All photos by George Hupka
When award winning Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard, from Peepeekisis First Nation in Treaty Four Territory was younger, she was taken to visit a buffalo ribstone outside of Regina, where she saw boulder petroglyphs that have existed for thousands of years. It was an experience that changed her life, and continues to inform her academic research and her latest documentary film, Singing Back the Buffalo.
“It was a profound experience, where I realized that stones are alive and are part of our kinship systems. And it was after that visit that I started to have buffalo on my mind, what Leroy Littlebear calls Buffalo Consciousness,” says Hubbard. “I was in a masters program and I changed my focus to buffalo stories and I have continued to work for the buffalo since then. This film is a commitment I made long ago.”
Written and directed by Hubbard, and produced by Hubbard, Jason Ryle, George Hupka, associate produced by Marie-Eve Marchand, and executive produced by Bonnie Thompson, Singing Back the Buffalo is a powerful portrayal of the plight of the buffalo herd –who were almost extinct – and the positive steps towards taken towards the long journey of buffalo rematriation with Blackfoot Elder Leroy Little Bear.
Singing Back the Buffalo filmmaker Hubbard is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, whose research focusses on Indigenous film and Indigenous efforts to return the buffalo to the lands. She is part of the National Film Board’s newly formed Indigenous Advisory Council. Hubbard’s work includes writing/director Two Worlds Colliding, a film about Saskatoon’s Starlight Tours which premiered at ImagineNATIVE in 2004 and won the Canada Award at the Gemini Awards in 2005. She also worked on Birth of a Family, the National Film Board-produced documentary about a 60s Scoop family reuniting on a holiday in Banff. The film premiered at Hot Docs and received multiple accolades including the Moon Jury prize at imagineNATIVE. Her film nipawistamasowin: We Will Stand Up won the best Canadian feature documentary award at the 2019 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, as well as the Discovery Award from the 2019 Director’s Guild of Canada.
Yet, the buffalo has always been a deep sense of inspiration for Hubbard, as they hold a significant place in Indigenous stories, relationships and ways of being. The buffalo has been an ongoing guide for the filmmaker in many ways, as they continue to teach her about balance. “Buffalos face their challenges, they take care of one another, and they continue to live with joy and hope.” Ever since she was a girl she was drawn to the buffalo and had visions of the buffalo herd coming back, and central to the documentary film Singing Back the Buffalo.
“I hadn’t really thought of that memory until my producers started asking me questions as part of our process of how to tell the story of the film. I got very emotional when I told them about the memory of imagining buffalo on the prairie,” says Hubbard. “I didn’t have many opportunities to connect to my Cree culture as a child, and the things that I would see in my mind’s eye were so important to me.
“This is one of those portraits that I can still see that are from my memories. And I hope that the buffalo is once again able to move across their territory. I think that’s in our future.”
The journey of creating Singing Back the Buffalo documentary film began in 2024, with the late Narcisse Blood from Kainai, who passed in 2015. Hubbard took a year off from the film and started again in 2016. She continued developing the story while she worked on her academic research which focusses on the buffalo, and supports the Buffalo Treaty. The official production of Singing Back the Buffalo started in late 2021, and was shot over two years. The film was completed in January 2024.
The title of the film Singing Back the Buffalo stems from Hubbard’s first memory of singing to the buffalo ribstone she visited when she was younger, and later the first Buffalo Treaty gathering she attended where she witnessed Indigenous peoples sharing their buffalo songs and prayers as a way to help bring the buffalo back.
For Hubbard, she hopes after watching Singing Back the Buffalo viewers want to help the Indigenous visionaries and community who are rematriating the buffalo herd. Her film is an invitation to learn more about the buffalo, to sing for them, as she hopes we also fall in love with the buffalo and the beautiful grasslands they love. As both the land and herd are threatened, the buffalo need us to love and appreciate them, to do what we can to protect them for generations to come. Hubbard’s offers some tips on how to support the journey of rematriating of the buffalo herd.
“You can find out what buffalo projects are close to you and find out what kind of supports they need,” she says. “There also needs to be some changes at the provincial and federal level, and you can write letters and request that both levels of government have support for Indigenous buffalo restoration.
“And you can also oppose the sale of public/crown lands. We need to keep what remaining prairie we have intact, and not tilled up. Those lands hold our stories.”
Singing the Back the Buffalo is screening in festivals for the next year, with a theatrical release in September 2024. Follow Singing Back the Buffalo on social media and visit their website (https://buffalosong.com/) for screenings nearest you. A one-hour version will be broadcast on CBC The Nature of Things, feature version on APTN in 2025. Canadian distribution is handled by Cinema Politica.
