Returning indigenous roots to Yellowstone.
BY CHRIS LA TRAY
It is a sweaty evening in mid-August of 2022 on the second night of my stay at the All Nations Tipi Village in Yellowstone National Park. I’m at Madison Junction, the lush meadow 14 miles from the park’s West Entrance where the Gibbon and Firehole rivers join to comprise the headwaters of the Madison River. The day fading toward dusk has been full of spirited interactions with the public and, while most were overwhelmingly positive, the sun was unrelenting; I am overcooked and socially weary.
The light is fading into pastel colors behind distant ridges and a group of singers and drummers are in the adjacent meadow rehearsing for a performance to come tomorrow night. While drums thump and people shuffle-dance around and between the tipis, a massive bull buffalo emerges from out of the shade of thick lodgepole pines to the north and ambles down a dusty slope into the wide field that separates the line of tipis from the river. There is a collective gasp as lingering tourists, largely campers from the campground just above the meadow, swarm with cameras and excited babbling. A nearby ranger with raised hands urges everyone back to a safe distance. The buffalo, muscular and shaggy and as-much-red-as-brown in this golden hour, pulls big chunks of grass into his mouth. Even from my safe distance perched in my camp chair, I can hear the soil tear free from the earth, the munching sounds of his chewing. He is unconcerned with anyone’s proximity.
A woman approaches me. “Is that a real wild buffalo?” she breathes. “Or is it one from a petting zoo or something brought here to hang around the tipis?” I assure her it is indeed a real wild buffalo. She smiles, though I’m not entirely certain she believes me.
There was a time my ancestors were as familiar with the arrangement of stars in the night sky as I am with the little app icons scattered across the dark glass of the home screen of my cell phone. I am considering this loss of connection with the universe, not entirely self-inflicted but certainly self-maintained, as I stand alone under the sky, deeply moved and reveling in the moment.
I am here as one of many cultural ambassadors from nearby tribes invited to occupy the village for the better part of a week, all of us here to commemorate the 150-year anniversary of the park. Crucially, we are mostly here to announce and usher in the park’s next mission, which is to re-establish an essential Indigenous presence within the borders after almost two centuries of absence. It is a grand vision and long overdue. We spent the day explaining our presence to anyone who happened by; some, like me, via stories and presentations, others via art, both visual and performance.
Before long, darkness settles and people disperse. Somewhere nearby a small group of men are chatting; by now, I am stripped to my boxers and reclining in my tipi, where I will spend the night on top of my sleeping bag. The voices are low and indiscernible and then fade away.
I am the only ambassador actually sleeping in a tipi. The rest are up above in the campground. Apparently this— spending the week in the campground— had been the intention of organizers all along, but I never got the memo. When I arrived the previous evening and no one was around, I set up a nest in the tipi marked “Little Shell Chippewa Tribe” and no one has made me move since. So here I am, in my tipi, the first stars beginning to pop from the sky as seen through the opening at the apex of the tipi where the 14 poles cross. I drift off, the entire area to myself. Or seemingly so.
Later, just a couple of hours past midnight, I wake up and emerge from the low flap of the tipi into the chill of the night and walk out into the meadow. I can hear the river swirling and a slight breeze rustling the pines like whispers from this other, and simultaneously familiar, universe. Without so much as a nail clipping of moon to brighten things, the stars in the sky are stupendous. Gobsmacking. Truly and literally of other worlds. The Milky Way stretches far overhead. I don’t see anything like this anywhere near where I live, what with city lights and porch lights and headlights and any and all kinds of encroaching, human-made lights.
There was a time my ancestors were as familiar with the arrangement of stars in the night sky as I am with the little app icons scattered across the dark glass of the home screen of my cell phone. I am considering this loss of connection with the universe, not entirely self-inflicted but certainly self-maintained, as I stand alone under the sky, deeply moved and reveling in the moment. I feel born fresh into existence, like Nanaboozhoo, the first Human in the creation story of my Anishinaabe people, instructed by Creator to go out and meet the world and all of our more-than-human relatives for the first time. I believe this is what it might have felt like: everything ancient, everything brand new, everything magnificent.
My reverie is broken with the sound of a deep, explosive, “Uungh.” I pause. This is Yellowstone. It could be anything. I hear the rumble again. “Uuuuuungh….”
I reach up, flick my headlamp on, and turn around. Some 20 or 30 feet away is the buffalo, bedded down behind the tipi two positions adjacent to mine. Staring eye to blinking eye at the buffalo, my alarm drains away. I turn the lamp off. I can hear him breathing and imagine the glitter of his dark eyes. I move slowly back to my tipi, saying aloud as I pass, almost giddily, “I hope you rest well tonight too, my brother.”
My buffalo brother wasn’t here by happenstance. He was here to celebrate the return of our shared presence on this particular stretch of land.
Many people get indignant when we dare to “anthropomorphize” our more-than-human relatives. I find the word mildly repugnant and a perfect example of human arrogance. Who are we to pass judgment on the inner world of creatures we’ve never tried to understand beyond what we can measure with our own tiny view of existence? My connections to the world are deeper when I accept that it isn’t the animals that are dull and stupid; it is that all too often we are. Not only are we the last to arrive on this world, according to Anishinaabek cosmology, and prone to gigantic mistakes, we are the ones whose failures of humility have disconnected us from the rest of the world. The world was fine without us before our arrival and would likely, if the last few centuries are any indication, be better off with us gone again, a future we seem to be hell bent on embracing. But it’s not too late to change this apparent fate; Anishinaabek teachings assure us of this too. I believe the land and our animal relatives would miss us if we left. Same as we miss the ones we’ve driven to extinction.
Consider the relationship Indigenous people have had with what we call Yellowstone Park, or the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for thousands of years. We have been absent from it for more than 150 years at the decisions of men who believed nature wasn’t pure unless people—non-white people in particular, it seems—weren’t part of it. In the case of our national parks, Native folks aren’t allowed to live in them as we have for centuries, yet tourists are allowed to trample all over them. There is no sense in this.
We can learn from our mistakes. The stumbling, early efforts in Yellowstone to “re-Indigenize” are steps in the right direction, however long it takes to arrive. Lying in my tipi, realizing my great relative, literally the symbol in the center of my people’s tribal flag, was taking his rest just a score or so of feet away, I came to a deep revelation. My buffalo brother wasn’t here by happenstance. He was here to celebrate the return of our shared presence on this particular stretch of land. My heart was full with gratitude. I thanked him in prayer.
Sometimes a buffalo in a meadow is just a buffalo in a meadow. But sometimes, like this experience in Yellowstone, the buffalo—bizhiki in Ojibwemow in—is visiting as one of our Seven Grandfathers, representing Manaaji’idiwin, or Respect. I think that, assembled in this beautiful meadow for the first time in 150 years, this buffalo came to pay his respects to us on behalf of all of his Nation. He was reminding us to be mindful that we are indeed all connected, living being to living being. That we must be honorable in the teachings we are sharing with the curious. That we need to give of ourselves to make things better for everyone. Reminding us. And welcoming us home.
The next morning I am up and making coffee a little after 6 a.m. My buffalo relative is still here too, a massive shape in a dusty wallow, his legs tucked up under him. Small bunches of Canada geese, not even Vs of them, are flying low overhead above the misty river, making their racket. Everything so primeval from last night under the stars is still here in the earliest light of morning, the hissing of the little gas stove brewing my coffee notwithstanding. Things couldn’t be more perfect.
Before long the buffalo heaves to his feet, snorts and snuffles, and starts eating again. He makes his way south along the line of tipis, pausing here and there. He curves around to the west along the bank of the Gibbon River. He ascends the hill, and disappears into the trees.
Chris La Tray is a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He writes the newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025 and the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana.
