“That’s the dream, right? To be able to participate in an actual buffalo jump,” Alvin First Rider, a Kainai environmental technician, said.
Photo: Gavin John / The Narwhal
Reigniting that relationshipIn Alberta and Montana, the Blackfoot Confederacy is revitalizing the buffalo herds — and hopefully, their traditional hunts.
For thousands of years, Indigenous nations on the plains hunted buffalo with the help of gravity. Hundreds of people would work together to drive a stampeding herd toward a precipice and over its edge, where other hunters would be waiting at the bottom to slaughter and harvest the animals.
That’s hard to imagine now — partly because wild buffalo were nearly eradicated more than a century ago. By 1889, it was estimated that only 891 remained on the entire continent. But today, freelance journalist Jimmy Thomson writes, the Blackfeet Tribe is nurturing a herd of buffalo once more — with the ambitious goal of someday bringing back the buffalo jump.
The Blackfeet Tribe is one of four member nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, whose homelands encompass parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana. Jimmy and photographer Gavin John road-tripped together from Calgary down to Blackfoot territory, where they spent three days reporting from the Kainai Nation in Alberta and the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. The result is a stunning feature that showcases the beauty of the Blackfoot people, their traditions and their homelands.
On the Kainai Nation, which established its own herd in 2018 and harvested the first buffalo this past September, members were surprised and inspired by the idea of revitalizing the traditional hunting method. “That’s the dream, right? To be able to participate in an actual buffalo jump,” Alvin First Rider, an environmental technician, said. “That’s reigniting that relationship.”
Gavin, who lives in Calgary, was more familiar with Blackfoot protocol and ensured he and Jimmy came prepared for the journey.
“Before we left Calgary, Gavin had tracked down tobacco and pouches to give as culturally appropriate tokens of our appreciation,” Jimmy told me. “As we met Elders and leaders, Gavin would slip me a pouch and I’d offer it, and later we heard from members of the community that that had gotten us off to a great start. More importantly, it set the tone for our work.”
For one Elder, Jimmy and Gavin offered a pack of loose tobacco purchased in Canada, where the packaging is a little more explicit than the written health warnings on U.S. products — a distinction they only learned when the Elder pulled them aside the next day. “Pointing to the slumped-cigarette depiction of impotence on the Canadian package, he demanded, ‘You don’t want me to have any more kids?’ ”
“It wasn’t the only time we were the butt of the joke, but we always felt welcome,” Jimmy said. “I hope the warmth of the Blackfoot comes through in this story about their remarkable cultural resurgence.”
Take some time to read Jimmy’s piece, with Gavin’s photos of buffalos in the breathtaking backdrop of northwest Montana, over here.
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Basking in the Sun
Our team is tickled this week after a rare Narwhal sighting — on the front page of the Vancouver Sun! B.C. politics and environment reporter Shannon Waters landed a scoop on the risks of sea-level rise to the Vancouver International Airport, and it certainly caught some attention.
After the story appeared in the Sun, Shannon was also invited on SiriusXM Canada’s The Daily Edition to talk all about the story.
The Narwhal’s mission is to reach as many people as possible with our in-depth reporting on the climate and environment, so we’re marking these down as a win. Want to help us reach more people? Forward this newsletter to your friends and tell them to sign up — it’s free!
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