10/26/2024
Medicine Fish was proud to hold our first ever 'Buffalo Days' in partnership with several local community members, including partners in the Menominee Indian School District and several local artisans, chefs, crafters, and storytellers.
The goal and foundation of Medicine Fish centers on youth. We view youth as critical to our future as Menominee people, and we strive to include our community as often as possible, as we understand such important work cannot be done in isolation. Our Buffalo Days week, held October 7th through the 10th, kicked off with a beautiful harvest ceremony in the Nachusa Grasslands supported by our allies, including Cody Considine and good friends from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho nations, Jason and Patti Baldes (respectively).
In the past seasons following the harvest, we have typically selected a location in the Menominee community to complete a community-wide carving and processing of our buffalo relative, including the Medicine Fish Buffalo Camp, School View, and Neopit. This season's harvest led us to bring the carving and processing directly to the school to commemorate the opening of the high school's new facility and host our event to more students. We were honored to be a part of this 'new beginning' of our youth's educational experience. Another change to this season's harvest was turning the experience into a week-long event to allow maximum engagement and cultivate meaningful relationships with the students; in turn, we hoped to celebrate and normalize the presence of buffalo in their lives.
In the spirit of including members from our community and other tribal relatives, we invited several local experts in traditional gardening, cooking, storytelling (led by Kim Hoffman and Miranda Bailey), and artists, allowing us to create an experiential multi-layered event for students' engagement. High school students from all grades stopped in throughout the week to assist in carving, meat processing, hide scraping, and visiting. Several brave ones tasted raw meat, and others tried freshly cooked meat over an open fire. We had a station, overseen by Lucy, Ben, and their daughter Kesīpetiya͞emen "Yammie" Grignon of Ancient Roots Homestead, who taught us how to use dry buffalo dung, fresh soil, and prairie seed mix (which our interns helped to gather from Nachusa earlier this summer) to create fertilizer "seed bombs." These seed bombs will be used later in a larger project to help us restore the buffalo habitat at Buffalo Camp into ecological abundance. Additionally, students took part in hide painting (the hide was provided by the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council), using salmon eggs and Earth pigment. Students were encouraged to paint directly on the hide using their own creativity and inspiration, with a centerpiece of woodland floral, designed and painted by high school senior Anisa Waupoose. Finally, students participated in a live cooking demonstration by Chef Anthony Warrior of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, who brought traditional foods he bartered for throughout Turtle Island and the Great Lakes. Together, students learned about the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health benefits of living among and with and consuming buffalo.
Our week culminated with a private screening of "A Buffalo Story," (abuffalostory.org) co-produced by Colin Ruffiero and National Wildlife Federation, featuring Jason and Patti Baldes. This film follows Jason and his journey to reintroduce buffalo to the Wind River Reservation and highlights the social, cultural, and spiritual relationship between humans and buffalo. This film is not yet set to release to the public and students were invited to an all-access pass to the Shawano Cinema for a private viewing. We want to give a special shout out to the owner/operator/creator Zeke Heling of the Shawano Cinema for their amazing job hosting our students. In total, we had just over 180 students and chaperones in attendance!
Medicine Fish is deeply grateful to be a part of such events and we want to take a brief moment to share with you all how amazing our Menominee students are. We are taking away several observations. Our students are teaching and co-leading this work through their lens of curiosity, ingenuity, and creativity. Our station leads provided the canvas and students jumped with enthusiasm to help do something they'd never done before, adding special touches to this work. Their curiosity especially drove them to explore new ideas and ask insightful questions, making their participation vibrant and enriching. We also saw peer-to-peer encouragement, humor, and a lot of laughter. As we take a breath and reflect on these moments, we see the future of our community is strong.
We want to give a maec-wāēwāēnen and both hands raised high 🙌 to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois. TNC has been committed to assisting Medicine Fish in growing our buffalo herd by allowing us to harvest from their herd for the first four years of our growth. Now, in our second year (this season bringing about our 4th harvest) of learning and developing our work at Buffalo Camp, we are grateful for TNC's support and contribution. The knowledge and resources they provide permit us to know and understand how to caretake buffalo using our Menominee worldview about land and creation thus, allowing us to be guided and led by the buffalo as they rematriate into the socio-cultural fabric of our community.
Finally, The ceremonial act of harvesting a buffalo holds profound significance, serving as a bridge between past and present. It is a moment of deep respect and gratitude, recognizing the buffalo not just as a source of sustenance, but as a relative who gives its life for our well-being. This ritual embodies love, honoring the sacrifice of the buffalo and acknowledging the spiritual connection between humans and the natural world.
For those who partake in this sacred act, it’s essential to express both reverence and sorrow. While grief is a natural response to the loss of a life, it is also a powerful reminder of the cyclical nature of life and death. This connection reinforces the teachings of our ancestors, who celebrated such harvests as a communal act of gratitude and acknowledgment of the buffalo’s role in sustaining their lives.
As we engage in these traditions, we renew our commitment to honoring the buffalo and the land, fostering a deeper relationship with our environment. This return to our ancestral ways is not only a celebration of life but also a reaffirmation of our responsibility to respect and protect these sacred connections. We give a maec-wāēwāēnen to our young relative, Bryant Waupoose III for taking on this responsibility for us and for our pesāēhkiw relative for giving of himself for our community.
Netāēnawēmakanak
Eneq.
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We invite you all to join us for our next event, a Homecoming of a new buffalo herd, to be held November 9th, 2024, 1 pm - 5 pm at Buffalo Camp just outside Middle Village.
