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Bison have sustained many Native American tribes for centuries as a source of food, clothing and tools. Now, Haskell Indian Nations University is sharing the bison’s deep cultural significance with the general public through a harvest workshop and community meal.
The harvest workshop Saturday featured ceremonies led by the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho (CNA) Tribes, who donated the two bison for the event. The crowd watched and some assisted as experts broke down each animal: removing the head, opening up the belly, removing the hide and splitting the rib cage.
As Native attendees prayed, burned sage and told stories around the bodies, the importance of traditional foodways came into focus.
“As Indigenous individuals, part of who we are and what we’re taught is connection to all living creatures,” says Rachael Lackey, Cherokee Nation, coordinator of Haskell’s U.S. Department of Agriculture Extension Program. “These workshops are important because they’re a hands-on demonstration of how we come together to honor these animals’ lives and take part in the nourishment that they’ve sacrificed for us. It’s all viewed as a ceremony, from start to finish.”
The bison cookout is a free event that’s open to the public, to be held from 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22 at the Haskell Powwow Grounds, 2535 West Perimeter Road.
Community members and professional chefs will use a large smoker and open pits to cook dishes made with the bison meat that was harvested Saturday. They will be served with non-meat sides like homemade fry bread and tortillas. Chef Jason Champagne, Red Lake Band of Chippewa, owner of Native Chef LLC in Eudora, will cook wild rice. Chef Anthony Warrior, Absentee Shawnee, will prepare soups and other dishes with pumpkin and squash.
Rather than transporting bison to slaughter, field-harvesting bison allows for a more peaceful end-of-life transition and encompasses the collection of all the animal’s parts.
Part of Sunday’s programming includes a hands-on workshop at 9 a.m. where people can help frame, stretch and tan the hides. The bison’s skulls and processed hides will be returned to the CNA Tribes for preservation, then sent back to Haskell to be put on display.
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Harvesting the meat is a community effort, involving people such as Lee Meisel, Standing Rock Sioux, owner of Leeway Butcher. As a Native butcher, he finds these types of projects bring people together in a powerful way. That’s why he founded the Wakarusa Native Foodways initiative, which preserves Indigenous food knowledge through education.
“It’s becoming more of a national trend to explore the concepts of Indigenous food systems, so being able to introduce that to the Lawrence community firsthand is a really cool thing,” Meisel says. “It’s amazing that Haskell can fund these educational programs and invite the public in to see what it’s all about. I think it’s great that we’re harvesting in a respectful way and inviting members of the public to share our table with us.”
Mackie Moore, dean of Haskell’s School of Business, has been a major player in securing grant funding for many of these programs, as well as launching a new agriculture business degree program at the school. These initiatives are helping to raise awareness about local food systems and Native food sovereignty.
“Many Natives and non-Natives across the country have reached out to us, interested in the programming that’s going on here this weekend,” Moore says. “This is turning into something much bigger. Now we have other tribes wanting to do this, to come and teach their ways.”
One of the organizations that reached out to Haskell was the Intertribal Buffalo Council. Since 1993, this organization has been working with tribes across the country to support their tribal bison programs.
Thomas Peters, Meskwaki Nation, technical services assistant for the ITBC, helps run the mobile harvest trailer that was used to process the bison Saturday.
“Especially for Plains tribes, bison were a major part of their livelihoods, and with almost complete eradication now, they’ve lost that,” Peters says. “We’re working to bring that back and teach people how to care for them.”
This restoration work is critical to allowing tribes to continue their traditional foodways. The population of American bison has declined dramatically since the 1800s, when American bison were slaughtered at a rate that reduced their populations from the millions to just a few hundred, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
“This workshop is sharing our culture with the community and educating our students and the public,” Moore says. “Haskell has 140 different tribes represented on campus. There are differences for each of those tribes, including our ceremonies when it comes to things like harvesting bison. So much of our teaching is in the classroom, but this gets people out, which is an important part of who we are.”
Many attendees were parents with their young children in tow, including Kelly Beym, Navajo Nation, a doctoral student in geography at KU whose research focuses on Indigenous agriculture. She says that many Native residents of Lawrence are in an urban setting, which can make it difficult to practice their traditions and cultural teachings, but these types of events make that connection more accessible.
“The tribe that donated the bison is my kid’s father’s side, so it was important I brought my son out today. I want him to know that this bison is a relative of his and has been raised with other relatives of his in Concho, Oklahoma,” Beym says. “You can see all the youth around here. This is an opportunity to teach them how to harvest respectfully, be in reciprocity with these animals and give back for generations to come.”
Stay up-to-date with Sunday’s bison cookout on the Facebook event page.
Click to reveal more photos of the harvest and processing
Jordan Winter (she/her), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since August 2021, is a 2019 KU grad with degrees in journalism and political science.
Check out her work at jrdnwntr.com. See more of her work for the Times here.
Molly Adams (she/her), photojournalist and news operations coordinator for The Lawrence Times, can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com. Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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