Fort Pierre was built on Oceti Sakowin, Cheyenne, and Mnicoujou traditional lands along the Missouri River. Known as the oldest continuously occupied white settlement in South Dakota, Fort Pierre is home to natural and historic sites: the mouth of the Bad River, the Wakpa Sica Reconciliation Center, the Verendrye Monument establishing France’s purported claim to the Louisiana Purchase, rodeo grounds and the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Museum, and the Fort Pierre Chouteau National Landmark, one of the largest Great Plains trading posts in the 1830s.
Picture Perfect
Meet John Banasiak, a photography professor at the University of South Dakota, who has been recognized with a Governor’s Award in the Arts for Outstanding Service in Arts Education. Banasiak says the award is a group effort, as his art department colleagues work together to create an environment for learning and he continues to learn from his students.
Diamond A Cattle Co.
The Diamond A Ranch near Eagle Butte was one of several large outfits established in western South Dakota at the turn of the 20th century. The grasslands west of the Missouri River were still mostly un-fenced and the big-time cattle bosses could continue to operate almost as they had during the days of the great cattle drives decades before.
Bringing Buffalo Back: Redco’s Wolakota Buffalo Range
Buffalo are returning in greater numbers to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate. A project of the Rosebud Economic Development Corporation (REDCO), Wolakota, meaning “to live the Lakota way of life,” is building a bison herd on 28,000 acres of Rosebud Sioux Tribal lands. The multi-year build-up phase includes plans that convert the former working ranch known as Mustang Meadows from cattle to a 1,500-strong bison herd, as well as a workshop and gathering space. Wolakota is also exploring a processing plant, cultural and ecotourism and educational outreach.
The regenerative buffalo range is taking shape on land that was formerly under non-Indian ownership and control and is within the boundaries of the tribal nation. The plan is to build Wolakota into the largest Native-owned and managed buffalo range in the world.
REDCO is partnering with organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Department of the Interior, working to ensure the herd is grown sustainably and tended in a culturally appropriate manner, including a diverse range of animals such as older females and bulls who regulate and govern the herd. Buffalo from Badlands National Park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and Montana’s American Prairie Reserve have been relocated to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate. Wizipan Little Elk (Sicangu Lakota), REDCO Chief Executive Officer, explains the origins and mission of Wolakota.
“The relationship between Lakota and buffalo is one that is inextricable. Buffalo cannot be separated from Lakota and Lakota cannot be separated from buffalo. We’re one and the same people.
We consider buffalo to be our ancestors. When the buffalo were taken from us, it was a massive blow. When the genocide was committed against the Lakota and against other indigenous peoples, there was also a genocide committed against buffalo – a very specific and concerted effort to wipe out buffalo from the land. With colonial expansion, they knew that if they were able to eliminate buffalo from the land that it would then be easier to take our land and to move us onto the reservations.
The buffalo were everything to us. They were our food. They provided our clothing, our shelter, our ceremonial items. They were our teachers on how to organize ourselves and our society – on how to treat one another with kindness and compassion, on how to protect children, on how to honor our elders.
This is an opportunity to not dwell on the past, but to acknowledge it and move forward with new vision and with new light into a future that is healthy for our people, for our region, and for the planet.
The greatest opportunity that we’re going to have with the Wolakota project is the ability to form meaningful relationships with buffalo and to bring them back – not necessarily into our daily lives, but perhaps into a part of our monthly or annual lives. We will have an opportunity to see them, to interact with them, and to form that relationship.
There are opportunities to heal our land. Buffalo are a keystone species. When you introduce buffalo back into the prairie ecosystem, the original prairie ecosystem starts to rebuild itself. You see increased biodiversity. We’re going to see increased carbon capture. There are also going to be economic opportunities as well in terms of jobs that are created.
This is an opportunity for us to do what we call the development and implementation of local solutions to global challenges. And this is going to be an example not only for other native nations but really for the rest of the world to look at, and say, ‘Hey, these guys are doing something pretty cool out in the middle of what we now call South Dakota. We can do that in our area as well.’
We have to be economically sustainable. Wolakota puts us on the map in a way that we’ve not been before and allows us to engage with the rest of the world in a different kind of way. It’s important to understand that that no nation can be sovereign if it can’t feed itself. This is just one component of a much larger plan and vision for the Sicangu Oyate to be able to feed itself and to not only be able to provide for our own, but for our relatives in the region. This is particularly important in the time of globalization and particularly poignant during the time of COVID where global food and supply chains have been upended.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe has a constitutional provision that says that we are supposed to consider the implications of our decisions on the next seven generations. Instead of having that simply be an aspirational statement, let’s actualize that and actually make a 175-year plan of prosperity, so that informs our approach and our work.
This herd doesn’t belong to any one individual, one nation, or even one generation. This herd belongs to our people, the buffalo people, and it belongs to our future generations.”
A new episode of Dakota Life premieres Thursday, May 6, 8pm (& MT) on SDPB1 and SDPB.org.