The continued presence of the buffalo serves as a powerful representation for their own resilience.

The new Buffalo Nations Landmarks program recognizes the importance—for all people—of revitalization of relationships between Buffalo Nations, the American Bison (i.e., “buffalo”), and the lands within and surrounding Yellowstone National Park (YNP). The program will prepare two groups of K-12 educators from across the U.S. to implement curriculum focusing on history and revitalization of the buffalo as situated within the histories, geographies, and contemporary knowledges of Indigenous Nations. The InterTribal Buffalo Treaty and its tribal members--the Buffalo Nations--serve as a powerful Indigenous-led landmark initiative to restore buffalo to tribal lands. While the treaty is an instrument for collaboration for Indigenous Nations in the U.S. and Canada, the InterTribal Buffalo Council is an important institutional structure for participating Nations in the U.S. While the geographic locations of these Nations demonstrate the far-reaching influence of the buffalo across much of the U.S. today, Yellowstone National Park (YNP) has for more than a century played a critical role in the survival of bison as a species. The Park’s significant historical, archeological and ongoing ties to the region and to the work of the ITBC makes it an ideal geographic site for our workshops. During the two resident workshops, participants will visit key sites and engage in activities facilitated by experts, educators, and leaders from several Buffalo Nations, Ecology Project International (EPI), Montana State University (MSU), and the National Park Service (NPS). Virtual learning communities in the following school year will round out the program.

Core readings and resources include works overviewing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), the history and archaeology of Yellowstone, land-based teaching and learning, and sovereignty and citizenship. The workshop curriculum will make space for teachers to integrate content standards across social studies (e.g., history, geography), science (e.g., ecology, geology), language arts (e.g., literacy, Indigenous language revitalization), math (e.g., measurement, data analysis, problem-solving), art, and more.  

Literacy will be a key program theme. First, the project will expand historical, geographic, political, economic, cultural, and social literacy for teachers (and, subsequently, K-12 learners) pertinent to the Buffalo Nations. Second, the project advances ecological literacy for teachers (and K-12 students), by engaging participants in field-based study to examine the influence of buffalo on the landscape and how their restoration is changing prairie ecology in YNP and where restoration efforts are occurring. Finally, the project will support critical humanities literacy development—especially for children from the partner reservations—through storytelling and sharing of oral histories; Indigenous language integration; and exploration of artwork, maps, and documents. For example, participating teachers will learn about how diverse maps (Indigenous and non-Indigenous and historical and contemporary) can be paired with ledger art to teaching about perspective, economic influences on political and cultural worldviews, and the use of primary sources to understand Indigenous peoples’ long-standing “survivance” (survival + resistance) to settler colonialism (Vizenor, 2008). 

A powerful and diverse mix of curricular resources will be shared, including academic texts, videos and films, podcasts, interactive websites, primary source materials (treaties, maps, artwork, etc.), artifacts, and more. Each day during the workshops, participants will engage in field-based inquiry, expert presentations, learning community circles, and multi-media activities to engage with and apply these resources. For example, participating teachers will examine the ways sites such as Native Knowledge 360, Tracking the Buffalo, and Mission U.S. A Cheyenne Odyssey, which share Indigenous perspectives and histories using interactive technology, can support innovative teaching and learning of complex humanities content in contexts across the U.S. Integrated field study excursions will further support experiential and place-conscious learning as related to the Buffalo Nations. Participants will interpret anthropological and ecological data at Obsidian Cliff (where Buffalo Nations’ ancestors quarried obsidian for tools) and in the Lamar Valley (where buffalo wallows help sustain ecological diversity). 

Curricula and Subject Areas 

Workshop content will focus not only on a wide range of subject areas but also their interdisciplinary connections. For example, participants will learn about how historical events (i.e., social studies content) influenced contemporary environmental and ecological health (i.e., science content). Importantly, the workshops will also attend to pedagogy which is applicable and transferable across grade levels and content areas. For example, participants will learn strategies to shift the ways that schools have historically minoritized Indigenous students through punitive disciplinary practices, English-only literacy education, and teacher-centered practices. Workshop facilitators and presenters will provide guidance on culturally responsive education, language revitalization, restorative justice, and student- and community-led inquiry. Other strategies will include learning circles with community members and Structured Academic Controversy. Both focus on story-sharing, critical document analysis, dialogue about cultural knowledges, controversial content and consensus-building, and can be transferred to a wide range of contexts and subject areas, especially within English Language Arts and social studies. 

This program offers unique humanities teaching-and-learning opportunities. Most of the curricular resources that will be introduced during the workshops are digitized and available beyond the specific site. For example, participants will explore videorecorded oral histories on the Montana Tribes website, digital archives with winter counts and traditional maps on buffalo hides, videos of buffalo releases on several reservations, and interactive resources and online simulations through Mission U.S., the Smithsonian, and the National Museum of the American Indian. These resources can be easily accessed and shared in classrooms across the country. 

Experiential Learning and Transfer to Classroom Practice 

Experiential learning will be abundant in the workshop format, including site visits, field work, and small group “learning circle” activities facilitated by educators and leaders from partner reservations, FPCC, MSU, and EPI. Also, interdisciplinary grade-band (i.e., K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12) or subject-matter groups will meet to review, discuss, and plan for curricular implementation. The final two workshop days include focused attention on adapting program content and methods to participants’ specific classrooms with a capstone focus on creating a curriculum map outlining integration of content, methods, and pedagogies over a sustained time period (e.g., unit, term, or year) and a ready-to-teach lesson plan or learning sequence. Subsequent virtual community meetings will support continued adaptation of workshop content.   

Buffalo Nations: History and Revitalization of the American Bison, Workshop Overview

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.