The bison are back—and they’re helping to restore Métis Nation culture

Throughout the 19th century, in spring and fall, members of the Métis Nation would gather in the North Saskatchewan River Valley in their thousands to hunt abundant bison—also known as buffalo, or “lii bufloo” in Michif, the language of the Métis.

By the end of the century however, European settlers had hunted those bison to near-extinction. But this morning, the group, largely made up of Métis community leaders and Elders, have gathered to welcome them back to their natural environment.

RELATED: From ‘unwanted’ relics to tourist attractions: Can travelers help save Canada’s only reindeer herd?

Bringing bison back to the Métis homeland was the realization of a dream, says Juanita Marois, who stands watching on the edge of the paddock.

“Buffalo are the foundation of our independence. We learned from them. We governed through them. And that’s how we plan to move forward.” The Métis were once landless, she adds. “Now that we have a piece of land through Métis Crossing, putting the buffalo back on that land is a symbol of our resilience and our strength.”

Marois is the CEO of Métis Crossing, a cultural interpretive center an hour and half north of Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta. The center celebrates the culture and history of the Métis, who are of mixed First Nation and European ancestry, and one of the three recognized Indigenous peoples in Canada, along with First Nations and Inuit.

Here, visitors can immerse themselves in Métis culture through guided experiences and traditional workshops. The day before, I had learned to tuft with Elder Lilyrose, followed in the paddle strokes of Métis voyageurs by canoeing the North Saskatchewan River, and spent the night in a trapper tent set on the edge of the river where I listened to coyotes howling through the night.

For Marois, bringing light to this history is a way of dispelling harmful stereotypes that have long been told about Indigenous people. “Those weren’t savages,” she tells us. “Those were organized people.”

As well as the wood bison, the Plains bison, rare white bison, elk and Percheron horses now roam freely in separate paddocks in the center’s new wildlife park, named Visions, Hopes and Dreams.

The center has welcomed summer visitors since it opened in 2005, but the bison release marked its expansion into a year-round destination. Once again, bison are building economic resilience in the community.

“The bison are so important to us,” says Marois, speaking to the group afterward at the opening ceremony in Métis Crossing’s newly-built Cultural Gathering Center. “They came to us, first as a source of food and then we built them into the source of our economic activity.”

The Métis used dried buffalo meat to create pemmican and shipped it to fur trading posts in the north. This trade was a major factor in the emergence of a distinct Métis society and, said Marois, “foundational to us as we developed an economic system.”

RELATED: Reconnecting with my Indigenous ancestry, one conversation at a time

Moreover, the rules of the buffalo hunts formed the basis of Métis democratic and judicial systems, which helped to establish the Métis as a Nation. At the beginning of each hunt, there would be an election of a Buffalo Council, which would establish rules or laws that were agreed upon by the entire community, creating one of the earliest forms of direct democracy in North America.

The Laws of the Hunt, I’d read earlier that morning, in The North-West is Our Mother by Jean Teillet, was “an institution built on everything the Métis cherished—freedom, mobility, democracy, the family and the hunt.”

For Marois, bringing light to this history is a way of dispelling harmful stereotypes that have long been told about Indigenous people. “Those weren’t savages,” she tells us. “Those were organized people.”

“That’s part of who we are as a Nation. We weren’t given things from other people. We were separated from the Europeans and separated from the First Nations, We created our own Nation, and it’s a sign of our independence and entrepreneurial spirit.”

- Juanita Marois, Métis Crossing

The animals’ reintroduction on Métis lands occurs while Canada is grappling with its complex relationship with Indigenous peoples. In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set out to investigate residential schools—which took more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities—and to forge a path toward mutual respect and understanding.

Addressing the crowd, Marois says that the opening of the wildlife park in partnership with a non-Indigenous partner—the rancher, Len Hrehorets—demonstrates “reconciliation in action.”

Bison were part of the very earliest plans for Métis Crossing “as a foundational part of the story that we share about who we are as a Nation,” Marois explains to me afterward when I ask her what she means. “But we didn’t have knowledge of how to raise buffalo at the time. Len wanted to share his buffalo with the world, but knew nothing about the visitor economy. So we’ve both brought very important pieces to this partnership.”

She adds: “Reconciliation to us is the everyday actions. It’s about the political acknowledgement, but it’s also about Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and businesses working together to create a better reality.”

Earlier, in the Cultural Gathering Center, Audrey Poitras, Métis Nation of Alberta President, had expressed a similar sentiment. “We’ve achieved this together,” she said. “Visions, Hopes and Dreams is better that it could ever be with only one of us.”

This inter-cultural collaboration echoes the Indigenous framework of “two-eyed seeing,” which Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall described as “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together for the benefit of all.”

I had been introduced to the concept by Joe Urie, owner of Jasper Tour Company, as we drove from Edmonton to Métis Crossing. He told me that, to him, two-eyed seeing “is Métis culture personified. Because we have both of those eyes; we have one foot in either camp.”

The wildlife park is just one part of Métis Crossing’s expansion. It will open a new 40-room lodge this winter and add snowshoeing, stargazing programming, and cross-country ski trails. The center needed these “international-level draws, like the buffalo experience,” in order to meet its goal of achieving financial self-sufficiency, says Marois.

“That’s part of who we are as a Nation. We weren’t given things from other people. We were separated from the Europeans and separated from the First Nations, We created our own Nation, and it’s a sign of our independence and entrepreneurial spirit.”

That self-sufficiency allows us “to bring our own people here,” Marois tells me of the Métis people who visit to connect with their culture and the educational school trips they host from across the province. “Métis Crossing is about our people wanting to share ourselves with others, and also use all of that to continue to rebuild our Nation.”