{"id":426795,"date":"2025-12-05T16:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426795\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:04:18","slug":"pbs-documentary-chronicles-blackfeet-nations-bison-conservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/426795\/","title":{"rendered":"PBS Documentary Chronicles Blackfeet Nation\u2019s Bison Conservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American bison\u2019s homecoming to Montana was not only a triumph of nature, but it was also the start of a cultural renaissance for Native Americans<\/a> in the northwest.<\/p>\n

Once populating the grassy plains of North America in the millions, wild buffalo were brought to the brink of extinction during the quest to conquer the west in the 1800s. Over a century later, the mission to undo the damage wrought by America\u2019s appetite for expansion has been chronicled by directors Ivan MacDonald, Ivy MacDonald and Daniel Glick in the potent new documentary \u201cBring Them Home\u201d or \u201cAisk\u00f3t\u00e1hkapiyaaya,\u201d<\/a> executive produced and narrated by Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone<\/a>, who is of the Blackfeet and Nez Perce tribes.<\/p>\n

The film, which debuted on PBS on Nov. 24, follows the Blackfoot<\/a> tribes\u2019 turbulent battle to restore the herds, reclaim their heritage and assert their sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Gladstone told HuffPost how buffaloes, known as \u201ciinnii\u201d in Blackfoot language, were part of the \u201cvery fabric of our identity,\u201d serving as an essential resource for survival and as a model of resilience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIinnii are really at the center of everything for us,\u201d Gladstone said. \u201cWe are Buffalo people, and a lot of the times we\u2019re facing hardship, one teaching that we\u2019re given, one bit of comfort that we\u2019re given in hard times, is to be like buffalo,\u201d who survive subzero temperatures during winter, and face elements and their predators head on.<\/p>\n

\"LilyLily Gladstone, here at February’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, said bison were at the “center of everything” for Blackfoot people in a HuffPost interview about the new documentary, “Bring Them Home.”<\/p>\n

Rodin Eckenroth via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\"KnownKnown as “innii” in Blackfoot language, the animals’ population was numbered in the millions before the colonization of the American West.<\/p>\n

Blackfoot people and other Great Plains tribes had over 500 ways to use every piece of the buffalo, which provided sustenance, shelter, tools, toys and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had everything \u2014 the means to sustain a rich and healthy life was with us,\u201d Blackfeet elder G.G. Kipp says in the film.<\/p>\n

The Blackfoot people also understood their relationship with buffalo as comrades not conquerors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not the top of a pyramid; we\u2019re part of a bigger circle,\u201d Gladstone told HuffPost. \u201cWe\u2019re part of an ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tribal elder and scholar Leroy Little Bear expands on this idea in the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not just about subsistence,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the native world, everything is made up of energy waves, what we refer to as the spirit. So when we say, \u2018all my relations,\u2019 it\u2019s because I\u2019ve got spirit but so does everything else. So they\u2019re all my relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as settlers trampled into Indigenous territory during America\u2019s westward expansion, national leaders realized slaughtering and displacing hundreds of thousands of natives was not the only way to contend with what many colonizers called \u201cthe Indian problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe had everything \u2014 the means to sustain a rich and healthy life was with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Blackfeet elder G.G. Kipp<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cKill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone,\u201d U.S. Army General Grenville M. Dodge instructed a hunter in 1867.<\/p>\n

In just one generation, these massacres killed enough bison to bring their population from an estimated 30 million to fewer than 1,000. It was a \u201ccampaign to divide and conquer not just people from each other but people from themselves, their culture, and for us, the buffalo,\u201d Gladstone emphasized.<\/p>\n

Without bison, other plants and animals which depended on them withered away, in turn fracturing the Blackfoot Confederacy\u2019s vast territory into three reserves in Canada and a single sprawl in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Generations of forced assimilation ensued, as Native children were torn from their families and taken to abuse-ridden boarding schools<\/a>. Indigenous communities shoehorned into reservations, or other tribal enclaves elsewhere had their ceremonies and language outlawed. Those who gave birth were forcibly sterilized, and as elders died, countless traditions died with them.<\/p>\n

The long tail of colonization left Natives isolated, alienated from economic opportunity and starved of identity.<\/p>\n

But in spite of the devastation, the story of the Blackfeet and their buffalo was not over.<\/p>\n

\"AA hunter poses alongside a mountain of buffalo skulls at Michigan Carbon Works, in Rougeville, Michigan, in 1892. U.S. Army General Grenville M. Dodge once said, “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”<\/p>\n

Burton Historical Collection<\/p>\n

\"GladstoneGladstone told HuffPost that during “hard times,” Blackfeet people remind themselves “to be like buffalo,” who survive subzero temperatures during winter, and face elements and their predators head on.<\/p>\n

Untamed herds brought from Yellowstone National Park to Montana\u2019s Blackfeet Reservation in 1979 mangled fences, crushed crops and grazed on cattle ground, leaving many Blackfoot to believe the beasts were nothing but a burden. Amid tension, the tribal council decided to round up the bison and sell them just years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were wild animals running loose on the Blackfeet Reservation. No one could control them,\u201d elder and rancher Mouse Hall says in the film. <\/p>\n

A movement to restore wild bison populations began in Canada in the early \u201990s but was fraught with conflict. The fight to reunite iinnii with their homeland pitted tribal activists against Native ranchers and farmers who needed the land.<\/p>\n

One chief\u2019s rogue attempt to bring buffalo back to Alberta\u2019s Blood Tribe Reserve in 1993 resulted in blockades and protests that drew national attention.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Montana\u2019s Blackfoot people tried again, raising a new herd of calves taught not to respect fence lines, and grow comfortable with humans with the help of Native volunteers and students at Blackfeet Community College. Still, the clashes with cattle ranchers and farm owners continued, and when a new tribal council came to power in 2006, it abruptly decided to sell most of the fledgling herd.<\/p>\n

While the animals were mostly gone, the community\u2019s support for rewilding had grown out of its more hands-on role with the second herd.<\/p>\n

Conversations about iinnii\u2019s place in Blackfoot culture continued between tribal members, bringing what Little Bear called \u201cbuffalo consciousness\u201d back into the fold.<\/p>\n

During those dialogues, Little Bear said he heard elders explain that while younger generations of the tribe were taught their ancestors\u2019 stories, ceremonies and songs, those beliefs had little link to their everyday lives without being able to witness buffalo roaming free.<\/p>\n

\"DuringDuring dialogues about the buffalo, elders said younger generations were taught their ancestors\u2019 stories, ceremonies and songs, but couldn’t understand things fully without being able to witness buffalo roaming free.\"AsAs a keystone species, bison are crucial to the survival of other plants and animals. “Almost everything about how bison live and move through the landscape benefits other animals,” Gladstone explains in the film.<\/p>\n

In 2009, supporters continued this grassroots strategy by founding the Iinnii Initiative. They then found another base of allies with the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York City, which focused on the ecological importance of bison.<\/p>\n

As a keystone species, the animals were crucial to other flora and fauna\u2019s survival. When buffalo wallow in the dirt, they create nooks for amphibians, and flowers that feed insects and make up the bulk of local birds and small mammals\u2019 diets. Their grazing creates space for grassland birds, many of which also nest in their fur. In the deep of winter, they plow through snow, treading pathways for pronghorn and other animals to survive the harsh elements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost everything about how bison live and move through the landscape benefits other animals,\u201d Gladstone explains in the film. <\/p>\n

Despite the conservationists\u2019 and tribe\u2019s different motivations, Gladstone told HuffPost that what mattered was that both were \u201cworking for the same goal,\u201d and that the outsiders understood their role was as \u201callies and not saviors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together, they decided to return a free-ranging herd forced from Montana\u2019s Flathead Reservation to Canada\u2019s Elk Island National Park by the U.S. government in the early 1900s back to Blackfeet Nation.<\/p>\n

A group of calves were brought back to their native territory from Canada, but one key question remained: Where in the wilderness should the herd be returned?<\/p>\n

\"ItIt took years for the tribe to find the wild herd a home at Ninastako or Chief Mountain, a stretch of land at the border of Glacier National Park and the reservation which had long been a spiritual guiding point for Blackfeet. <\/p>\n

Most of the reservation was allocated for cattle ranching, a major source of income for the tribe. Every acre of land ceded to the buffalo meant less money, so the Iinnii Initiative was forced to search for space elsewhere.<\/p>\n

It took years to weigh the options and decide on a prime location for the Elk Island herd: Ninastako or Chief Mountain, a stretch of land at the border of Glacier National Park and the reservation which had long been a spiritual guiding point for Blackfeet.<\/p>\n

As more years passed, the movement steadily gained momentum, leading the tribal council to set aside cattle land at Chief Mountain for the herd in 2023. That June, a herd of dozens of bulls, cows and calves returned to soil<\/a> that their species had inhabited for thousands of years prior to colonization.<\/p>\n

Tyson Running Wolf, a tribal council member, imagined the homecoming as a moment for the tribe\u2019s \u201cspirit to finally catch up with our humanness.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gladstone, the long, arduous road to the bison\u2019s return couldn\u2019t have happened without the tribe echoing the animal\u2019s own resilience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a community of the strongest ones of them to break the embankments, to break the snow banks, to break through the storm,\u201d she told HuffPost. \u201cIt takes a community of them to surround themselves around their calves, around the youth. It\u2019s all of them continuing on together. And that\u2019s as long as they\u2019re continuing, as long as their hooves are churning and moving the earth, then we continue as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBring Them Home\u201d is now airing on PBS. You can find your local station\u2019s schedule here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American bison\u2019s homecoming to Montana was not only a triumph of nature, but it was also the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":426796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[198697,17546,3192,54949,198696,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-426795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-blackfeet-nation","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-indigenous-peoples","12":"tag-lily-gladstone","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115667814149643115","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}