Denver Donates 11 Bison to Navajo Nation in Tribal Blessing Ceremony

Snow was falling fast and hard at Genesee Park near Golden, Colorado, on March 6 when six Native American drummers circled a large drum on haystacks and sent 34 yearling bison home to tribal lands through songs, prayers, and ceremony.

Eleven of those animals went to the Navajo Nation, where Sam Diswood, the tribe's fish and wildlife manager, watched from a platform above the pens as the bison moved through the snow. He loaded nine of the yearlings onto trailers that day and will pick up the remaining two later in the year, transporting them to the Wolf Springs Ranch in southern Colorado, a property the Navajo Nation has owned since 2017.

"For the Navajo Nation, it's both spiritual and cultural significance to us from the values that we place on the animals," Diswood said. "These animals will bring new genetics to our herds but there is that cultural tie which brings us the spiritual value to our work."

The Navajo Nation is planning a food sovereignty program around the bison herd at Wolf Springs Ranch, and Diswood noted that the animals are well suited for the climate. "They love the snow," he said. "They have fine hairs, so it doesn't really bother them."

Denver Parks and Recreation distributed the remaining 23 animals among three other recipients: 10 bison to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, 12 to Buffalo First, a Lakota nonprofit affiliated with the Cheyenne River Sioux in South Dakota, and one to the Tall Bull Memorial Council, a Denver-based organization. Robert Simpson, a Northern Cheyenne Tribe council member, smiled in the snow as he waited for animals to be loaded onto trailers.

Donovan Taylor of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe framed the day in terms of responsibility to future generations. "It's important for us to be here today to bless our people with some buffalo for the future generations," he said.

Lewis Tall Bull of the Tall Bull Memorial Council described the broader significance of tribes from across the country gathering around a single purpose. "It's an honor to be witness to what's going on today. Being able to work with the bison and being able to bring together different tribal nations and focus our efforts to the same common goal, which is to restore these bison, bring them to our traditional ways of life, and bring them home."

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston called the annual transfer more than a wildlife management exercise. "It's a promise to begin restoring what was never ours alone," Johnston said, adding that "we are giving back a living piece of the land to the communities who have stewarded it for generations."

The March 6 transfer was the latest in a program that Denver City Council authorized through a 2021 ordinance allowing the city to donate American bison to federally recognized tribes and nonprofits rather than auction surplus animals. The first official transfer under that ordinance went to the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and the Tall Bull Memorial Council in April 2021. Since then, Denver has transferred more than 170 bison to 12 tribal nations and Native organizations, and the donation program is scheduled to continue through 2030.

Denver Parks and Recreation manages two bison herds in its mountain parks, a program that dates to 1914, making the city's herd one of the few municipally owned bison operations in the country. The Genesee Park herd, where Thursday's yearlings were sorted into pens and loaded onto trailers, sits in the foothills west of Denver and has become the source for an expanding network of tribally managed herds stretching from Colorado to the Dakotas.