Land Acknowledgement

When the buffalo were nearly driven to extinction in the 1800s, a deep wound was inflicted upon our people. The Wabasca Herd represents one of the last remnants of this ancient relationship that has sustained us for generations. Indigenous peoples have a long-standing cultural and spiritual relationship with the Buffalo. In the early 1800s, there were estimated to be over 60 million Buffalo in North America. By the late 1800s, there were estimated to be less than two thousand. Starving the Indigenous peoples was a tool used by governments to subdue them to sign Treaties. 

General Philip Sheridan, who assumed the task of subduing Indigenous culture, said, “We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war."

In the 1990s, Indigenous leadership, such as Chief Johnsen Sewepagaham, voiced Indigenous people’s opinion that the government’s justification for killing the Wood Buffalo was rather for land-use objectives.

Not even 20 years later, the Alberta Provincial government slaughtered 24 of 40 members of the Wabasca Wood Buffalo herd to “test for disease”... No disease was found. This is a testament to the lack of care and awareness that currently exists regarding this vulnerable buffalo herd; over history, we repeatedly see examples of how Indigenous voices are overlooked and dismissed. 

Our knowledge, language and traditions are tied to these lands and to the buffalo who share them with us. Allowing industrial exploration and exploitation of the land in this sacred space would further break our connection, bringing irreparable harm to our culture and the identity of our people. Not to mention the threat of extinction that hovers over the Wabasca Wood Buffalo.