How wiping out buffalo was a strategy to bring Indigenous people under colonizer control

CBC

06-03-2025

In the 16th century, it's believed that between 25 and 30 million wild buffalo lived across North America. By 1890, according to some estimates, those once-great herds dwindled to fewer than 300 animals.
During the industrial age, buffalo were a valuable commodity — their bones became fine china and fertilizer, while their hide became military boots and machine belts. Diseases passed on from cattle also contributed to their rapid decline.
But the actions of governments and the military were also a key factor in the removal of the buffalo from the land, says Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard in the video above, an extended clip from Singing Back the Buffalo, a documentary from The Nature of Things.
Indigenous people depended on the buffalo for food and vital materials. Without them, people starved and became dependent on the colonizers. "It was genocide of the Buffalo people, done to clear us both off the land and replace us with cattle and settlers," she says.
In Singing Back the Buffalo, Hubbard delves into the history of the buffalo in North America, how their eradication affected the Indigenous groups that relied on them, and how Indigenous nations including the Blackfeet, Kainai (Blood Tribe) and Siksika Nations are working to return the buffalo to their ancestral territories through the unique Buffalo Treaty.
The video above outlines the history of the buffalo hunt and how the Indigenous Peoples of North America's Great Plains experienced trauma, genocide and loss of independence.
"We stopped singing when the buffalo were gone," Hubbard says in the clip. "But our stories and prophecies say the buffalo will come back to us one day."