The Narwhal: Travelling the Buffalo road: Indigenous nations are “rematriating” bison to the prairies

Millions of bison once roamed the grasslands of North America, until colonialism nearly wiped them out. Writer Kayla MacInnis describes how several First Nations are reintroducing bison and restoring balance to their homelands.

February 5, 2026

“My Métis ancestors hunted and lived relationally with Buffalo,” writes Kayla, “and I can envision how the prairies must have looked hundreds of years ago when millions roamed freely from Alaska’s boreal forests to the western grasslands of Mexico, across the continent from Banff to the eastern Appalachian Mountains. Then colonizers nearly wiped them out, part of a deliberate genocidal effort to starve the Indigenous nations of the plains.”