot of muscle on him, a lot of fat, and a lot of meat for the whole tribe.

Cut that off real quick.

- Look at that.

- It makes me feel really good, you know, to see my grandson being able to participate in the harvest.

And I hope that, you know, that's here for generations to come.

♪ ♪ narrator: The Blackfeet plan to return buffalo to lands around Chief Mountain.

It's a sacred site bordering Glacier National Park.

♪ ♪ - The hope is that in the next year or two, we will be able to set those animals free and they will reestablish their migrations, they will reestablish these ecological systems that they're a part of.

A huge cascade of effects will happen, and we will see increases in birds and grasses, bumblebees, all kinds of insects.

♪ ♪ narrator: Restoring biodiversity is a long-term undertaking, but it will have ongoing benefits for the climate, the people, and the land.