Name: Bring Them Home / Aiskótáhkapiyaaya
Start: 2024-10-11T17:15:00-07:00
Location: 606 Fawcett Ave, Tacoma, WA, United States, Washington 98402

$Bring Them Home \/ Aisk\u00f3t\u00e1hkapiyaaya$

Bring Them Home/Aiskótáhkapiyaaya chronicles a decades-long initiative by members of the Blackfoot Confederacy to bring wild buffalo (Blackfeet: iinnii) back to the Blackfeet Reservation. A thriving wild buffalo population would not only reconnect Blackfeet with a central part of their heritage, spirituality and identity, but would provide economic opportunities and healing for the community. Along the way, however, the initiative faces obstacles from ranchers who see the buffalo as a threat to the cattle ranches that dominate the land and are a legacy of colonization.
Bring Them Home examines the deeply meaningful role that buffalo played in Blackfeet life prior to the arrival of settlers who nearly eradicated wild buffalo in an effort to eradicate the Blackfeet people. For Blackfeet, the buffalo are seen not only as fundamental to a healthy ecosystem, but as spiritual relatives. Their removal from the land meant the loss of the Blackfeet way of life, the trauma of which still reverberates today.