After More Than 20 Years, Healthy Bison Herd on Yakama Reservation a Point of Pride

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In his work with bison, it takes a lot to rattle Darwin Sockzehigh.

"I'm backing up," he said calmly as a cow and her calf came thundering toward his truck.

Sockzehigh occasionally uses the big flatbed pickup to herd the bison he oversees in his role as a wildlife technician for Yakama Nation Wildlife Resource Management. But he wasn't going to get in the way of the pair that had become separated from the others as they moved through a gap from one pasture to another.

Especially this mother, who looked particularly tough. Massive and shaggy with one horn askew, she cast a baleful look back as she and her calf slowed to a walk in the distance.

"They're in pretty good shape right now," Sockzehigh said of the 125 adult bison, along with a dozen or so calves and yearlings owned by the Yakama Nation, noting they sold 19 to tribal members in March to thin out the herd and reduce the number of bulls.

Bison have roamed this Yakama Nation reserve near Satus Longhouse Road since 1995 after returning to Yakama Nation lands in 1991, when the tribe bought about a dozen from a member who had raised them.

"It was a hobby," Sockzehigh said. "It's an expensive hobby. A lot of work, too."

His job with the bison began in May, but Sockzehigh had extensive experience around America's national mammal, having helped his predecessor.

He, Francis Piel and Casey Heemsah see themselves as stewards of the herd. They monitor the bison but are mostly hands-off, getting close only when necessary. That could mean vaccinations or helping as needed.

The bison are content with their home but have roamed from previous sites.

"The first or second year, they broke through the fence," said Carol Craig, a reporter and photographer for the Yakama Nation Review who arranged the recent visit with the bison and their caretakers.

About seven years ago, some of the bison got out and headed to Granger. Sockzehigh brought them back with the help of his dogs.

"As one bison rancher told me, bison are really good at being wherever they want to be," said Ken Zontek, author of "Buffalo Nation: American Indian Efforts to Restore the Bison."

"If they want to go somewhere, they're going," he added.

Brink of extinction

A history professor at Yakima Valley College, Zontek specializes in the North American West and its environment. His book highlights efforts of Native Americans, beginning in the 1870s, to establish captive breeding programs as bison teetered on the brink of extinction amid relentless overhunting and decimation by diseases from domestic cattle. It also focuses on the more recent work of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, known as the Intertribal Bison Cooperative when Zontek's book was published in 2007.

Based in South Dakota, the nonprofit involves 63 tribes in 19 states. Its mission is to restore bison to Indian Country in order to preserve the historical, cultural, traditional and spiritual relationship for future generations, according to its website.

"Having an organization gave them a lot more pull in Washington, D.C.," Zontek said of tribes that had previously worked independently to re-establish herds. "No organization is perfect, but it's worked pretty well for more than a quarter of a century."

The Yakama Nation is among three member tribes in Washington state, along with the Stillaguamish and Kalispel tribes.

"It's my understanding with the ITBC people, they're pretty happy with the Yakama effort," Zontek said.

Known as Tsoo-thlum in Ichishkíin—the language spoken by the Yakama people in Washington, Oregon and Idaho —bison roamed the Northwest when tens of millions lived in North America in the early 19th century.

"They were in the Northwest. ... They were here, but not in the numbers like the Plains," he said. "It was really a matter of recolonization after the Ice Age and that takes time, and it wasn't the best habitat."

Archaeological records show that prehistorically, people of the intermountain West and Pacific Northwest harvested bison when they could, Zontek notes in his book. Historical records more clearly quantify some of those archaeological details.

"Were the Yakama buffalo people? Yes, as were the Kalispel, as were the Spokane, as were other nations on the east side, the Plateau side," Zontek said. "The Klickitats, they probably were as well.



"Those people that were horsed, they would go over to the east side of the Rockies and hunt bison. It's pretty safe to say there were Yakamas who did that."

And as one of the great Native regional trade centers of North America, today's city of The Dalles, Ore., was salmon-centered, "but you would have had people there getting ahold of bison leather or food, pemmican, jerky," Zontek said.

Bison contribute to Native wellbeing in multiple ways. Along with their cultural importance, bison meat is given to elders and distributed through the Yakama Nation Diabetes Program. It's leaner than beef, low in fat and high in protein.

"It's just delicious. ... I don't even season it," Craig said. "And it's tender. My mother loved it."

Restoration is personal

An estimated 20 to 30 million bison lived in North America in the 1500s, according to a timeline of the American bison compiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for information about the National Bison Range. They roamed from coast to coast, far into northern Canada and south into modern-day Mexico, according to a map in Zontek's book.

About 500,000 bison live in North America today, the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife says on its website. But it also notes that many are not pure wild bison, having been cross-bred with cattle in the past or raised as semi-domesticated livestock.

Fewer than 30,000 wild bison are in conservation herds, according to Defenders of Wildlife. Members of the InterTribal Buffalo Council manage a collective herd of about 20,000 bison, and not all tribes have bison, Zontek said.

Restoration of bison to traditional lands isn't about numbers, he stressed. It's more personal than that. For many, it's respect for the species.

Nor is it about money. The bison are precious in other ways.

"For the most part economics are not the primary reason. It's more about what they mean to the people," Zontek said. "That's why the numbers aren't the big issue. It's more about having the bison and propagating bison."

The Yakama Nation herd topped out around 200, "but there was hardly any land to sustain that much," Sockzehigh said.

The bison roam about 200 acres and add to their population every spring with around a dozen newborn calves. They range in age up to an old bull —identifiable by a long-healed wound in his side where he was gored—who was a youngster at the herd's previous location in 1995. Bison can live 35 to 40 years.

"They're just grazing right now. When winter comes along, we might give them a supplement," Sockzehigh said. "We're going to start rotating them from pasture to pasture after we get that hay off. We'll try to do that today."

The bison were quiet as some grazed, tails swishing. Occasionally one took a break to roll in a wallow, churning up impressive clouds of dust.

"They're not dumb. They're not lazy, just stolid. They're firm on the ground," Zontek said. "They do communicate; they're not real vocal" (except during rut).

And while the herd's biggest bull "was over a ton, easy," Sockzehigh said, it likely wasn't among the leaders. Bison are social animals that follow a matriarch.

"For the most part they'll go where the family goes. Even a bigger herd (has) smaller groups coordinated together, wherever the matriarch goes," Zontek said. "Those social associations are very important to them, to maintain those."

Bison are highly transient, moving a lot, "anywhere where it's kind of wild," Zontek said. "They take a bite, take a step, take a bite, take a step. That adds up after a while."

Despite that, and the fact they can lope along for miles and easily outrun humans, bison won't overrun the region, he stressed.

"If you have the (right) conditions set up for them, they'll respect that. You're not going to have buffalo running amok," Zontek said.

With slow and sustained growth in terms of numbers and acreage, the effort to restore bison is clearly working, Zontek said.

"In terms of nations involved, it's a success story that's going to take a lot of work to continue to move in that direction," he said.