Buffalo First

Buffalo First is a nonprofit founded by the DuBray family.  We have raised Buffalo on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota for the past 36 years.  Fred DuBray was instrumental in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe increasing its focus on Buffalo back in the early 1990s growing the herd from 78 to 4,500 during his leadership of Pte Hca Ka, Inc, the Tribal Buffalo Corporation he directed from 1990 through 2005.  It was at that time he brought together other Tribes and founded the InterTribal Bison Cooperative.  The focus has been on Buffalo restoration, which has been largely successful for the past few decades.  In 2006, the focus of the DuBray family became their private Buffalo herd which they raise with minimal management allowing the Buffalo to roam and be Buffalo.

Released in 2020, the documentary Gather produced by First Nations Development Institute featured Fred and Elsie DuBray as Buffalo caretakers.  The work of the family with Buffalo was recognized and highlighted as one of the food sovereignty efforts by Native people across the country.  Also in 2020, we suffered the tragic loss of our son Beau to suicide at 18 years old.  His absence is felt deeply by our family and he was an integral part of the Buffalo work we have done and is still a part of what we aspire to do in the future.

Buffalo First was founded to help reconnect our people to the Buffalo, here on Cheyenne River Reservation and beyond.  Through years of disconnection, many of our people do not know the Buffalo themselves, they have not had the opportunity to spend time with Buffalo.  This is necessary in order to develop a meaningful relationship with Buffalo that is based on respect and integrity.  It is through a respectful relationship with Buffalo that our people can culturally and spiritually reconnect with the Buffalo.  This will allow for traditional and cultural practices with Buffalo to be learned and practiced once again.  The hope is people will consider the Buffalo First, not the economics of raising Buffalo for food, but the reestablishing of a connection to the Buffalo.  

Once a relationship is reestablished between the Buffalo and the people, then harvesting Buffalo, processing Buffalo, eating Buffalo can have the traditional and cultural meaning it needs to have in order for people to receive the benefits to their spiritual, mental and physical health.  It is then that Buffalo can become, once again, a mainstay food source for our people and the high-quality healthy Buffalo meat can reach those who need it most, those who need it for their health and yet cannot afford the high prices of it at the store.  A relationship to the Buffalo needs to reach our Native families for our people to become healthy in all ways.  All of this brought us to conclude it was time to get involved in the systems surrounding Buffalo, to push for their preservation, protection, and so that they can be raised with integrity.  Considering the Buffalo and their health and wellbeing first, will help prioritize their needs above profit and push back on efforts to commodify them.  

This will enable Buffalo to keep their full value as a healthy food, free of antibiotics and vaccines, raised and finished on grass, and field harvested to keep them free of the stress and the cortisol and adrenaline it causes in their meat.  This also allows for them to become a valuable part of our daily lives again.  It is through having a relationship with Buffalo again that we will see our cultural, spiritual, physical and mental health improve and we can truly experience the Buffalo as Buffalo people once again.  This is a necessary part of success for all Buffalo restoration efforts and especially for them to become a significant part of the food systems on reservations, in service to the bigger population of Native people who do not live on the reservation, and beyond.