Bison calves being moved at the American Prairie Reserve (Photo courtesy of the American Prairie Reserve).
In early April, a quiet but profound shift in conservation unfolded in Loveland, Colorado, where Indigenous leaders, conservationists, ranchers, and advocates gathered for the inaugural North American Bison Summit hosted by First Nations Development Institute and Wildlife Restoration Foundation about Tribal food systems and Indigenous food sovereignty. However, the gathering wasn’t just about ecological restoration, it was about rematriation — a process of returning both land and life to Indigenous ways of being, grounded in relationships rather than ownership. For our Wildseeds Fund Executive Director, Esperanza Pallana, the summit became a living example of what happens when communities reclaim not only the land but the narratives that shape their future.
For centuries, buffalo roamed the North American plains in vast numbers. For Indigenous nations across Turtle Island, buffalo were not just a keystone species but a relative, a provider of food, clothing, shelter, and spiritual teachings. Colonization violently ruptured this relationship, with bison slaughter campaigns waged by the U.S. government as a calculated tactic to starve and displace Native nations between the 1860s and 1880s. During this period, millions of bison were deliberately killed as part of an explicit strategy to disrupt the lifeways of Plains Native nations, who relied on the animal - a colonial strategy to, if not eliminate the people, break their self-determination and enforce their dependence.
Today, buffalo herds are making a return, but the path forward is not led by governments or private ranchers alone — it is being stewarded by the original caretakers of this land: tribal communities. At least forty tribal members were in attendance and led sessions on storytelling, cultural and social aspects of buffalo stewardship, the recovery of food sovereignty post-removal and reservation era, and tension points between tribal uses of the whole animal versus commodification of bison meat. The summit provided a platform to witness how Indigenous leadership is reshaping conservation in ways that integrate Indigenous scientific management and cultural restoration.
The Ecological Future of the North American Bison: Conceiving Long-Term, Large-Scale Conservation of Wildlife. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. 22. 252-66.
"An intertribal cross-cultural gathering of people focused on protecting and stewarding a keystone species back into their rightful tribal homelands across Canada, the United States and Mexico, speaks to the future we want for generations to come." Esperanza reflected.
The message is clear: Indigenous stewardship never ended — it was suppressed, criminalized, and silenced, but it has always remained.
Overcoming Political Barriers, Restoring Kinship
One of the summit’s most moving themes was the reminder that the political borders separating Canada, the U.S., and Mexico are colonial inventions, drawn across lands where Indigenous families have long moved freely, guided not by fences or flags but by the cycles of migration, season, and ceremony.
Esperanza noted how the reintroduction of buffalo herds is serving as a symbolic and literal way to heal those imposed divisions. “It brings back that reminder of these borders being political and our families that are First Nations families have always been part of one larger family on the continent,” she said.
From the Northern Plains to the deserts of the Southwest and the grasslands of Mexico, partnerships between Indigenous nations are fostering the return of buffalo herds across the continent, modeling a form of diplomacy rooted in kinship rather than colonial law.
Food Sovereignty: Resilience Built From the Ground Up
While the bison has become a powerful symbol for ecological restoration, the summit made clear that conservation cannot be separated from food systems. As buffalo return to Native lands, so do the wealth of plant and animal species that are critical to Indigenous food practices, supporting alternative economies rooted in sovereignty and resilience.
Esperanza shared that “historically marginalized communities — particularly Native and Black communities — have long been sidelined by federal food programs. Our communities have been left to develop their own systems of self-sufficiency. As a result, they have built networks based on collective action, mutual aid, and deep ecological knowledge.
The summit served as an affirmation that was both inspiring and sobering: Indigenous food systems are not “alternatives” but long standing and deeply rooted models of abundance and environmental sustainability. These systems offer an urgent blueprint for the future.
Looking Forward: Lessons from the Summit
The North American Bison Summit was a collective act of remembrance and reimagining. Bison restoration is not about managing wildlife in isolation. It is about restoring Indigenous governance over ancestral homelands, revitalizing food systems, and rebuilding the webs of connection between people, plants, animals, and the Earth. These are not new ideas — they are ancient instructions, reawakened.
The summit left us at Wildseeds with a deep sense of hope, tempered by the awareness of the work ahead. For Indigenous nations, rematriation is not a one-time event but an ongoing process of returning — to the land, to the practices, and to the kinship networks that colonial systems tried, and failed, to erase. For those outside these communities, the lesson is just as clear: meaningful conservation, climate resilience, and food sovereignty will not come from top-down solutions but from listening to and supporting Indigenous leadership.
In a world grappling with ecological and social breakdown, the buffalo’s return is more than a restoration project — it is a call to remember, to repair, and to rebuild in partnership with the original caretakers of the land.
To learn more about buffalo integration, you can look out for showings of “Bring Them Home,” here: https://www.thunderheartfilms.com/bring-them-home