Romantic images from the American Old West feature majestic buffalo grazing on prairie grass or thundering across the Great Plains. In the battle for control of the Plains, the buffalo was almost wiped out.

Martha Hawley - Buffalo Nation

Today, work is being done by Indian and non-Indian ranchers to restore the herds. Native American traditional culture is being revived, and the ties are being renewed between tribal people and the sacred animal which they view as a relative.

"We had a pact with the buffalo. Our legends talk about the buffalos helping us to come out of the earth, which was under the ground and it was a safe place for us and we were very afraid of the surface world and the buffalo was already there. When the buffalo observed us coming up at night and coming back for a short time during the day, the buffalo said: 'I will give you food, I will give you clothing so you can be warm. I will give you my flesh to eat and to survive and when I am in need then you must help me, too."

The words of Rosalie Little Thunder, an enrolled member of Sicangu Lakota band. She lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, on the edge of the Great Plains, next to the Black Hills, the sacred centre for Lakota people. The Lakota belong to the Great Sioux nation, the largest and most powerful tribe in the West in 19th-century North America.
 
Decimated herds
As Europeans moved West, the Buffalo were almost wiped out on the Great Plains, and Native Americans were driven out or onto reservations. "The buffalo is considered a central species in the eco system,” explains Little Thunder, “one that created habitat for other species, that carried seeds in his coat and spread them around, that turned up the earth and fertilised it… When up to 60 million were taken out of the ecosystem, the land got very sick."

"The type of diet that was fed from the days of the buffalo was gone. Without their staple food, the Indians' health continued to deteriorate. Their lifespan is 20 years shorter than the average white male in the US," says Mike Fox, who's from the Fort Belknap Reservation of the Gros Vent Tribe in North Central Montana. As buffalo meat is low in fat and cholesterol and can help fight diabetes, Mike Fox and his partner Susan launched the Indigenous Diabetes Education Alliance (IDEA) which aims to reintroduce buffalo into indigenous people's diet.

New indigenous dawn
Times are changing, though: the white population on the Great Plains is decreasing, and the Native American population is on the rise. Families and community groups are starting to build their own small herds, one buffalo at a time.

South Dakota is now the largest bison-producing state in the country. On the Great Plains, the profound silence is disturbed only by the peeping of cell phones and prairie dogs - and the hum of the bison caretaker's truck or van. Buffalo need room to roam. Protecting the land base is an ongoing struggle for most tribes. Based in Rapid City, the Intertribal Bison Cooperative pools efforts by dozens of tribes.

Director Fred DuBray stresses the importance of reviving Native American traditional culture. He says the challenge is to find common ground for cultural and commercial interests. Meat from tribal herds could be sold to reservation schools and hospitals, as well as being kept for ceremonial use.

"Buffalo was one of the things that had all the elements that were necessary for everybody in a reservation to be part of,” says DuBray, “and I thought if there was anything that could hopefully turn things around it would be buffalo, because they are powerful enough to accomplish that. It allows for economic development to take place by building up a large herd, building up a meat market for instance and a market for its by-products. All these different things could produce jobs and could restore health back to the people. But it also could do a lot of things from a cultural standpoint."

Crossing paths
Traditional, progressive and non-Indian paths cross in new ways all the time. Modern techniques go hand-in-hand with kill ceremonies and other ancient rituals in which the buffalo is asked to come and help feed the people. For the Lakota tribe in South Dakota, the buffalo has once again come to the rescue. It's returned to offer its meat and hide, strengthen tribal culture and boost confidence on the reservation.

Buffalo Nation was produced by Martha Hawley. The documentary was originally broadcast in January 2005.