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Abstract
This dissertation looks at contemporary American Indian efforts to build tribal bison ranching programs on reservations, especially on the Great Plains. It focuses on the northern plains, following year-long dissertation fieldwork on Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota.
Tribal bison operations are an effort to regain ecological, economic, cultural, and political sovereignty for Indian reservations. With the rise of the buffalo industry, coinciding with the Buffalo Commons debate, in the 1980s, bison became a profitable alternative to cattle ranching. Because many Indian groups, historically subsisting in various degrees on bison, hold the animals to be traditionally sacred, they tried to catch this opportunity to revive important aspects of their cultural, religious, and physical health and simultaneously renew efforts at economic development. Bison operations were conceived of as locally planned, controlled, and maintained sustainable development projects, which would provide jobs, contribute to school programs, provide healthy nutrition, restore the ecology, and revive social and cultural traditions. This study follows the fate of one such tribal bison operation, Pte Hca Ka, Inc., on Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. The operation is used here as a way to look at many contemporary issues of Indian Reservations, and to place reservations in the context of northern plains ecology and economy in general.
Culturally and ecologically sustainable development projects are definitely needed on Indian reservations, and bison operations have the added benefits of promoting tribal sovereignty and reducing dependencies to the dominant society. Contemporary Indian societies on the northern plains have, however, adopted to a large degree the cattle culture of their surroundings. Bison operations are therefore, in trying to revive the traditional society and culture, not aiming to preserve, but to change cultural, economic, and ecological practices, and encounter resistance for that. Contemporary Indian societies are as socially and culturally complex and diverse as their neighbors, if not more so, and cannot be reduced to simply represent traditional societies transplanted from the past.
