Newswise — The Stoney Nakoda Nation and the Samson Cree Nation became the most recent signatories to a treaty that establishes intertribal alliances for cooperation in the restoration of American buffalo (or bison). The signing took place at a ceremony held by the two Canadian First Nations in Banff, Alberta, Canada on August 13th.
Although treaties have been a traditional practice for Native Americans for thousands of years, an intertribal peace treaty of this nature has not been signed among these tribes for more than 150 years. The Stoney Nakoda Nation and the Samson Cree Nation join 11 tribes and First Nations from Montana and Alberta that signed the treaty in September of 2014 at a ceremony in Browning, Montana.
Tribes and First Nations now signed on to the treaty include the Blackfeet Nation, Blood Tribe, Siksika Nation, Piikani Nation, the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of Fort Peck Indian Reservation, the Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Indian Reservation, the Tsuu T’ina Nation, Stoney Nakoda Nation and the Samson Cree Nation.
“Working together, the tribes/First Nations have more political influence than they have alone,” said WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) Bison Program Coordinator Keith Aune. “They also own and manage a vast amount of grassland and prairie habitat throughout the United States and Canada. Through their combined voice and a formal expression of political unity, they hope to achieve ecological restoration of bison on their respective lands, and in so doing to re-affirm and strengthen ties that formed the basis for traditions thousands of years old.”
Along with agreeing to work together for bison restoration and grassland conservation on tribal lands, the treaty encourages youth education and cultural restoration among the tribes.
On September 23 at the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana, WCS will co-host with the 13 Tribes/First Nations the first annual treaty convention to officially recognize the new members, perform appropriate ceremonies and to open a session of dialogue among the treaty parties about conservation, culture, economics, and bison restoration. The treaty convention will be held in conjunction with a bison summit hosted for the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation for several days.
For tens of thousands of years, bison fundamentally shaped North American prairie ecosystems and linked Native peoples to the land. Acting as bio-engineers, they affected plant communities, transported and recycled nutrients, created habitat variability that benefited grassland birds, insects, and small mammals, and provided abundant food resources not only for people but also for species such as grizzly bears and wolves.
Following their great slaughter in the 19th Century, bison have been largely missing from these lands, resulting in ecological change as well as cultural loss to Native peoples. To ecologically restore this species, large native prairies that can support far-ranging bison are needed. Preserving the few remaining large intact prairies, many of which are tribally managed, is critical to retaining an option to restore and recover bison as wildlife.
The treaty marks another landmark event in the comeback of the North American bison. In the early 1900’s, bison numbered less than 1,100 individuals after ranging across North America in the tens of millions a century earlier. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, William Hornaday of WCS (then the New York Zoological Society), and others convened a group of diverse stakeholders at the Bronx Zoo in New York City and formed the American Bison Society (ABS). ABS developed a new conservation ethic and helped save bison from extinction. In 1907, fifteen Bronx–born bison were sent by the Society to the first big game refuge in the U.S.—the Wichita Reserve Bison Refuge in Oklahoma.
Today, bison number in the hundreds of thousands in North America, and are found in state and national parks, wildlife refuges, and on tribal lands, but most reside on private lands as livestock. This has resulted in a disconnect between the bison and the native people and cultures that relied upon them. Only a small fraction of today’s bison are legally designated wildlife. Conservation efforts are underway to restore viable bison populations and preserve the species, a symbol of our national heritage.
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