'Absolutely epic': Blackfeet release wild buffalo on tribal land

As he watched the half-ton buffalo jump in the waist-high grass at Chief Mountain, Blackfeet Councilman Lauren Monroe Jr. said he thought of his ancestors.

“I thought of the demise they went through,” he said. “If they were to understand that our language, our culture, our buffalo would come back one day … it was absolutely momentous as a Blackfeet to be on our land within our sovereignty and do this. We’re the leaders. We’re choosing our future as we see it.”

On Monday, the Blackfeet Nation transferred 30 wild buffalo (iinnii in the Blackfoot language) to tribal lands near Chief Mountain, an area steeped in Blackfeet cultural significance in the northwest corner of the reservation bordering Glacier National Park. The buffalo were brought to the Blackfeet from Alberta in 2016 after testing negative for diseases. In the seven years since, the tribe has been growing the captive herd in preparation for the release.

On Monday, the exploratory herd was loaded into trailers and hauled to a temporary paddock within sight of Chief Mountain. There, they grazed quietly until wranglers opened the gate.

Then every buffalo rushed through, formed a single-file line and rumbled toward a distant tree line. Monroe called the moment “absolutely epic.”

Rosalyn LaPier, Blackfeet and Métis, and her family own 120 acres in the foothills of Chief Mountain. She said the tribe has created a conservation district in the area to allow for grazing.

“Our land isn’t fenced,” she explained. “So bison, like bears and elk and deer and moose and antelope, can walk freely across the land.”

LaPier, a historian, said to her knowledge, there is no other place in North America that allows free-roaming buffalo.

“Bison are almost always behind a fence, even when in a large area,” she said. “It’s unlike any other wild animal species that are allowed to roam freely and jump over fences, go under fences and ruin fences.”

The Chief Mountain release, LaPier said, is not just momentous for the tribe but also presents scientists with a new opportunity.

“One thing scientists don’t know is where bison want to go,” she said. “They’ve always been fenced in so we have no idea, as scholars and scientists, where they want to go when they roam. Even in Yellowstone, the bison are killed or relocated when they leave the border of the park. So this will be really interesting to see what happens.”

Gerald “Buzz” Cobell, director of Blackfeet Fish and Wildlife, said leaders from Glacier and Waterton Lakes national parks were supportive of the release. Representatives from Glacier National Park did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, but have stated publicly in the past they looked forward to welcoming the new wildlife.

The animals may wander into Glacier, but for now, Cobell said the tribe has to wait and see where the buffalo want to go. Some of the roaming buffalo have collars and solar ear tags, so the tribe will be able to monitor them and know their location. Because some people hike Chief Mountain, Cobell said the location data will help the tribe keep members of the public safe.

“The bison have always been there,” Cobell said, referencing the area that is now Glacier National Park. “And now they’re coming back.”

Since time immemorial, Native Americans have used buffalo for food, shelter, tools, clothing, jewelry and ceremony. Buffalo and Native people were so connected that biologists say the two mammals co-evolved.

But in the 19th century, settlers and U.S. soldiers killed millions of bison to devastate the tribal communities that relied on them. Ungulate diseases spread by domestic cattle are suspected of killing herds the hunters didn’t reach.

From 1820 to 1880, the bison population fell from around 30 to 60 million to fewer than 1,000. Some estimate that only 300 bison survived what’s now known as “the Great Slaughter.”

Monroe compared the attempted buffalo extermination to colonization and assimilation efforts.

“When colonizers attempted to exterminate us, we lost our wildlife, our land and we temporarily lost access to who we were,” he said. “Like the buffalo, the Indian was the same way. We were cleared from the plains to make way for ‘progress,’ as they called it.”

As the bison population declined, some states and the federal government passed laws to protect the animals. By the late 19th century, dozens of bison occupied Yellowstone National Park.

Today, through partnerships with national parks and organizations, buffalo have returned to tribal lands nationwide. Most tribes in Montana maintain their own herds, but until earlier this week, none had released wild buffalo on their land.

Blackfeet’s domestic herd has grown to 700 head, and the buffalo still take care of the community, just as they once did hundreds of years ago.

The Blackfeet Buffalo Program harvests about 20 buffalo each year and distributes meat to food banks, ceremonies and elders in the community. The tribe also regularly sells its own buffalo meat at Glacier Family Foods grocery store in Browning at $7.99 a pound, so community members can afford it.

In February, the Blackfeet Nation offered its first trophy buffalo hunt, where members of the public could enter a lottery to participate in a hunt on the reservation. The trophy hunt earned the Buffalo Program at least $75,000, which will be reinvested in food distribution efforts to benefit the community.

Monroe said he expects the free-roaming herd will also bring tourism dollars to the reservation, especially in the summer as millions travel to the nearby Glacier National Park. He said some tourists showed up at the release by coincidence and were “absolutely floored” by the event.

Given the history of colonization and the near extermination of buffalo, Monroe said the release of the wild herd symbolizes an important shift.

“We are not fearful anymore to be Blackfeet,” he said. “We don’t need to ask permission to be Blackfeet. This means a lot. It means we are going to do what we need to do to survive.”