(Above: An excited crowd watches a herd of bison launch out of the trailer onto their new home on the Pine Ridge Reservation, SD) Today, Village Earth released it’s 3rd “seed herd” of Bison on the Pine Ridge Reservation! The bison came from the Danylchuck ranch in Rye Colorado as part Village Earth’s Adopt-A-Buffalo program and were released onto the Brave Heart’s land 5 miles west of Pine Ridge village. Village Earth has been working with the Brave Heart family since February of this year to prepare their land, fencing, and water resources for the arrival of the bison.
Despite the cold and rain, over 30 people from across the reservation came out the Brave Heart’s land for the release which included prayers, songs and stories about the buffalo, and a talk by Basil and Bob Brave Heart about the importance of reclaiming the land, restoring the ecology of the great plains, and the importance of the buffalo for the Lakota people.
On Friday night, prior to the release, the Brave Heart Singers performed at a dinner event at the Historic Arkansas River Project in downtown Pueblo, Colorado to celebrate the pickup of the buffalo and to honor the Danylchuck family for the bison.
The buffalo were rounded up and corralled on a sunny day in Rye Colorado and followed by picnik provided by the Danylchucks.
A HUGE Thank You and Was Te! Goes out to Henry Red Cloud and Bret Tsacher (of the Lone Buffalo Project), John “the Worm Man” Anderson, and Bryan Deans (of Butte Bio Fuels), and Ralf Kracke-Berndorf for their help in ensuring that the buffalo were delivered safely to Pine Ridge in time for the scheduled release.

GSLL 1514 – Challenges and Opportunities of Utilizing Traditional Knowledge in Climate Adaptation
This class will explore key concepts of resilience, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and social capital in the context of community exposure to climate change. We will engage in critical analysis of tools and methods for building resilience to climate change and will look at several case studies from around the world.