Description: Indigenous Feature Documentary on restoring buffalo (bison) in North America
Award-winning Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard’s ( nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up , Birth of a Family) feature length Singing Back the Buffalo follows Indigenous visionaries, scientists and communities who are rematriating the buffalo to the heart of the North American plains they once defined, signaling a turning point for Indigenous nations, the ecosystem, and all of our collective survival.
As a little girl, Indigenous filmmaker Tasha Hubbard would imagine herds of buffalo roaming the prairie landscape in which she lived. 165 years ago, a herd of buffalo on the Great Plains of North America would take two days to pass by. After three decades of deliberate slaughter, there were less than 500 left from the over 30-50 million that moved across the continent, drastically impacting Indigenous nations.
The buffalo’s fate reflected Indigenous people’s confinement to reserves. For over a century, neither have been free to walk the lands that have been Indigenous for millennia.