BRINGING BACK THE BUFFALO
In 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, Lucille Contreras stood in the grass of a property between San Antonio and Houston and breathed in the fresh air. She imagined the millions of buffalo that had once passed over this very land. This was the spot, she thought to herself.
After years spent away from Texas, where she was born, Contreras was excited to come home — and it was a homecoming for more than just her. On the 77 acres of land, which she bought shortly after she first saw it, Contreras has provided a home for around 20 bison (also called buffalo or the Lipan Apache word, Iyanee’), an animal that roamed the area for thousands of years.
As a member of the Lipan Apache tribe, Contreras feels an ancestral tie to the animals.
“The buffalo are everything — our home, our spirituality, medicine, food, shelter — really everything,” says Contreras. “The buffalo survived near-extinction, but so did the Texas Indigenous people. They are really very parallel lives and destinies.”
Contreras’ acreage outside Waelder is the home base of her nonprofit organization, the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project. The project aims to reconnect Native Americans with the buffalo through meeting the animals, learning about them and interacting with them as their ancestors once did.
Contreras first decided she wanted to bring back buffalo after working with the animals at the Knife Chief Buffalo Nation Society in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
“Spending time with the buffalo really provided a sense of healing and calmness that I had never experienced before aside from riding a horse,” says Contreras. “I felt that if I feel this way, how amazing would it be for other people? What they will feel, the other Indigenous people of Texas? We have been separated from the buffalo as Native people in Texas for so long.”
The project started with nine buffalo and a USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher loan. The Nature Conservancy donated five more animals; then more came from an anonymous donor. Soon, Contreras had 20 buffalo on her 77-acre property.
Contreras connects Native children with the buffalo through youth camps and events. She finds attendees by partnering with various organizations such as Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, Fuerza Unida and Circles in Da Hood. At her camps, the students learn outdoor skills such as fishing or how to humanely harvest a meat rabbit; they also get to interact with the bison and spend time in nature.
“They get a chance to reconnect and be on the land and be able to not worry about technology or violence and or possible dangerous situations,” she says. “It’s great [for them] to be able to just be here and be kids and run and have fun and play, as well as learn about their culture and their history.”
The Texas Tribal Buffalo Project also sells buffalo products such as frozen meat, providing local communities with a traditional food staple. Recently they partnered with a local school district, Florence ISD, to provide meat for school lunches.
Contreras’ work to connect Native people with their buffalo history is a healing practice for people and buffalo alike.
“The destruction and the slaughter of the great buffalo herds was a direct result of wanting to acquire land that Indigenous people lived on,” she says. “Certainly there are other buffalo ranches and caretakers in Texas, but none that I know of that are coming from a point of view of Indigenous restoration of land and communities in Texas, based on the relationship that Texas Indigenous people once had with the buffalo.”
