Wild bison could be classified as big game wildlife in Colorado at the request of some Native communities. Legislation currently before state lawmakers would give the animal more protection, making it largely illegal to hunt or poach them.
“These are more than just animals. They're kin, providers, a cornerstone of our very existence,” Andrew Gallegos, a member of the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council, said in his testimony at the Colorado State Capitol late last week.
Under SB25-053, Colorado would put wild bison into the same category as other large wild mammals like bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk. State lawmakers voted on party lines to advance the Democratic bill at its first committee hearing. Bison are sacred to some tribes, including the Cheyenne. Lewis TallBull, who was representing Sacred Return Indigenous Restoration Initiative, testified about their importance historically, before white settlers nearly eradicated them and destroyed their habitat.
“Everything we needed for life came from the buffalo's body,” he said. “It was hard to say where the animals ended and where the human began and with every dead buffalo was a dead Indian.”
Democratic Senator Jessie Danielson, one of the bill’s main sponsors, said the killing of wild bison is not “a very prevalent problem” currently, as wild bison or buffalo have a small footprint in Colorado. But the animals sometimes enter from neighboring states, where they are protected, crossing “an imaginary line that puts them in Colorado, and they're being poached.”
“This is something that we should just do what we can to stop… I don't want to mislead anybody. It's a few head a year, if that, I understand. But this is a really important animal to the state of Colorado, our history, our cultural background,” Danielson said.
There have been efforts across the U.S. in recent years to repopulate bison herds, recognizing the legacy of the federally sanctioned campaign to kill them off as a way to drive Indigenous people onto reservations and gut their cultures. Several of those who testified, including TallBull, reminded lawmakers of that history.
“To me, the bison is a victim, a survivor of genocide,” he said.
An amendment to the bill added language to acknowledge the U.S. government’s role in the “wasteful and inhumane” operation to mass exterminate the bison, declaring it “a calculated effort to undermine the cultural and physical survival of indigenous peoples.”
This legislation to protect the animals from poaching came from the work of a committee designed to pair Indigenous advocates with state lawmakers. The American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee was formed last April with the goal of raising the needs and concerns of Native communities more directly with the legislature.
The bill wouldn’t apply to bison that are already considered to be livestock by the state, including herds owned by tribes, or those authorized by the rule of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife. However, as testimony tipped toward CPW’s management of the animal and speculation on what that might look like if a wild bison population is re-established in the state, some asked for lawmakers to not overcomplicate this issue.
Monycka Snowbird, who was involved in the formation of the study committee, said she wants the focus to stay on unregulated poaching of the bison that cross into Colorado and not to try to cover possible future scenarios.
“Many in the Native community are not in favor of this being a way that a hunting license can be sold for a bison,” she said. “I don't know how we've gotten so far over here on something that should just be ‘no unregulated poaching.’ They're here. They go home. We don't kill them in that process.”
