Giving a voice to the North American buffalo

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This article was published 14/09/2024 (749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — In 2016, Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard was at work on her documentary Singing Back the Buffalo. She was chasing a longtime dream to explore the subject of the bison that once roamed all over North America in herds of tens of millions until the late 19th century when they were slaughtered almost to the point of extinction.

An associate professor in the faculty of native studies and department of English and film at the University of Alberta, Hubbard had written a dissertation on buffalo consciousness and the subject was near and dear to her heart.

But the documentary was interrupted with the 2016 death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man who was shot by Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley. Hubbard explored the incident, and Stanley’s subsequent acquittal, in her 2019 film nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up.

“When I heard about Colten, I asked the buffalo to pause and wait and be patient,” Hubbard says during a coffee shop conversation in April when the film premièred at Hot Docs in Toronto.

“I had to do this other film that was urgent, and I needed to tell it.”

Hubbard says after We Will Stand Up was released, she was approached to tell similar types of stories, but felt she didn’t have it in her.

“My family actually came to me and said, ‘You’re telling these really important stories, but they’re all hard stories.’ They said, ‘You need to bring some balance back and make something that brings you joy.’”

That was when Hubbard resolved to “go back and tell my Buffalo story.”

“There are still hard elements,” Hubbard admits.

Singing Back the Buffalo is about the “rematriation” of buffalo herds back into North America. It captures the beauty of the buffalo and the majestic plains into which the herds are being reintroduced, but yes, it does take on the tough subjects.

“I will say my work fundamentally is about injustice. I can look at my body of work, every single one, and whether it’s a different approach, or I’m using a different form of filmmaking, that’s what they’re about.” Hubbard says.

“And this one is no different. We tend to think of justice and injustice only pertaining to human beings, and ultimately, what this film is about (is): What does justice for the buffalo mean?”

The parallel between Indigenous peoples and the buffalo is such that Hubbard uses the term “genocide” to describe the buffalo’s fate.

“Humans aren’t the only people, from an Indigenous perspective. We can think of it that way in the strategic destruction of buffalo … people forget that the destruction of the buffalo was an attack on us as much as it was also an attack on them,” the filmmaker says.

She points out that the same kind of injustices that have been perpetrated on Indigenous people have also been perpetrated on the bison — “their lack of freedom, their lack of agency, their lack of territory, the loss of body sovereignty.”

That awareness permeates the film, but Hubbard also interlaces it with scenes of stunning natural beauty and hope for a world in which natural balance is restored.

“You have to feel joy,” Hubbard says. “That’s a big teaching that I’ve had in the last five years. We need to work to undo injustice. We need to go to the dark places and expose them.

“But part of our human experience is to have those moments of joy and beauty. It’s what sustains us to keep doing that other work.”

After the 7 p.m. screening tonight, the Winnipeg Indigenous Filmmakers Collective will present a conversation about the film with director-mentee Charlene Moore and local filmmaker Amanda Kindzierski.

arts@freepress.mb.ca