For two days, a herd of life-size buffalo moved through the streets of New York City.
Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi, presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Walk Productions and KBH Arts, brought forty enormous buffalo puppets through Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn on September 18 and 19. The free public artwork combined puppetry with music, poetry, dance, and Indigenous ceremony. The project was created by Amir Nizar Zuabi in partnership with Elders from the Lenape and Lakota Nations.
The production also brought together an unusually broad group of performers and participants. As the buffalo traveled along routes that included sites of historic significance, actors, musicians, gospel choirs, dance companies, marching bands, and Tribal ceremonial groups performed in parks, plazas, and public squares. Featured artists include Sam Waterston, Susan Sarandon, Rosario Dawson, Laurie Anderson, Rhiannon Giddens, Nathalie Joachim and Talie Cerin, Davóne Tines & THE TRUTH, Dither, Resistance Revival Chorus, HONK Family Band, Caridad De La Luz, Daphne Rubin-Vega Cannupa Hanska Luger, Native Pride Dancers, Chaske Spencer, Pilobolus Dance Company, Fogo Azul marching band, Heather Christian and the Terce Choir, and Brooklyn United Marching Band.
The image was striking, a not-so-subtle reminder of the brutal history and parallels of the buffalo and Indigenous peoples.
American buffalo once numbered in the tens of millions and moved across vast stretches of the continent. Their near extinction wasn’t simply the result of commercial hunting. Government policies encouraged the destruction of the buffalo. As the herds disappeared, so did an essential source of food and material support for communities already facing military campaigns, land seizures, and forced removal. Some U.S. military leaders understood the connection between the buffalo and Native resistance, making their destruction part of a broader effort to break the ability of Plains Nations to remain on their lands and maintain their independence.
The result was catastrophic population loss and the fragmentation of communities that had existed for generations. By the late 19th century, only a small number of wild buffalo remained.
Since then, Native Nations and Indigenous-led organizations have spent decades rebuilding buffalo herds and restoring the land and traditions connected to them. The Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative in Wyoming is working to return buffalo to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho communities through herd restoration, land rematriation, and youth education. In South Dakota, the Knife Chief Buffalo Nation Society maintains a herd near Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to support Lakota cultural practices, ceremony, and food sovereignty.
Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi brings that ongoing work into a setting far removed from the reservations and grasslands where much of it takes place, placing buffalo in the middle of New York City.
The production made a history many people know only in fragments impossible to miss. Free and open to the public, the procession reached people who might not otherwise seek out Indigenous history or buffalo restoration. For those who stopped to watch, the spectacle could also raise questions about how the buffalo nearly disappeared and why Native nations are working to bring them back.
A performance can’t change history, but it can change what people notice. For a few hours, the Indigenous history and buffalo weren’t confined to museums, textbooks, or historical photographs. They moved through New York’s streets, giving an old story presence in the present.
Once the procession ended, the city moved on. The hope is that some of those who watched carried the story with them.
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