(gentle pop music) - This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

(inspiring music) - The reclamation of identity, culture and traditions are all involved with the reintroduction of the American buffalo.

It is an inherent right for tribes to reintroduce and manage buffalo on their reservations to preserve their way of life.

(inspiring music continuing) - This program is made possible with support from members like you.

Thank you.

And by... - Donors to the Explore South Dakota Fund.

Support the production of local documentaries and other programs of local interest presented by SDPB.

Friends of SDPB appreciates their support of this program.

- And by AARP South Dakota, empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age.

And South Dakota Retired School Personnel, the education community of AARP advocating for their members and the future of education.

And by Great Plain Tribal Leaders Health Board, with a vision that all tribal nations, communities and citizens achieve optimal wellness by embracing traditional cultural values and innovative and holistic healing practices strengthened by tribal sovereignty.

(gentle music) - The history of the First Peoples and the Buffalo Nation are closely intertwined, like two leaves from the same branch.

For thousands of years, the buffalo have been a primary food source for Native Americans.

Through this relationship, Native Americans were taught how to live in harmony with the buffalo, the land, and the other animal nations, as well as sacred ceremonies and virtues as told in the Lakota legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman.

(dramatic percussive music) (chanting in Native language) (birds singing) - The buffalo provided a renewed spiritual connection amongst the people and fostered a unique relationship and way of life for many years to come.

(gentle music) (birds singing) (gentle music continuing) - People lived in harmony.

We never took more than what we needed.

Buffalo taught us all that.

Different animals taught us all these things.

So you know, that's why we were in sync, in balance and harmony with nature.

- As many as 60 million buffalo roam the region, creating a vast ecosystem that fostered the land and animals around them.

(gentle music) (frogs croaking) - Buffalo are the original climate regulator.

That's the way they graze, how they are designed.

That's what made the grasslands the grasslands.

They have different enzymes in their saliva and snot or mucus that encourage grass growth.

They're very intense grazers.

So they go across the field and chomp it all the way down.

But they keep moving.

(birds singing) Their hoof design, it plants that seed deeper, but it also, it also helps other wildlife.

Birds use that that sloughed hair for their nests to keep their eggs warm.

You know, other insects and microbes gather around the wallows where they put deep impressions and then that collects rainwater.

So other animals can either get a drink or multiply near that water source.

So, you know, as far as healing the land, buffalo on the landscape is a good thing.

- Nothing went to waste after a buffalo was hunted.

Every part was used in a variety of ways, such as clothing, tools, shelter, and weapons.

Some of these harvesting techniques are still used today.

- There are certain parts of the buffalo that when we're processing buffalo today, we always make sure, we watch that, you know, we don't cut the sinew so that if somebody wanted to make bow strings, they could.

You know, taking the hooves apart and seeing the different intricacies of the hoof and using those parts, you know, from rattles to in the soup pot.

Getting back to how that animal was processed and what it provided for all the people.

But there is ceremony and there's healing in that.

When you harvest a buffalo, they do it a certain way.

(tense percussive music) (people uttering war cries) - This way of life was drastically interrupted as the push for Western expansion grew under a flawed philosophy known as manifest destiny.

As more settlers pushed West, the US government enacted many failed policies to deal with the Indian problem.

(melancholy music) One such policy was to subjugate this problem by destroying the American buffalo.

- The history of buffalo is tragic because it was, that animal was nearly exterminated to try to control us as Native people.

And the thought behind it was, "We take away their food source," and we'll become compliant.

And you know, that had detrimental effects to Native people all over the country.

(thunder booming) (tense percussive music) - The annihilation of more than 60 million buffalo was a devastating loss to Native Americans and to their way of life.

This, along with the establishment of reservations and boarding schools, all but destroyed culture, tradition, customs, and brought Native Americans into a different era of oppression and failed policy that is still affecting the following generations.

(dramatic music) - One of the things that it did was, when I first went there, they killed my spirit.

Our hair is our spirit.

So when you wake up in the morning, you don't really look at the mug.

You look at the do (chuckles), see how your spirit's looking.

But without my permission, they sat me in a strange chair and they just kind of like, sheared me like a sheep.

And I watched my hair fall and I cried.

And then they made me think differently.

Now you're either on that side or on this side.

A different, completely different thought process, where I thought in more of a circle.

And physically I didn't own my body, 'cause when I got there with the clothes I had on, they stripped me, took all my clothes away, and I stood there, I would say naked truth.

I didn't own anything.

And I was only seven or six years old.

They do that in the military.

A lot of the veterans I talked to, yeah, they took everything away, stood there naked.

But they were young adults.

But this is like a six-year-old, sometimes five-year-olds.

Took everything away and then they gave you clothes to wear, and they gave you a number.

So I noticed I still, 174 is my number.

I still remember.

They put all your bedding and everything, everything, your clothes, your towels, it was in that box.

(clears throat) Emotionally, they kind of like, froze your emotions.

When you're sitting there waiting to, you had to be quiet all the time.

You had to be told to be quiet, couldn't express nothing.

And if you're sitting there smiling there, matrons walk by.

"What are you smiling about?

What's so funny?"

And you put your head down.

"Are you crying?"

And they kind of push you or something and you start to tear up a little bit.

"Are you crying?

I'll give you something to cry about."

(slap ringing out) You know?

And those people that watched us, they didn't have to love us, much less nurture us or respect us or honor us.

They just kind of like, watched you like cattle.

You got out of line?

(slap ringing out) "Get back in line."

That's why we always joke about getting in lines.

(chuckles) We see a line, we automatically get in line.

Being conditioned, you know?

It was all about conditioning your mind.

And it was a military tactic.

(military drum music) Who invented boarding schools on this?

It was a military man, Pratt.

Carlisle Indian School.

He wanted to kill the Indian and save the man.

And that process still goes on.

It was like that till about 1960.

Then it changed.

All the people that used to be abusive were pretty much gone.

They hired some really good people.

The guys they hired, the women they hired, they were more like mothers and these guys were like big brothers.

(people singing traditional Native song) (intense percussive music) - You know, growing up on a reservation, you just, if you grew up here and you're from here, your understanding to see something big picture to have perspective, extremely difficult because just growing up here, you're dealt generational trauma, you're dealt, you know, systematic wrongs.

You know what I mean?

A lot of this stuff is just not, it doesn't click with our people.

And I always think about, like, what was the first thing that was taken from us?

It wasn't our land, it was our food.

Once the food is eradicated our connection with the land was severed.

So in a sense, the land was already taken from us whenever they took the food, and the way they took the food was eradicating buffalo.

(upbeat music) - A new era is emerging from the ashes of colonization.

An era that is regaining the ways of their ancestors and identity and teaching that to the next generations of Indigenous peoples.

(upbeat music continuing) It's an era of empowerment that shows the world we are still here.

(man speaking Native language) - Today we wanna remember (speaking Native language).

I wanna remember in our prayers today because this day, we really look forward to this day with you students to do this, to share our Lakota ways with all of you young children.

And I know her spirit is here today.

- Yeah.

To me, I think it really looks good.

You know, our elders and their elders, they left us enough too.

With our own visions and dreams, we're gonna make it better.

Each generation's gonna make it better.

Yeah, we struggled for a little bit there.

Boarding school really did a lot of damage and I can talk for hours about that, but we've gone past that now.

We've been healing from the boarding school syndrome.

So we're now not ashamed anymore.

(upbeat music) - Okay.

- Yes.

It's on that hill, still.

- We work with tribes to support however they want to manage their buffalo.

Some tribes are, you know, very small.

They might have five buffalo, but those five buffalo mean the world, you know, to that tribe.

Other tribes, you know, have over 2000 and are actively in the meat sales or you know, using them as an economic driver as well.

So we just try to support tribes at whatever stage they're at and you know, get them some resources so they can have a successful program.

(upbeat music continuing) (man speaking Native language) - For the most part, we never forget that, you know, our goal is to restore buffalo back for that cultural and spiritual connection that we once had and that was nearly taken away from us.

But we're trying everything we can to bring that back.

(energetic percussive music) - One, two, three.

(grunting) One more set!

One, two, three.

(grunting with effort) - You know, they always say our language and our culture is dying.

No, it's always been there.

It's constant.

It's still there.

It's just that people left.

But our young people are starting to come back.

We're getting a lot of our young people starting to speak the language now.

They're working at it, you know, and then they're getting involved in their culture.

- Each year, Mahpiya Luta Red Cloud, a school on the Pine Ridge reservation, holds an annual buffalo harvest that involves students and members of the community.

- I think it's really important to teach our youth the cultural relevance of the buffalo because it's what sustained our ancestors.

Our whole culture, really, is based on the buffalo and how it provides for us and how we can provide for it.

And from a food sovereignty perspective, I think it's really important to learn how to use the meat and how to sustain ourselves and know that like, we don't have to go to the grocery store and get this grossly overpriced meat.

Like, it's provided by nature, by Mother Earth.

And I think that's really important.

- All we do as part of food education is teach kids how our ancestors used to process buffalo back in the day.

And through that, we teach them all that we know from what we've learned.

Just by doing this constantly and talking to our ancestors and learning about what our ancestors did in the field when processing this animal.

And we teach the kids.

(kids laughing and chatting) (upbeat percussive music) - We are the comeback.

We are that comeback story that our ancestors have dreamt about.

(children singing in Native language) (upbeat percussive music) - I just wanna be hopeful that there's others, you know, in the future who would wanna do this, 'cause you know, back then we lived like this and we need to keep that, you know, hold onto it forever, 'cause that's all we have now, you know?

This culture, this way of life.

Yeah.

(uplifting music) (children cheering) (singers harmonizing) (man singing in Native language)