Countless herds of majestic buffalo once roamed across the plains and prairies of North America. For at least 10,000 years, the native people hunted the buffalo and depended upon its meat and hide for their survival. But to the Indians, the buffalo was also considered sacred. They saw this abundant, powerful animal as another tribe, one that was closely related to them, and they treated it with great respect and admiration. Here, an award-winning nonfiction team traces the history of this relationship, from its beginnings in prehistory to the present. Deftly weaving social history and science, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent discusses how European settlers slaughtered the buffalo almost to extinction, breaking the back of Indian cultures. And she shows how today, as Indians are reviving their cultures, they are also restoring buffalo herds to the land. Featuring William Munoz’s stunning full-color photographs, supplemented with paintings by well-known artists, this book is an inspiring tale of a successful conservation effort. Author’s note, suggestions for further reading, index.

An intimate, illustrated look at the lives of the Plains Indians

“Education is the new buffalo” is a metaphor widely used among Indigenous peoples in Canada to signify the importance of education to their survival and ability to support themselves, as once Plains nations supported themselves as buffalo peoples. The assumption is that many of the pre-Contact ways of living are forever gone, so adaptation is necessary. But Chelsea Vowel asks, “Instead of accepting that the buffalo, and our ancestral ways, will never come back, what if we simply ensure that they do?” Inspired by classic and contemporary speculative fiction, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo explores science fiction tropes through a Métis lens: a Two-Spirit rougarou (shapeshifter) in the nineteenth century tries to solve a murder in her community and joins the nêhiyaw-pwat (Iron Confederacy) in order to successfully stop Canadian colonial expansion into the West. A Métis man is gored by a radioactive bison, gaining super strength, but losing the ability to be remembered by anyone not related to him by blood. Nanites babble to babies in Cree, virtual reality teaches transformation, foxes take human form and wreak havoc on hearts, buffalo roam free, and beings grapple with the thorny problem of healing from colonialism. Indigenous futurisms seek to discover the impact of colonization, remove its psychological baggage, and recover ancestral traditions. These eight short stories of “Métis futurism” explore Indigenous existence and resistance through the specific lens of being Métis. Expansive and eye-opening, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo rewrites our shared history in provocative and exciting ways.

"The five narratives in this book, the third in Julian Rice's examination of the work of Ella Deloria, demonstrate Deloria's artistry in portraying the central values of Lakota (Sioux) culture. The introductory stories illustrate courage in three extraordinary women and Deloria's ability to subordinate her voice to that of different narrators. Another tale, "The Prairie Dogs," explains how the warriors' and chiefs' societies, the strongest forces for social cohesion, came into being." "The longest story, "The Buffalo People," concerns the origin of tribal identity based on such ideal qualities as the strength and generosity of the buffalo and the resiliency and grace of the corn. Following the noted storyteller Makula (Breast or Left Heron), Deloria improvises upon the poetic conventions of oral performance, from simple asides to traditional set speeches of the Buffalo Woman ceremony. Blending careful observation with creative skill, these stories offer new and often surprising perspectives on Lakota culture. They will entertain and instruct any reader with an interest in Native American societies of the past and present."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"A long time ago, Our People came from the Northern Woodlands to the Great Plains looking for food," Grandfather said. "They saw that the Buffalo lived in harmony with Mother Earth the same as Our People did." Through the Creator, the buffalo gave themselves as a gift for the sustenance and survival of the Plains Cree people. The largest land animal in North America once thundered across the Great Plains in numbers of 30 to 50 million. They provided shelter, food, clothing, tools, hunting gear, ceremonial objects and many other necessities for those who lived on the Plains. But by 1889, just over a thousand buffalo remained, and the lives of the Plains Cree people changed. The buffalo is honoured to this day, a reminder of life in harmony with nature as it was once lived. This is the story of how the buffalo came to share themselves so freely.

A young hunter marries a female buffalo in the form of a beautiful maiden, but when his people reject her he must pass several tests before being allowed to join the buffalo nation

Nomads of the great plains, the ways of family and clan, a bounty from the wild beast, the timeless cycle of ceremony.