by Jacob Faye, BFC Volunteer Coordinator

This week in the field we sadly had 4 Buffalo shot and killed. As much as we try to be there for the Buffalo, we cannot prevent the inevitable. I had the opportunity to meet and get to know the hunters who harvested these Buffalo.

Buffalo through the spotting scope on patrol

With several volunteers, I was on my way back from a ski several miles into
Yellowstone, to a spot called “Buffalo Meadow”, where the Buffalo are known to hang out. We had been skiing on top of these Bluffs along the Madison River, the principal migratory corridor for the Buffalo, and had been seeing Buffalo all along the river. Several Hundred Yards from the Yellowstone National Park Boundary(but still inside of Yellowstone) were a group of 20-30 Buffalo grazing along the Madison, and right at the park boundary were several hunters sitting atop the Bluffs, watching the Buffalo.

As we approached the park exit, I skied over to speak with the hunters, somewhat anxious, there was some obvious tension in the air.

Internally I was conflicted. We as a campaign are here to protect the Buffalo, and these people are here to kill them, so we should obviously be opposed to one another. But, being that the state hunt ended the previous week, these hunters had to have been people with treaty rights, and we as a campaign also support the rights of treaty hunters to hunt.

Instead of doing what I felt I was supposed to do, I acted on gut feeling. Our initial interactions with one another were somewhat harsh. But as we spoke more, we began to interact as friends and allies would.

It became increasingly obvious to me that these people were not here to harass or subjugate the Buffalo, but rather, to regain and rebuild a sacred relationship that had been part of their culture for longer than I could ever imagine. They admired, appreciated and respected the Buffalo, but also enjoyed the hunt, and that ability to provide for their family and tribe.

At one point in our conversation, one of the treaty hunters brought up that he was there to exercise his government-protected treaty rights. I laughed and reflected- it’s such a ridiculous and unjust predicament to be in. European colonizers, the American government, came to this land several hundred years ago and brutally wiped out the people’s living on this continent to make it their own. These peoples should not need their colonizers to give them back their rights in order to be able to express their culture.  It should be natural for them to be able to do so without reprimand. Beyond the limitations of the American legal system, in the eyes of the truth, this land, the Buffalo, are not the state of Montana’s to give out.

Over the past few centuries, Indigenous people’s around the globe have been
oppressed to a degree that can only be described as evil. The conquest of minorities by European colonizers has left many cultures in shambles. Our cultures have been eradicated and subjugated, our people having their security, dignity, and sanity brutally stripped of them.

As a second generation Senegalese immigrant, my people are still struggling to get back on their feet. Africans as a whole are looked at as uncivilized, unintelligent, and in America especially, seen as violent brutes.

Our country has spent many years under the rule of various European nations, all who exploited and weakened us, perpetuating stereotypes to justify their heinous actions, and have only came to fruition as a result of them. As a black man living in America, and the only person of my culture, in some cases, for as many as hundreds of miles around, whether chosen or not, this is something that I have had to bear the weight of wherever I go, and in many cases, am only left with the choice to ignore.

In many ways, I can relate to the treaty hunters who are coming to practice this sacred ritual of theirs that has been lost. Not being Native American myself, I could never understand what the indigenous peoples of this continent have been through. In Africa, at least most of the land that was traditionally ours, is still, to some degree, ours.

BFC Volunteer Coordinator, Jacob Faye, in the snow and in the know ~ for the Buffalo!

American Indians do not even have that. Their peoples have been subject to genocide to the point of near extinction, forced onto reservations, under the rule of a colonizing government that has little to no care for them. The racial injustice that is still currently undergoing is severe. But like Africans, Native Americans have had their power and culture stripped of them. In the case of Buffalo, they are being thrown a bone. What was once a herd of wild Buffalo millions strong across nearly the entire continental United States, is now a herd that is intentionally kept at only a few thousand by the state of Montana’s Department of Livestock and its Interagency Bison Management plan. Wild Buffalo and the ability to harvest them are few and far between. Due to relentless harassment from the state, they rarely even leave Yellowstone, and can thus neither migrate in their natural manner, nor be harvested by those seeking to reconnect with an obviously sacred element of their culture.

These treaty protected hunting rights are a bone that the State of Montana is throwing at Indigenous groups. A minute portion of what was once sacred to them exists, and they are desperate to reconnect with it. Worse yet, the racial stereotypes and discrimination that exist surrounding the issue of the Buffalo are horrendous. Last year, while in Yellowstone, a park ranger come up to a group I was with, asking if we know that it was the Natives who were doing all the killing, completely oblivious to the fact that the state government legislates to minimize the herd of the Buffalo, and would be killing them regardless. Tourists in the area scorn at and make racist remarks towards these treaty hunters for killing Buffalo, while simultaneously consuming meat obtained from horrendously oppressive factory farming operations; being complicit in a form of slaughter and animal subjugation that completely ignores the interdependency and interconnectedness of all things, and yet looking down on those who kill with that comprehension.

The irony, hypocrisy and entitlement of this racism is absurd. Buffalo do
not belong to anyone, and they especially do not belong to the colonizers who eradicated them. They are not objects that exist merely for the admiration of tourists.

They are living, breathing beings, and like all beings they must die, whether that be
through illness, old age, the hunt of wolves, or treaty hunters.

We as a Campaign must ally ourselves with those to whom Buffalo have been sacred for for millennia if we wish to see change in this issue. In the eyes of truth, there is no Yellowstone National Park Boundary, no limit to where Buffalo can go, and no limit to how and where they can be harvested. Those in power have instated laws, and done so in a way that favors their own personal interests. The natural world is all around us and we must treat it with respect if we wish to survive as a species. No amount of National Parks, laws or regulations can replace that understanding. The world that we must strive for as a campaign, as activists, and most importantly, as human beings, is one in which we all live with that understanding.

Across the world, and the country especially we see people existing in a state that is more divided than ever. The powers that be have used the people and things that we care about, the things that are sacred to us, and our fear of losing them, our desperation to keep them, to divide us. The new administration capitalizes on this fear, turning families against one another, putting people, even those of them same racial identity as one another, at odds with each other. Doing anything they can to keep the masses divided, all while augmenting their power. And yet, as human beings, we have far more similarities than we have differences. In our fear, our anger, our despair of the loss of that which we care about, we become divided. We see our fellow subjugated being as an other, rather than as an ally or as ourselves. The human species is one and equal-whether we know it or not, we live and we die together. We need each other to survive.
 

We can only fight for Buffalo, for a better world, once we comprehend that. So let us all stand together in this fight. We all want to see Buffalo roaming freely, and let us not forget that.

The day of the hunt, it was obvious from the onset that Buffalo had been killed. We
could see the hide on the ground with blood around it. As we skied further down a forest service trail road, we ran into the treaty hunters I had met the previous day. We spoke again as they finished up their harvest. It was very obviously a family affair. Spirits were up as they now had Buffalo for the tribe. It reminded me of my family back in Senegal after the slaughter of an animal. Meat only exists because of death; it is sacred and a valuable resource that comes with much suffering. We are happy because it is not something that we can or should take for granted. It is something that is rare and valuable that we rarely get the chance to delight ourselves with. Life can only come about because of death. Energy is not created or destroyed, only renewed. The atoms in all of the things that exist today have existed since the beginning of the universe and will exist until its demise. Modern American consumerist culture has lost this understanding.

Instead of having to do the work to kill the animals we eat, instead of being forced to face the death, the suffering behind our luxuries, we can pay somebody else, probably somebody who is underpaid and struggling survive, a sum of money so that we can avoid this difficult, but necessary element of our reality. Our lives are made so easy and convenient that most of us barely understand who we are anymore. This convenience is a curse. It teaches us that we can avoid making difficult decisions in life, when in reality, we all must go through hardship. It is only by coming face to face with reality of who and what we are that we can change ourselves, and in doing so, change the world.

The cultures that keep us in touch with this understanding have much to “advanced” modern society in this regard.

For the Buffalo,

Jacob, Field Season 28