This Indigenous People’s Day, Sierra Club Wyoming was proud to participate in the third annual Buffalo Bash hosted by the Wind River Tribal Buffalo initiative. A partnership forged by former SCWY staff member Kaycee Prevedel, the buffalo bash began as a fundraising effort to grow the Wind River buffalo herd. This year, festivities spanned from morning to night: the community dinner and sunset tour were preceded by a Tribal Conservation Summit hosted by WRTBI and Wyoming Outdoor Council. SCWY staffers Kelsey Yarzab Yates and Emma Jones were on-site to help where they could.
I arrived just in time to greet students arriving from the nearby school. Tagging along with WRTBI staffer Taylar, she explains to each group how they can mold their own clay buffalo. Taylar carves out four stubby legs, a big face and characteristic hump, and a tiny little tail from a grape-sized piece of clay. She shares that some students like to craft horns for their buffalo.
After putting the finishing touches on our renderings, we take our buffalo outside and help them to wallow in the dirt. Buffalo wallow for a variety of reasons: to shed their winter coats, relieve an itch, defend against insects, cool off, as well as for social and mating behaviors.
The kids revel in the dirt-centric part of the activity, and honestly, so do I. We don’t get our hands dirty in adulthood as much as we maybe should. Now that our clay buffalo have been bathed in dirt, we bury them in the ground like seeds, hoping to sprout the next generation of buffalo on this landscape and beyond.
With workshops wrapping up and dinner on the stove, Emma and I peeled off to assist with parking. We motioned arriving cars to spots in an open field, nearly every car with a potluck dish in tow. By the time the lot filled up and we opened up the gates to the overflow area on the opposite side of the site, the dinner tent was practically overflowing with food and people. With two types of buffalo stew as the centerpiece, we filled our plates with carefully made vegetables, gravy, fry bread, and side dishes galore. To help kick off the night’s festivities, dinner featured a musical performance from Big Wind Carpenter.
Following a delicious dinner, some lively conversation and invigorating entertainment, we’d arrived at the main event: it was time to go see the buffalo. Emma and I piled into a car with a few other volunteers and joined the caravan of approximately 50 vehicles, rolling down the dirt road toward the buffalo, just as the sun was setting behind the wind river mountain range. Buffalo are always bigger in-person than I expect; even from a significant distance.
More remarkable, however, is seeing buffalo on this landscape at all. Despite historic population estimates hovering around 60 million with a habitat that once spanned much of North America, the population was decimated in the 19th century to just 541 remaining animals on the whole continent. On the Wind River Reservation, the return of the buffalo is less than a decade old. The first conservation herd arrived in 2016, beginning with just ten buffalo from the Neil Smith Wildlife Refuge. Subsequent transfers came from Yellowstone and Fort Peck. Today, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho herds total approximately 200 head of buffalo, with the intention of acquiring more land to further grow the herds. You can support those efforts here.
Upon our return to camp, the night came to a close with a bonfire and entertainment from hoop dancer, multi-instrumentalist and singer Jackie Bird as well as Laramie-based band Pigasus.
Three years on, the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative has created a full day of activity and connection, offering something for every community member. We’re proud to have played a small part in making the day a success.
