Tufawon

Indigenous Mind Body Gathering 2026! Super excited to be taking part in this incredible event. I had the honor of being on the planning committee and will be performing. So much good medicine being shared all throughout. Truly an honor 😌🌱

60 million bison once covered the Great Plains.

Herds so large that early European travellers described them as a living carpet stretching to every horizon. Herds that took days to pass a given point at full movement.

By 1889: 300 animals. Systemically hunted — for hides, for sport, and deliberately as a strategy to destroy the food base of Plains Indigenous nations. The US Army understood that killing the bison was a military tactic. Documents from the period confirm this was policy.

In 1889, naturalist William Hornaday counted 256 bison surviving in the wild.

What followed was one of the first deliberate wildlife conservation efforts in American history. Theodore Roosevelt and Hornaday helped found the American Bison Society in 1905. Captive herds were bred and protected. Land was set aside.

Today: approximately 30,000 wild and conservation herd bison. Over 400,000 including commercial ranching operations.

From 60 million to 300 to 30,000. It is not a full recovery. The vast migrations are gone. The cultural and ecological relationship with the land they shaped is irreplaceably altered. But they are not extinct.

The decision to stop was enough to keep them from disappearing completely. Sometimes that is all that's needed.

#1889