Losing the bison nearly broke Indigenous communities. This is how they’re bringing the animals back.
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SEDALIA, Colo. — In the chill of early November at Tall Bull Memorial Park, dozens of Indigenous children and their elders worked side by side, carefully butchering a bison to prepare a stew for a community feast, and to distribute the remaining meat to families.
“If you look around, there’s a lot of people here. Everyone’s helping. Everyone's kind of doing their part to help distribute this meat,” said Esther Perez, who co-founded Sacred Return with her husband, Lewis Tallbull, to reconnect Native people with their traditions and ancestral foodways.
The day before, more than 150 attendees gathered to witness a young man, Tayton Kills Small, take his first-ever bison, a 600-pound animal.
Video: Priya Shahi, Rocky Mountain PBS
“The bison was taken by one of our Sundance chiefs. He’s a young man, so I think this was his first bison that he took, so it’s really special,” said Perez.
Lewis TallBull guided Small and a handful of men to a pit in Daniels Park, located in Douglas County, where the bison had been corralled before it was taken down. The hunt holds personal meaning for TallBull, whose late grandfather, Richard TallBull, founded the TallBull Memorial Council that now organizes the annual event.
A Southern Cheyenne Tribal member who moved from Oklahoma to Denver under the Indian Relocation Act, Richard TallBull worked with the City of Denver in 1974 to preserve a space at Daniels Park for ceremonies and powwows. In 2021, the city gave a bison to the council as part of reparations and conservation efforts, and harvesting ceremonies have taken place at the park ever since.
Building on this legacy, Sacred Return now works to organize multiple harvests each year, bringing communities together and reconnecting them with their ancestral foodways.
For this harvest’s community feed and meat distribution, they invited chef Jose Vilchez Avila, a two-time James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef, to prepare bison stew for the community. Sacred Return’s last bison harvest took place near Lamar in August, where they brought about 30 community members along, Perez said.
For this harvest’s community feed and meat distribution, they invited chef Jose Vilchez Avila, a two-time James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef, to prepare bison stew for the community. Sacred Return’s last bison harvest took place near Lamar in August, where they brought about 30 community members along, Perez said.
“For this bison that was harvested yesterday, we sear it first and then we do a stew with a little bit of birria sauce and also a little bit of yellow corn then we chop chop veggies, let it simmer for a bit and we serve it with cabbage lime and tostada on the side,” Avila said.
A prayer ceremony is held before the bison is taken down, and community members pay their respects afterward. Dance prayers were also performed to honor this particular bison, his spirit, and his sacrifice. Everything, from the hide and the hair on its head to the tail and bones, is harvested. Some parts, Perez said, are even used to make offerings for other animals.
“Bison play a big role in the culture of Indigenous people, especially Plains Indigenous people. I like to make people aware of the fact that bison also went through their genocide, along with the native people,” said Perez. “It was a way to starve Native people into submission.”
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, hunting and the fur trade caused the North American bison population to collapse from tens of millions of animals to the brink of extinction by 1890. The National Park Service notes that, along with intense drought and the introduction of horses, which made bison hunting more efficient and increased competition for food and water, a major stressor on the bison population was also the mass killings of bison to subdue the Plains Indians.
“I think that's also a huge part that got lost when the bison got taken away and when they were hunted to near-extinction… we lost a lot of community in that," Perez said. "We lost our ways to work with each other, to help each other.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.