{"id":38103,"date":"2024-07-01T13:24:19","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T17:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=38103"},"modified":"2024-07-02T10:24:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:24:48","slug":"cronkite-news-bill-returns-bison-to-tribal-homelands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2024\/07\/01\/cronkite-news-bill-returns-bison-to-tribal-homelands\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronkite News: Bill returns bison to tribal homelands"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Buffalo\"<\/a>
A buffalo resting in Custer State Park South Dakota in September 2020. Photo by Brianna Chappie \/ Cronkite News<\/figcaption>\r\n
Where the buffalo roamed: Bill would return herds to ancestral Native American lands<\/div>\r\n
Monday, July 1, 2024<\/div>\r\n
By Brianna Chappie<\/div>\r\n
Cronkite News<\/DIV>\r\n
cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A><\/DIV>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C — Buffalo are so iconic, Congress designated them as the national mammal in 2016. Native American oral histories estimate that 30 to 60 million<\/a> once roamed the plains.

<\/P>\r\nAfter nearly going extinct, the shaggy beasts are making a comeback and soon, many could find themselves on reservations where their kind hasn\u2019t set hoof in decades.

<\/P>\r\nA bipartisan bill<\/a> pending in Congress would pay to relocate some of the 20,500 buffalo from public lands across the West and Midwest to reservation lands that were historically part of the animals\u2019 range<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n \r\nBy the early 1900s, fewer than a thousand remained. The latest headcount is roughly 440,000 nationwide, mostly in commercial herds, according to the Interior Department. Over 4,000 wild buffalo<\/a> live in Yellowstone National Park.

<\/P>\r\nSupport for moving some back to their ancestral lands shows signs of growing since the late Rep. Don Young<\/a>, an Alaska Republican, proposed it in 2021<\/a>. The House approved the measure 373-52 in late 2021 but it died in the Senate.

<\/P>\r\nSen. Markwayne Mullin<\/a>, R-Okla., the only Native American in the Senate, is leading a new push<\/a> with Sen. Martin Heinrich<\/a>, D-N.M.

<\/P>\r\nThe bill would ensure that Native Americans \u201ccontinue reconnecting with a keystone of their historic culture and way of life,\u201d Mullin said in a press release announcing<\/a> the measure.

<\/P>\r\nBuffalo are actually a species of bison<\/a>. The terms are interchangeable in the United States, where French fur trappers began calling them \u201cboeuf\u201d (beef)<\/a> in the 1600s and the name stuck.

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