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Some grandpas buy a sports car. Other grandpas buy a buffalo. For me and my friend Elizabeth Kirk, our fathers fall into category number two. The Kirks are citizens of Isleta Pueblo, and they didn’t know the Tewa word for buffalo, so I use “tatanka,” or as my 4-year old says, “ta-taco,” in this column. Tatanka is the word for buffalo in Lakota, though they have many, many other Indigenous names. Yeah, I know you elder millennials like me are thinking about “Dances With Wolves” now. Cut it out, haha!
Michael Kirk, 75, is a Vietnam Veteran who was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, likely from exposure to Agent Orange, in 2022. His doctors recommended a vegan diet, which his daughter helped with. Michael ultimately returned to eating meat, but he looked for natural, unprocessed sources, which led him to acquire his first bison, a bull his grandson named Spiderman, and then a cow his granddaughter named Luna.
Today Michael has survived cancer twice and believes his little herd of buffalo have a large part to play in his health and vitality. He keeps his herd in a pen near his Isleta home and visits and talks to them every day before going to his studio to work on his jewelry. Both practices also help him manage his PTSD from active duty as a Marine.
I’ve heard some Native people refer to the tatanka as a one stop shop because of how many human survival essentials one animal can produce, including their ultra warm hide and nutrient rich meat. Buffalo fat is yellow in colorations, rather than the white you see in beef, because it is dense in omega fatty acids, similar to fish. It is also lower in cholesterol and high in a multitude of vitamins and minerals.
The American buffalo is a keystone species to this continent that once roamed from Canada to Mexico. Isleta doesn’t hold a buffalo dance like some of the other Pueblos, but Michael recounted to me stories his grandfather told of hunting buffalo around the Manzano Mountains and bringing the meat home by wagon.
Most people don’t imagine New Mexico when they imagine ancient buffalo herds. Rather, the reason many associate Nakota/Dakota/Lakota country to the tatanka is that Yellowstone is the only place in the world where a herd of buffalo have existed continuously since prehistoric times. Everywhere else they have been reintroduced and are essentially ranch animals that are maintained by fences, their breeding is monitored to keep healthy bloodlines, and they are harvested when appropriate. But from what I hear from the folks in charge of buffalo reintroduction programs, the goal is always to bring the buffalo home, keep them wild and help them live freely once again so that they can heal and help the humans to heal, too.
Michael’s herd is an exception to the norm. He will never say his animals are tame but he does admit they are gentle, and to his daughter’s chagrin, he mingles amongst them daily. As a steadfast rule, no one should ever get too close to a buffalo. And that needs saying because what most considered common sense was challenged a few years ago when a tourist at Yellowstone attempted to take a selfie with a buffalo and ended up with their jeans dangling from its horn. They were lucky they didn’t lose more than pants!
When my dad found out I had a buffalo connection, he became fixated until earlier this month I facilitated the sale of a female calf from Michael to let run with my old man’s Wagu cows on our ranch, which encompasses 6-sections of virgin land in Catron County. He plans to get another next year once he learns the ins and outs of being a buffalo cowboy.
Right away my four-year old named her Happy, while my aunt thought Trouble was more apropos. I combined the two, put on my Indigenous Studies hat and told myself Happy Trouble would be more than a spectacle for elk hunters to go home and tell their friends about. She would be a wild and free reminder of the West that was! Tatanka!
A week later, my aunt sent me a photo of my father petting Happy Trouble’s head in a corral, while several cows looked on in horror. Dang it. Even as a Native person, I can’t help but want to ruffle that head, too. What can I say? She is a spectacle, an exotic novelty, just the way I am when I travel outside the Southwest. Happy Trouble and I have more in common than just her name, I’ve decided. We are living reminders that some legends never die. And as long as a little feral DNA keeps pumping through tatanka veins and little Ind’in girl hearts, there is some reassurance to me for the future. We can always get more wild, later, when the time is right.
