There Is No Future Where the Lakota and the Buffalo Don't Exist Together
«The Buffalo have a lot to teach us. But we are still, as we speak, facing the consequences of the federal government’s genocidal campaign, where they killed the Buffalo, intentionally trying to kill us. And it did kill a lot of us, and it killed a lot of things inside of us. Make no mistake: both were intentional.
[…]
So, to me, Buffalo restoration isn’t just the next eco-trend or hot new social justice campaign. I see Buffalo restoration as food sovereignty. I see it as language revitalization. I see it as suicide prevention. I see it as an economic alternative to a capitalist society.
[…]
When I think about borders and fences, I think about limitations. And, necessarily, I think about the cattle industry and all it represents. To me, this is getting into the real nitty gritty, because when they nearly killed off the buffalo, what did they do? They put us on reservations, which have borders and allow us our little space to exist in.
[…]
And then we’re told that we need to be farmers and ranchers, and we need to put up these fences to separate what’s mine from what’s yours from what’s theirs. All of these things are fragmentations, divisions […] So it’s not just the literal fences of these cattle ranches. It’s the fencing of our minds that comes with it, and everything that the cattle industry comes to represent in modern America, its origins, and the perpetuation of the settler state.»