Speak Buffalo: The INDIGENOUS LED Origin Story
INDIGENOUS LED was born at a breakfast table in Missoula, Montana in the winter of 2022.
Ervin Carlson and I were attending an Interagency Bison Management Program meeting. One of the critical decisions the meeting was tasked with determining the Yellowstone buffalo cull, read slaughter for “bison population management.”
On one side of the debate, Tribal Nations campaigned to protect their relatives and Tribal Sovereignty. On the other, the Montana Department of Livestock battled for profit margins and political dominance. Scientists then took the floor throwing population and carrying capacity data into an argument whirlpool. The entrenched sides lobbed numbers and arguments back and forth like an undetonated grenade.
Silently fuming in the back of the room with no opportunity to speak, it struck me that our relative Buffalo, didn’t have a voice either. There was no seat set for Buffalo in this ideological war room. What if there was, I wondered? What would our four-legged relative say in response to Greed’s booming voice? What would they say to those two-leggeds that clearly had forgotten that humans and the natural world are kin, forgotten the intimate embrace of our Mother Earth.
An intense rage gave way to a suffocating fog of grief and despair. In the seemingly never-ending darkness, I stumbled over my own thoughts, sharp with doubt, tangled with fear, and blind to any horizon - until a thin strand of light broke through. It reached for me like a hand, read hoof, and in its glow, I began to see the shape of a future, a future where we all remember what it is to live in reciprocal relationship with the natural world. The hint of a future that would become INDIGENOUS LED.
What would it have taken that day in Missoula for everyone in the room to remember that Buffalo is our relative? What if instead of talking about minimum viable population numbers, we all recognized we were actually talking about life and the well-being of a relative? An auntie? An uncle? A brother or sister?
I have more faith in human ingenuity, let alone heart, to believe that we would devolve to the profanity of how many of our “aunties” are we going to sanction to slaughter for the economic benefit of a privileged few. I refuse to believe that humans are incapable of remembering humanity’s sacred connection to the wild and the immutability of interdependence and reciprocity at the heart of this relationship with our beautiful, but finite, home planet.
The reality that 1500 of our relatives would be gunned down over the winter of 2022-2023 sat heavy with Ervin and I over breakfast. In defeated voices we contemplated what it means for humanity to have forgotten how to be in relationship with the natural world. To have forgotten that Buffalo, Beaver, and Bear, are our brothers and sisters, and as a result we have forgotten, violated, the sacred treaties made long ago with these sacred beings. What does it mean for the world that we no longer know what it feels like on our tongues to speak Buffalo, to speak the language of relationship: Respect. Reciprocity. Responsibility. Rematriation. Reconciliation.
We recognized that a much older language is audible, if we slow and listen. A language spoken in whispers, in murmurs. A language heard on a gust of wind, a bird wing ripping open sky, hooves cleaving earth, the slap of a tail on still water. This language speaks humility and honor, respect and reciprocity, kinship and kindness. This is the language of love that calls on all of us to remember we’ve been wild for 99% of human history—inextricably intertwined in the most familiar relationship with our wild kin.
The language of Western conservation is by comparison a dissociative language: linear, reductionist, mechanistic. Input equals output; success measured in acres, miles, designations. The values reflect a language of ownership, dominion over—a language of separation.
The dissociation from this ancestral reality was driven by colonization, by the rise of reason and an obsession with data. While these data are no doubt revelatory, they do not inherently yield knowledge let alone wisdom, and seem to miss the most important point when it comes to the reality of our collective planetary crisis. Through Indigenous eyes “conservation” is a relationship. This vital work is devoted practice: fierce love given expression.
You might ask: What does love and reciprocal relationship have to do with conserving biodiversity, reversing climate change, halting the destruction of land and water? The West teaches that conservation impact requires objectivity, which many interpret as keeping heart, let alone spirit, out of it. But it is clear that the trebled biodiversity, climate and social justice crises are at their root a relational crisis. The solutions require much more of us than just intellect, logic or ration - it also calls for the fiercest more devoted love.
Sitting with these realities, Ervin took a sip of steaming coffee and our ancestors spoke through him: “We need a new organization. An organization that can spark the emergence of an Indigenous-led conservation movement,” he said in a soft faraway voice. Not missing a beat, I sang back: “Yes! And we will call it INDIGENOUS LED: all caps, bold, 80-point font.” We both laughed out loud and, in that laughter, INDIGENOUS LED was born.
INDIGENOUS LED was founded by Indigenous People for Indigenous People to build and elevate the Indigenous Voice and Power needed to address our planetary crisis through our ways of knowing, being and doing. Our vision is expressed through a set of parallel strategies—Protect. Heal. Celebrate.—that support the emergence of a community of belonging that enables all of us to remember and give expression to our largest humanity.
These strategies are actioned through three, place-based initiatives:
Rematriating Relatives: Restoring Buffalo & Beaver to their Native Homelands
Making the Case: Proving the Power of Indigenous-Led Conservation
Remembering & Renewing Relationship: Cultivating a Community of Belonging through Story & Ceremony
Our work braids knowledge, shares art, evokes sacred law, emboldens youth, and gives expression to a culture of belonging. We believe this work is crux to the healing needed to drive revolutionary change and indigenize everything from conservation to capital to ourselves for the future of both people & planet.
Let us know how you want to contribute to a community of belonging that invites all beings into the sacred circle of relationship. Let us know what you need to start speaking Buffalo again.
Cristina Mormorunni and Ervin Carlson launched INDIGENOUS LED in March of 2022. Cristina serves as the organization’s Executive Director and Ervin as a Strategic Advisor for mission critical bodies of work.
