Park Service, ITBC send 100 Tatanka to CRST

Before the European invasion Puebloans in northern New Mexico hunted bison on the high plains along the east slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and today Picuris is one of eighty tribal entities represented on the Rapid City, South Dakota-based Intertribal Buffalo Council (ITBC). 

Now, with cooperation from Democratic former South Dakota State Senator and Sicangu citizen, Troy Heinert more bison are coming home to the Nations. After meeting with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland during her visit to occupied South Dakota in October, 2022 Executive Director Heinert's name has been plastered all over the national news for his work with ITBC to restore the American Bison to tribal communities in the West. About 11,000 bison roam 4.6 million acres of public lands in 12 states under the stewardship of state and tribal managers as part of the Biden/Harris Interior Department’s Grasslands Keystone Initiative.

Last October the National Park Service rehomed 300 bison in the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and Standing Rock Sioux. In April with Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in attendance and in cooperation with Colorado State University ITBC moved five yearling bulls and five heifers with Yellowstone genetics to the Taos Pueblo. 

With ITBC efforts Grand Canyon National Park just sent a hundred critters of some 380 from the North Rim to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

In a Monday statement, Grand Canyon Superintendent Ed Keable called Friday’s successful live-capture and transfer “a testament to the collaborative efforts of all our partners” and “a significant step toward achieving our long-term goals for bison management and conservation.” [KJZZ]

A South Dakota state park named for a war criminal keeps a drove of allegorical mooching donkeys as a slap in the face to the South Dakota Democratic Party and stages an annual mock bison roundup appropriated from the hunting practices of some Indigenous peoples. Crazy Horse Memorial in the occupied Black Hills is paying tribute to the Tatanka on 28 September during the Buffalo Roundup weekend.