What Buffalo Still Have to Teach Us

As we celebrate National Bison Month, perhaps the question isn't why America chose the buffalo as its National Mammal. Perhaps the question is why buffalo haven't given up on us–and what they still have left to teach us.

In our Letter from Buffalo to America, Buffalo reminds us that another story has always been written overhead: that the old ones saw millions of buffalo running across the stars. This extraordinary work by Iháŋktuŋwaŋ Dakȟóta artist Lauren Moores invites us to see that story once again.

“Spirit Relatives Return Home” by Lauren Moores (Iháŋktuŋwaŋ Dakȟóta)

The old ones did not simply see buffalo in the stars. The constellations revealed origin stories and helped our people find their place in the universe.

Look again.

Buffalo societies are led by mothers and grandmothers. Their first instinct is not dominance. It is protection. The herd gathers around its young.

In the aurora, grasslands appear as a path of return. The buffalo are not only moving through the stars. They are finding their way home.

Every civilization reveals itself by what it chooses to place at its center. At a time when so much is pulling us apart, buffalo remind us that the measure of a nation is not what it conquers, but what it brings together.

Perhaps America chose the buffalo because, somewhere deep in its imagination, it recognized the nation it still hoped to become.

This National Bison Month, don't just celebrate the return of buffalo. Ask what their return requires of us.

The buffalo are still running.
The stars are still showing the way.

Will you follow? Who are you willing to become?