From South Dakota and Oklahoma to Alaska and Alberta, Indigenous groups in the U.S. and Canada are leading efforts to restore bison across North America more than a century after European settlers drove the species near extinction.
Tribes now have a collective 20,000 bison and that’s been growing steadily along with a desire among many Native Americans to reclaim stewardship of an animal their predecessors lived alongside and depended upon for millennia.
The long-term dream for many: return bison, also known as buffalo, on a scale rivaling the tens of millions that once roamed the continent in thundering herds that shaped the landscape itself.