What you share here is all true, and the intentional genocidal policies of the US government should be called out, though I feel like in the interest of expanding this discussion beyond anthropocentric thinking, we should also honor our Buffalo kin through acknowledging the intrinsic keystone (and trophic cascade) ecological roles of these beings. The symbiosis between animistic ethos guided humans and buffalo (involving practices like controlled burns to alter migration patterns and regenerate grass/soil) can enhance their regenerative impact on the land, however, Buffalo are critically important for the health of multiple bioregions here on Turtle Island, whether human beings are present, in relation with and involved in hunting them or not).

Also, I think it is important to acknowledge that the railroad barons here in "Canada" also encouraged extermination of these majestic beings. I have pictures of the Canadian Railroad workers standing on mountains of skulls in Alberta which are very similar to that picture from the US you included.

Another thing worth noting is that I have been to several exhibits in Canadian museums focusing on the Bison and they similarly have vague "whitewashed" stories about how they almost went extinct. Worse yet, many Canadian official information sources spend a lot of time and space talking about how the indigenous people in what is now called "Alberta" killed way more buffalo than they needed to with cliff jump hunting (in places such as "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump" in Alberta) implying that their hunting practices were unsustainable (when in reality they had been doing that for millennia). Such exhibits also mention very little if anything about the role of the railroad barons.

Also, I am so grateful to hear that some indigenous people are re-introducing them into land to roam free but your article gives the impression that government oppression and massacring of these beings has ended in the USA, and that is not true. Government approved and funded senseless killing of Buffalo continues in and around Yellowstone to this day.

I will provide some more specific historical data below to elaborate on some of the facts you touched on here.

The United States government (and the oligarchs that stand behind and above it) wanted the land of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and saw how connected they were to the Buffalo and thus encouraged the slaughter of the buffalo as a strategy to conquer the American plains “Indians”.

Generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan believed if the soldiers could eradicate the Buffalo, the “Indians” would have no choice but to give up. This belief stemmed from General Sherman’s tactic during the Civil War to defeat the Confederates in his March to the Sea—the “scorched earth” policy. Take away anything essential for the survival of a people, and they will surrender—as long as the Buffalo roamed the Plains, so did the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island—the two were symbiotic.

American General Phil Sheridan said, “Let them kill the buffalo until they are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy.. ..Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

For more information: nativephilanthropy.cand…

On 26 June 1869, the Army-Navy Journal reported that General Sherman remarked, “the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins.”

Sherman told Grant the year before, “we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” When Grant assumed the presidency in 1869, he appointed Sherman Commanding General of the Army, and Sherman was responsible for U.S. engagement in the “Indian Wars” (aka Buffalo War).

For more information : nativephilanthropy.cand…

Sheridan was soon able to mount the kind of offensive he desired. In the Winter Campaign of 1868-69 against Cheyenne encampments, Sheridan set about destroying the Indians’ food, shelter and livestock with overwhelming force, leaving women and children at the mercy of the Army and “Indian” warriors little choice but to surrender or risk starvation.

As you touched on, many Indigenous scholars demonstrate the interrelation of Plains Indigenous Nations and bison herds, sometimes referred to as buffalo.

For example, Cree scientist Keira Ladner studied the non-hierarchical organization of Blackfoot communities and practices of collaborative decision-making. “These community practices are rooted in close relationships to bison herds, which work as non-coercive collectives in which no single animal dominates.”

The imperialistic Statists and oligarchs of the railroad companies could not allow for such a way of life to continue, for not only did they want to steal the land, but these indigenous peoples were standing as an example of an alternative way of organizing society, standing in direct opposition to their self-proclaimed “civilized” statist societal structure. Thus, the Buffalo were hunted down and exterminated and the vast majority of the indigenous peoples were massacred, enslaved and/or imprisoned on little parcels of land where the government could attempt to slowly brainwash them over multiple generations.

(continued in a comment below..)