Name: Birds, Bison and Belonging
Start: 2026-05-27T00:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-05-30T00:00:00-07:00
Location: Jackson Hole, Wyoming

This spring, BYNP has the honor of speaking at the Jackson Hole Birding Festival—My talk is titled Birds, Bison, and Belonging.
See you there! May 27th -30th https://www.jacksonholebirdingfestival.com/
Lisa Ansell Frazier presents The Return of Life: Birds, Bison, and Belonging:
The return of life is interconnected. When bison return to the prairie, birds return to the sky. When food systems heal, culture follows. When relationship is restored, belonging emerges.
In this program, Indigenous leader Lisa Marie Ansell Frazier invites us into a living story of restoration—one rooted in relationship rather than control. Drawing from Indigenous ecological knowledge, seventh-generation responsibility, and hands-on bison restoration work, she explores how birds serve as living indicators of prairie health and how the return of buffalo signals the renewal of land, food systems, culture, and community.
Through the lens of the Buffalo Youth Nation Project, Lisa reflects on the deep interdependence between birds, bison, people, and place. She reframes conservation as an act of remembrance: remembering who we are in relationship to the land, and who the land is to us. This conversation illuminates how true restoration is not only ecological but cultural and spiritual—restoring balance, nourishment, and belonging for future generations.
About the Speaker:
Lisa Marie Ansell Frazier is an Indigenous nonprofit director and founder of the Buffalo Youth Nation Project, a Native-led organization dedicated to food sovereignty, youth nourishment, cultural restoration, and the return of bison. Her work centers on rebuilding reciprocal relationships between land, animals, and community through bison herd restoration, community food programs, and culturally rooted education. Guided by Indigenous stewardship practices, Lisa’s holistic approach to conservation recognizes that when the buffalo return, so too do the birds, medicines, balance, and a renewed sense of belonging