Students participate in traditional buffalo kill
posted December 20, 2007

As a part of Healthy Life Choices Week, students participated in a traditional buffalo kill on December 5, 2007. Throughout history, the Lakota people completely relied on the buffalo for food, clothing, housing and all their basic living utensils. It was said that the buffalo were brothers to the Lakota people.

Russ Cournoyer and employees from the Oglala Sioux Tribe Tribal Parks and Recreation Authority arrived at campus with the buffalo bull. As students looked on attentively, Russ described the traditional buffalo kill and the meaning it has to the Lakota people. He described the buffalo’s last steps as prayers and offerings were said for the life of the buffalo.

Lakota spiritual leader Wilmer Mesteth blessed each part of the buffalo. He then sang a traditional buffalo honoring song as students danced to celebrate the buffalo and the buffalo nation.

Throughout the buffalo kill, Lakota teacher Philomine Lakota described to the students the importance of the buffalo to the Lakota people and why the buffalo must be honored for giving their lives so that the Lakota people may live.

Students and teachers were giving the chance to taste the buffalo liver as the butchering began, and then helped as teachers gathered parts of the animal to be cleaned and used for a number of things, including a buffalo feed, school projects and traditional ceremonies. The hide will be used as winter count painting to be hung in the high school.

After the buffalo kill was done, the tripe was made into soup and enjoyed by students in the spiritual formation department.

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