In October 2020, the hoofbeats of American bison thumped across the prairie of the Rosebud Reservation for the first time in more than a century. Years in the works, the release of 100 bison (Bison bison) in the U.S. state of South Dakota resulted from a collaboration between the Sicangu Lakota Oyate Nation, WWF and […]
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In October 2020, the hoofbeats of American bison thumped across the prairie of the Rosebud Reservation for the first time in more than a century. Years in the works, the release of 100 bison (Bison bison) in the U.S. state of South Dakota resulted from a collaboration between the Sicangu Lakota Oyate Nation, WWF and the U.S. Department of the Interior. The goal was to bring a critical species back to the North American Great Plains, from which they’d nearly been exterminated in the 1800s.
In doing so, the hope was to reinvigorate the relationships between North America’s largest land animal, the landscape and its people. For the Indigenous Sicangu Lakota Oyate, the release marked a resurgent spiritual connection, one based on an ancient kinship they share with the bison.
