Sacred Buffalo People Transcription
- [Narrator] The buffalo people have always stood among our people, from the beginning of time, and they were always there for us. They clothed us. They fed us, and they gave us inner strength to carry on. They've supported us in many ways, and the people have always respected the sacred buffalo people.
- Just on this side of the ice age, when this continent was abundant in grass and all that was virgin, honored, beautiful, pure, and so good, even to look at.
- This one old buffalo... It was a windy day, and he was up in age, and I suppose he was a little hard-hearing, but he seems to be hearing some voice crying, crying bitterly. So he managed to follow this voice, this old buffalo did, and he finally came upon a corroded blood clot. It was a blood clot, and it was this blood that was crying out: "I am cold. I am hungry. I am weak."
- [Narrator] So the Great Spirit put in the mind of the buffalo to have pity on this blood clot.
- And he said, "Look at me. I'm big and strong, so when the blowing north wind blows, I can walk to it, not feeling cold, and I can gallop a slow gallop all day long. So I am that strong. I will give you these and much more. I will give you myself so that you can survive, feed yourself and your children my flesh." So at that moment, the buffalo adopted the Indian, the Lakota, as his younger brother: "Together, we will walk."
- I was always taught... My dad taught me this as a early, early age was respect. It was respect for yourself; respect for your siblings, brother and sisters, be it clan, whatever. And that includes animals 'cause animals... You know, I was always taught that, when the first creator made the earth, first of all, and put the animals on, he put some of his spirit in the animals.
- They're created with this energy force, that life that keeps us existing. They have that same energy force. They have the same ability to use their senses, as well as we have the same ability to use our senses. A lotta people talk about the sixth sense, which I feel that... The animal world actually live in it, are part of it. ♪ Where did you go ♪ ♪ Where did you go ♪
- [Narrator] In 1986, the Fort Berthold tribe acquired buffalo through the National Parks Program. Dean P. Fox was the tribe's first buffalo manager. ♪ Fed me when I was hungry in my soul ♪ ♪ Now, where did you go ♪ ♪ A friend that I've grown to know ♪ ♪ My friend ♪ ♪ The buffalo ♪
- That summer, I had no place to stay, so I put somewhat together a shack and stayed in there, and the next big idea was to... Since we were gonna be right here, have to watch the buffalo, and know the buffalo, might as well just move in with 'em. Course, they probably didn't want us around, but they got used to us. And then we got used to them. I remember some of the nights that... It was such a powerful feeling. The air was still. The sun was down, and it was dark. The stars were out, and we were sitting in some of these armchairs that had no legs but were so... We had 'em on the ground. We had our little camp somewhat set up, had a little stove there that could heat up coffee. It was the young ones, the calves and the yearlings, that had the curiosity to come right up and would stick their nose on our pants or our skin, and what we had to... From what we understand about their touch, ha ha, is horns, and it's always right in the rump: "Boom, get outta the way. Boom, get outta the way." So we had to stay real calm, still. They would come and smell us, get real close to us. And then they'd back off, but for sure, we shared a lot of personal powerful moments with them. It'll definitely last a lifetime. They're part of me. I'm part of them somewhat. I feel it.
- [Narrator] Bennett Brien is an artist for the North Dakota Arts Council. A buffalo he welded out of 3/4-inch wire stands outside of the North Dakota Heritage Center.
- Growing up, we really never... All my parents or grandparents, they never really explained our culture too much, you know, because, when they grew up and went to school, well, it wasn't really good to be the Indian or part Indian or anything. So they never really said much about it, ya know? And they just wanted us to, more or less, assimilate into culture as just a English-speaking person, I suppose. They never really told us much, you know, about the past, I guess. When I came to UND here, I took a Michif class. See, Metis, Michif, , that all means same thing, mixed blood. It's specifically talking about the French and Cree people. The Metis were strong Catholics, for one, and did fiddle and dance, and they'd hunt the buffalo. And the buffalo was the... They're probably their main income, in a way. In the fall, in the spring, they'd go on hunts, and there'd probably be 100-300 carts. In their zenith, you know, when they were really powerful, there'd probably be 300-400 carts, I suppose, in each buffalo hunting, and they'd call 'em a caravans. And so they'd go out. They'd find the buffalo. During the hunt there, it was very strict. I mean, if one person stole even one sinew from another, his name would be... They'd walk around the encampment at night and say the name of that person and put the word thief behind it three times. They'd do that, so I mean, you couldn't even steal. You couldn't lie. You couldn't cheat, you know? And it was very strict. They weren't out there to have a good time. They were, you know, out there to live.
- [Art] When I was a child, I was taught, in the generations before me, they were taught by precept and by example.
- [Narrator] Art Raymond is the director of Indian Program Development at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
- Young boys first were given little bows and arrows, usually a arrow with a blunt wooden end, in which they... They practiced shooting, and they'd shoot at targets, and pretty soon, they would shoot at birds and jackrabbits and squirrels, and as they mastered these things and moved on, they hunted bigger and larger game, and the rate of their advancement depended entirely upon the individual. Usually, in the hunting of buffalo, the young men, these boys were taken along, often, as horse-holders or those who led the horses. In that way, they learned, and they watched, and they were gradually introduced till when they were ready, not at a certain prescribed date which was set for them, but when they were ready, then they were ready to participate fully in the hunt itself, and the hunt wasn't always easy. It was quite often a dangerous thing at that time. With a stampeding herd of buffalo, if you were thrown from your horse, it was very likely you could be trampled to death, you know? And a wounded buffalo often would turn and charge your horse too, you know, so it wasn't easy. It was very difficult.
- I've often wondered how it would be to hunt buffalo how our ancestors hunted buffalo, with bow and arrows and bareback on horseback and with just nothing but a war bridal, which is basically a rope through the mouth of a horse, how that experience was. You know it wasn't a once-a-month deal. They had to do this consistently throughout their lives in order provide food for all the people that was in the camp.
- [Narrator] Jody Luger is a Lakota with experience in rodeo. He was chosen as a rider for the buffalo hunt scene in the movie "Dances with Wolves."
- It was kinda like riding a bucking horse or a bull. The thrill was there, you know. And so once that adrenaline starts flowing, you don't think about the danger that's involved. When a group of buffalo broke off from the main herd, which was an awesome sight in itself coming over that hill, some of us would follow that... Whoever happened to be in the proximity of that small herd would follow that herd and actually get right down on 'em, going full blast, and shoot blunt-tipped arrows into them. Their skin and their bone structure are such that you couldn't just run up alongside of 'em and shoot 'em anywhere and hope to kill 'em. There mighta been isolated instances where an arrow would miss a rib and go in and, you know, would be able to stop an animal that way, but they're such a powerful animal that they had to be not only excellent horsemen but excellent archers too at the same time.
- Before our people went on a hunt or a kill of buffalo, they said a prayer: to interpret it to English, "My uncle the buffalo." And because the buffalo was sacred, there was no part of the buffalo which was wasted. Everything was used.
- Everything from the horns all the way through the body to the hooves were utilized long time ago, you know, for blankets, for pales, for food, for thread, you know, sinew for making arrows, so everything was all utilized that way, and the buffalo taught 'em that. The buffalo and the first creator taught 'em how to use that.
- [Dean] It's like a supermarket, like a mall, or , like a hardware store. It's a Target. It's Kmart. It's everything all rolled up into one because virtually all those things can be obtained from the buffalo. Well, you know, spiritually, this is what the buffalo represented, too. It represented the... How did they call it? Cornucopia, the horn of plenty.
- [Otter] Coyote said to the buffalo... He said, "Oh." He said, "You know, people talk about us." He said, "Is the buffalo faster than the coyote? Or the coyote faster than the buffalo?" That buffalo said, "No, no, no one is faster than the buffalo." They said, "Well, why don't we prove it?" It's what the old coyote said. "Well, we'll have a race right here," he said. He said, "I'll go and make... I'll set up some mounds. And then I'll come back, and we'll have that race." So the old coyote, he went. He's kinda sighting the place. He noticed that there was a big cut bank , so he goes, and he sets that mound up right there by that big cut bank. And then he goes and sets another one. "When we get to those mounds up," he said, "we'll just close our eyes tight. Then will go that much faster." And the buffalo said, "Sure." He said, "We'll do that." So then they got ready, and then they started up. "Go," he said. So then they just took off. They were just running. When they got to them mounds there that old put up, well, then they closed their eyes. Old coyote chief, him, he had one eye open and the other one closed. You know, the side where the buffalo was, he closed that one the went, "Here." That cut bank was right there, so that buffalo just went down. Him, he just curved around that way. He knew what he was doing, so he just ran and curved round to come back.
- I really believe, like the old guys do, I guess, and our people are today, that those things have a spirit, because, when you shoot 'em, you could almost feel that spirit around you for a while until you cut 'em open, until you start butchering them. And then that... What I usually do is I usually give some piece back, you know, their liver or whatever, and put that back on the earth again, so that goes back to the mother again.
- [Narrator] Gerard Baker has extensive experience with buffalo in his work as a ranger in the US Park Service. He took us to the site of an ancient hunting camp.
- Yeah, basically, a buffalo jump has... It's in an area that's real steep, not necessarily a cliff but at least a real steep hill, and they would have what we call today buffalo runs, and a buffalo run had two different forms. One of them was like a wall of stone. Now, in this particular area, we don't have a wall of stone, but we do have piles of rock, and that's also common, where they would do, essentially, the same thing. They would hide behind the piles of rock, and they would use everything from robes to maybe rattles, something that would spook to buffalo so they would go over, and basically, what happens when a buffalo goes over these high buttes and, sometimes, cliffs is that a lotta them would be killed as they went down. One thing about the buffalo jumps is that, in some cases, some of the buffalo that would be the first ones off the hill or first ones off the cliff, sometimes, they would be so battered up by the bones going through them, the meat and the hide, that they wouldn't use 'em. What they would do then is they would usually go through it and whatever bones they could they would use, or whatever muscle they could, like sinew and hooves. They would try to utilize everything that they... They never just killed the buffalo and took certain things. They would utilize everything. Before they would do that or usually before they would start butchering, they would usually have a holy man that maybe had the buffalo medicine, and he would pray to the buffalo, and he would tell the buffalo why they were doing this. They wouldn't... It would just... It wouldn't just be a slaughter.
- [Art] When we take the life of a buffalo in order that the people might live, we must leave an offering in the place of that buffalo. And so among the Lakota and other Indian peoples, something was left. Usually, with us, it was a tobacco offering.
- [Kevin] Course, I have never gone on a buffalo hunt, you know. so anything I can give you, it'd be secondhand.
- [Narrator] Kevin Locke, a Lakota educator and well-known hoop dancer is from the Standing Rock Reservation.
- The different Indian nations of the prairies here, they would make offerings of maybe even, like, a buffalo. If they had a successful hunt, out of thankfulness, they would prepare all that meat and just leave it on the hide, you know, out on the prairie there and leave that there for... Of course, naturally, the different predators would eat that, but this was... The main idea was that this was a gift from divine providence and this was something that should be accepted with thankfulness and reverence.
- The buffalo shared with us in order that the people might live, so the distribution of the meat of the buffalo was, you see, an honor.
- Even to this day, if you go to the reservation, you will see that, when our people give things, it is usually not a gift like a ring or something like that but usually will be meat or that kind of thing. This is a carryover from the olden days. And so it is that... So it was, I should say, that, when there was plenty of food around, we didn't have segments of our society who were hungry, but everybody was well fed. When somebody was hungry, everybody was hungry. And so it is to this day. In the sharing, when we shared, we honored the person with whom we shared, and we honored the Great Spirit.
- [Otter] Then he started. Gonna go out hunting for a knife so he could skin the buffalo. His sin, he then made that into a sound about skinning the buffalo, and just kicking them flint around, he said, "I want a nice knife so I can skin the buffalo." He was saying, and he was just kicking. He finally got one. While he was doing that here, nother animal heard him, so he come and ask: "Say." He said, "I heard you singing a song here." Said, "No." He said, "I'm just looking for some things here, looking for something." "Sure," he said. "No": he just denied up and down that he sang a song, you know, he made a song. He said, "Sure. We heard you over there. You said something about... You were skinning a buffalo?" "Oh yes, that's right," he said. "Oh," he said, "I'm just looking for a flint here so I can..." "I killed a buffalo right over there," he said, "so I wanna skin it." "Oh." So then he start looking around here. He got one nice kinda flint, you know? He said, "This will be a nice sharp knife," this real sharp and kind of long, big knife, and laid it down, and it was... And he got another one and made it kinda little bit less, only thing. The blade part, he said... You know, he didn't say, "Sharp," so it was... It wasn't sharp. Says that this can be your knife, and he said, "Here's my knife is. Now let's go over there and butcher that buffalo off mine." So they went. Him, his knife was so sharp, so in no time, he just trim his side. And the other one, his knife was so dull he had a hard time, you know? Just keep trying and trying, barely the cut around the hoof, you know. That old coyote said, "Cut all done." He said, "You get outta here." He said, "This is mine in the first place." He said, "I tried to share with you, but you're too slow, so go on." So the poor porcupine, he took off. He was crying and crying, and he went on. Him, he just cut it already, and he just cut it all up, you know, stack all that meat up. And then he spread the robe out, you know, and staked it out, and he made a fire, and he boiled the ribs, you know? "Hey, this kinda looks like good place to sit down and rest," he thought, so after he did all that and got that meat boiling and everything, he went, and he sat down. He had a long stick, and he's kinda pressed it, and he sat down. Hey, it felt good, you know, to sit down. He was so tired. After, he sat down and he was, yeah, kinda resting. Pretty soon, he tried to get up, you know, from that rock, and he went like. Here he was stuck. He couldn't raise up. One animal would kinda peek over. He'll holler, "Ah." He'll say that. Then that animal would go outta sight. Another one would peak and say, "Ah." He'll go like that. And then they'd go back. They caught onto that, that he was stuck to that rock, you know. Gee, they just come... They kept coming closer. Pretty soon they just all came, and they just wiped all that meat, even shined his cooking up, ate all the ribs and everything. They got through, and then they went back, and he was sitting there, and he kinda went like this. He just came right off, came right off that rock. That rock let him go. Then he start to cry. He tried to find somewhere the soup was spilt or something, or maybe a blood spot or something, you know? They might have forgotten. Looked around, nothing. He just... Everything was cleared up, cleaned up good, nothing in the kettle, just bones in there. Then he start to cry: "That's what I get for being stingy."
- [Gerard] You don't just take something, you know? There's the relationship. This is a law of nature. There's always the interchange. There's always the reciprocity. So it's simply recognizing that, in this creation, there's certain basic laws and that we are a part of this order.
- [Chuck] What's this one?
- [Child] Not sure.
- [Child] Weed.
- A weed?
- Them are trees.
- Tree.
- Trees, all right. Any of this medicine? Do you know?
- Uh-uh.
- Uh-uh.
- I know that this red stuff is.
- [Chuck] Yeah.
- We ate it in Green Grass.
- And this.
- Yeah, okay, good, good, and this one down here, this is food, too, huh?
- [Child] Don't step on that wire.
- [Chuck] Right here.
- [Narrator] Chuck Ross is an educator and author of "Mitakuye Oyasin."
- Long time ago-
- A book about Lakota beliefs.
- Before we had socks, we used to use this. There's so much symbology to native or Lakota way, Lakota philosophy and thought, and the buffalo is one of the main symbols that they use. Number one is the buffalo's a symbol of the universe. The buffalo skull is a symbol of , God. The four leg... The legs of the buffalo represent the four corners of the universe, four sacred directions. Also, they represents the four ages that mankind has evolved through. There are three constellations of stars that form a buffalo, the shape of a buffalo in the heavens. The head of that buffalo is made up of the constellation called Pleiades, seven stars, and these seven stars make a little, bitty dipper up in the heavens. Now, the reason that's so important: because the position of that buffalo determines when and where we have our ceremonies. In old days, when those seven stars appeared at night, that was a symbol or a sign for the time for the Lakota tribes to return back toward the Black Hills and prepare for winter.
- [Gerard] Just north here, between here and kennel, there's this long series of buttes, but there's one place where there's a depression or a notch, and right there, there's a story about this... This people who were in late winter were starving. It was, like, towards the end of the buffalo-hunting days, when the herds were really getting scarce. They were being pretty much slaughtered by the buffalo hunters, you know, shooting from trains and things. And so the herds were very, very small, and this was, like, one of the last bands that was pretty much independent.
- And there was supposed to be, like, a man who had a dream or a vision, or he heard this song. And then in this song, he was instructed to teach that. And so he taught that song to the people. And they start to sing that. It goes like this. It says, "With the visible face, I appear. I am the one that causes the buffalo to move over your country." They were singing that, and they felt the Earth kind of rumbling, and they went up to that high place there, and they saw a big thunderstorm coming and lightning flashing and buffalo herd coming ahead of it. And that thunderstorm drove that buffalo through that gap, and they're able to... They call that . It's right up here. It means a place where the thunders went hunting.
- [Georgia] Adam, d'you guys remember what the smudge is for?
- [Narrator] Georgia Fox is an aftercare counselor at the Circle of Life program on the Fort Berthold reservation.
- I remember we went to town in the city of Minot and went to the zoo, to the park area. We brought lunch, and we, you know, came up to the bison, the buffalo, that were in this pasture. There was no grass in there, and there was hay to the side, and there were a few of them in there, and my grandfather asked, you know, "Stop the car." And he got off. I was real young, and I watched him. And he walked up to that fence, and he stood there, and he started praying in our language, and he started crying. And I was sitting in the car, and everybody was quiet, and I asked my grandma, "What's grandpa doing?" And she shushed: "Be quiet." And I sat there, and I start watching. And he really cried, and he was hanging onto that fence, and he was talking, talking to the buffalo people. And the biggest buffalo outta the bunch acknowledged him by coming up to him and lowering his head and acknowledging. And what was keeping them apart, separated, was that fence. In that sense, you can also look at our people. We're just as pitiful as the buffalo people, and we need to help one another and to respect one another. And even respect is a powerful word if you really start knowing the true meaning of it.
- The buffalo went through the same kind of experience that our people went through. The buffalo lived in untold numbers. There were millions and millions of buffalo, and gradually, through the years, the buffalo herds were pushed ever westward and grew fewer and fewer in number. Our people went through that same kind of experience. General Sheridan said, "In order to get to the root of the problem, we must exterminate them: men, women, and children." In order to help bring about this extermination, the word was put out, by the military, to kill off all the buffalo, to encourage the slaughter of the buffalo at every turn.
- [Gerard] So then naturally, you know, the minute the buffalo were wiped out, then that's what caused the onset of the so-called reservation period and the containment and dramatic, drastic change in the lifestyle of our people, because, the moment the buffalo were wiped out, then the survival, the self-sufficiency, of the people was taken from them. The buffalo have been through a lotta things. They've been through buffalo hunters, which almost killed them off, and I've seen pictures of thousands and thousands of buffalo hides stacked upon one another, and I've seen thousands and thousands of buffalo skulls stacked up in the Dickinson area or down in Deadwood, where they used to have depots for them. And I compare that to what happened to our people. The Mandan and Hidatsa, you know, we've been through a lot. We've been through smallpox epidemics, two of them. One in 1781, one in 1837 that wiped us out, basically, especially the Mandans, and there's been other things that have happened that really discouraged us, I think, from living. You know, one of them, besides that, was the influence of the missionaries to get rid of our religion. That was another thing that happened to us. Another thing was the Garrison Dam that broke up our families and discouraged us from living what I considered a cultural or traditional way, and the government, among others, tried to get us to assimilate into the so-called white society. So I look at that, and we survived that, just like the buffalo surviving, and like the buffalo, you know, we, as Indian people, I think, now have found ourselves again. We're starting to understand what we're really about now. We're starting to understand why we're here, why we're supposed to exist, 'cause I think it's same way with the buffalo, so when I look at the buffalo, I can't help but think of all those things.
- [Gerard] When we have buffalo roundups... We just had one this year. What I like doing is that I like working the head chute. That's what I do. If we had any kinda specialty, I think that's what I claim is working the head chute, because I get to feel 'em. The head's right there. I get to touch 'em, and I get to feel their breath on me, and besides that, they spit on everything else too, which I think is good, too. Again, you can feel their power. I mean, I'll sit, and I'll greet every one of them, not out in the open, 'cause that other people working around there, you know, but I'll greet every one of those things that come through, and you can see 'em. We can see their eyes and, you know, how wild they are, how strong they are, and how determined they are to get outta that head chute.
- [Dean] On the eastern coast when they hear buffalo, first thing that pops in their mind is they're wild. Same way when they hear of Indians: "Hey, Indians are wild." And for sure, we are still wild. If you look at it in the sense that being close with Mother Earth, being close and understanding the plant nation, the rock nation, the elements, the creator, the directions, the spiritual realm... And then that seems to be the real tie-in with... The buffalo live it. The buffalo are it.
- There we go. See how it comes off? See that? See how it comes off like that? Okay, now, you see these lines right here? If you keep going the same way, you're gonna bust through 'em. Okay, what you gotta do is you gotta, instead of this way, just go sideways. Everything that was. What you wanna do is you wanna go straight in like. Here. Pop the hide. Long time ago. In that way, I mean, knowledge that we get from the environment, the respect that we give, the sacredness that we get from the environment. That's still here yet. You know, that's still here. I think there's... And once you get the hang. People always say, you know, that, culturally, we've lost a lot, and we have lost a lot culturally as far as our history, as far as our medicine bundles, as far as the songs and that type of thing, but that's still here. You know, I really believe that. 'Kay, it's like this. We can get it back by watching different things, for example, the buffalo, by watching the buffalo.
- [Gerard] Because when you look at buffalo, just like... We were at the buffalo pasture the other day. You can see they have this great social fabric. Just when they... When the hunter shot that buffalo, you know, you could see, all those other buffalo, they all looked and they wanted to do something, but then they realized, for the betterment of all those calves, they had to move that herd, so they moved it, and they all went together. They all went all the way round the pasture, and they all circled round, and they were standing there watching as their relative was being prepared, you know? So we were thinking about that. We said prayers about that, you know, regarding that, because of that beautiful instinctive social fabric that they have. The buffalo gave the people so much, long time ago, and that didn't stop. The buffalo can still offer that to people. We just have to pay attention to it. We just have to learn how to listen to it and learn how to accept what it's giving us.
- [Narrator] In 1990, members of the three affiliated tribes from Fort Berthold performed at the Smithsonian Folk Festival. They demonstrated the Mandan buffalo dance and other traditional arts of the northern plains.
- T S G I N D. So, we're gonna have a scouting song, a song that was dedicated to scouts, who were considered brave men and had long endurances, running.
- [Art] We believe that the Great Spirit exists everywhere, in all things, in all places, at all times. The Great Spirit exists in each one of us human beings, each one of us two-leggeds, all of the four-leggeds, everything that walks, crawls, swims, and flies. The Great Spirit is infinite. In that sense, then, we are related, since we are both creations of the Great Spirit, but even more so with the buffalo because the buffalo sacrifices his life in order that we might live.
- When the ancestors had , the buffalo dance, there was much pain, much suffering, much sacrifice, much prayers into a hunt that, when they actually got the carcass, the buffalo hide, the buffalo meat, it was held in reverence because so much was sacrificed to receive it, and when it was received, it was... There was a feeling there that not only does it sustain a body. It also sustains a spirit, and for sure, we've lost that. We've lost it today, but it always can be gained back if it's cultivated.
- , the grandfather, the great, the ancient one, his name was Inyan. That's the creator. Inyan, translated English, means rock, so that was the creator, and when he created everything, he used up all his power, shriveled up, and became hard, and that's why the rock is sacred. That's why the mountains are sacred. That's why the Earth is sacred, because this is , this is God, but people don't understand that. And everything's got a spirit. Buffalo spirits, plant spirits, bird spirits, eagle spirits, you know, all the spirit, everything's got a spirit: Earth, Mother Earth, mystic spirits of universe, stars. So that's why it's sacred, because it's God. You're walking right on God.
- Oh so long ago, during a hunt or during a warpath, when a warrior was wounded and he lost a whole amount of blood, they butchered a buffalo, and he drank the blood of this buffalo because the belief of the Lakota people is the blood of the buffalo is the same as the blood of the Lakota.
- [Gerard] That animal is not just an animal that we consider animal nowadays, but it has a spirit. It's alive. It has thought. It has feeling, and it has a wealth of information within itself to give to us.
- [Georgia] When you acknowledge the buffalo people; the wind ones, the ones who fly above; all animals. I've learned to see them in a different perspective in a spiritual sense. There's a spirit of life in everything, and when you acknowledge the spirit of the animals, the spirit of the tree people and Mother Earth and the universe, Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Son, everything is so meaningful, and to me, in that way that... I've learned to respect all things, and when I do that, it's acknowledging and respecting the creator even that much more.
- [Kevin] The most basic prayer in the Sioux language, or Lakota language, they say, . It can be said... It can stand on its own validity, or it can be used as the concluding part of a prayer, and what that means is all of my relations. It's affirming the fact that we exist because we're related to everything.
- I think that the Lakotas were and are... The purpose is guardians of the Earth and that the ecological swing that most of the world is forced to take a look at now can learn from our culture.
- [Georgia] The buffalo people have been survivors, and they've always been there for us, and they still stand among our people today, and they're giving us that certain strength, that inner strength, to carry on. And you know, they might be a small herd, but in time, they'll... That unity. They have a small unity together. And I could see that they can be teachers to us as people, to bring our people back together.
- When I look at the Black Hills, I see the farm of the buffalo. When you hear this videotape somewhere, think of the good things that happen in your life and think of who provided those things that have been good to you, and may those of you that read this small message take upon yourself the blessing of the Great Spirit. Thank you very much.
