Ancestral Memories: Restoring Ecosystems and Bringing the Buffalo Back Home

For thousands of years, buffalo dominated the grasslands of North America. But by the 19th century these large grazing mammals were nearly extinct – and today occupy less than one percent of their pre-European range. 

Buffalo (also known as bison) are a keystone species, integral to the prairie’s ecological balance and resilience. Without them, biodiversity suffers, and ecosystems can change dramatically, allowing invasive species to move in.

A major scientific study on the effects of reintroduction, published in 2022, underscored the important role buffalo play in plant diversity in particular. "When bison were allowed to graze through patches of tallgrass prairie,” wrote Jason Bittel in a National Geographic article covering the study, “they boosted native plant species richness by a whopping 86 percent over the past three decades." Comparatively, cattle produce less than half of that increase. Reintroducing buffalo, the study suggests, could help restore grassland biodiversity. 

But buffalo as ecological progenitor is not the whole story.

In many cultures, particularly Indigenous cultures, "blood memory" or "ancestral memory" is an expression that describes how we carry the traumas, the wisdom, and the resiliency of our ancestors in our bodies, hearts, and minds. And now modern science, through transgenerational epigenetics, is discovering that nongenetic information is transmitted across generations and the realities of our ancestors are carried in our bodies today. 

In their recent book, Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo, authors Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns nod to this, noting that for "nearly 10,000 years, buffalo evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals." 

The acknowledgement of science and history is most welcome, but certainly not news to people and communities who have retained and transmitted this knowledge — this ancestral memory — across generations.

In December, I traveled to Wind River, Wyoming, with my colleague Rocío Lower to witness firsthand the work of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative (WRTBI), a Bezos Earth Fund grantee. Executive Director Jason Baldes and the WRTBI team graciously hosted, introducing us to their world. An enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Jason also serves as Tribal Buffalo Program Manager for the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Partnerships Program.

Buffalo are a part of the natural world that provides humanity with our basic sustenance. And if acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul is correct, the natural world is a part of our extended mind. In her book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, she writes that we extend beyond our intellectual limits to solve problems "by stewing our world with rich materials and weaving them into our thoughts. The sights and sounds of nature help us rebound from stress." In fact, she notes, experiencing nature is a "process of psychological renewal that our brains cannot accomplish on their own." 

Perhaps this is one way for non-Natives to understand the unique and profound ways in which Native communities regard the buffalo as a relative. The long and rich relationship is, quite literally, part of community members' extended mind. Buffalo cannot be extricated from thinking, being, and living. Murphy Paul shares architect Harry Francis Mallgrave's thoughts on this. When we are in nature, "we feel 'at home' because we remain in part the children of our ancestral past."

Indigenous knowledge systems have always been a symbiosis of mind, body, environment, and community. That is why WRTBI’s work, and the work of other similar Native initiatives to bring back the buffalo, is such a powerful symbol of environmental and social healing. 

A recent — and poignant — performance symbolized how the beauty of the community-nature relationship can transcend historically segregated cultural boundaries. On National Bison Day, cellist Yo Yo Ma played for the buffalo on the open prairie. The performance was supported by Blackfeet Elder Ervin Carlson, Director of the Blackfeet Nation’s Buffalo Program and President of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, and by the Blackfeet nonprofit, Indigenous Led.

Buffalo are ecologically, symbolically, culturally, psychologically, and intellectually connected to the landscape and to people. Perhaps bringing them back is part of a larger lesson — that we need to restore all these connections in our relationship with nature. If not, we will deliver an inheritable planet, but one devoid of any real meaning.