Gluhá máni: Collecting to hold, not to keep

We stood in the brittle cold—hats, coats, and gloves tight on our bodies—and watched as the young bison bull was loaded onto a flatbed truck. Moments earlier, one of our sons had fired the first shot, and another sang a song of thanks for the harvest. Now, the eldest of us had already moved back into the vehicles to warm up while the youngest scrambled to help the tribal unit ranger load our kill. The bison harvest was a first for us as a tiwahe (family).

Settler colonialism, a long history of dispossession, forced assimilation, and active erasure of our lifeways have disconnected Oceti Sakowin (Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota-speaking nations) from bison. The “American” bison originally roamed over about one-third of the entire continent of what is now North America. In the late 1880s, as the United States forced the Oceti Sakowin onto reservations, settlers nearly eradicated the bison population through mass extermination. The bison was and still is a keystone species not only for Northern Plains tribal communities but for the ecological systems across the plains. We thrive because of the bison.

Over the past decade, bison restoration and harvest have resurged across the northern plains. As the bison has returned, we are learning to thrive again. We titled this essay “gluhá máni,” which loosely translates to “sustain or keep alive.” Our harvest demonstrates collecting and intergenerational learning practices centered on community collaboration that keep us alive. This resurgence empowers us to grow across generations while challenging settler colonial inheritances.

The drive to maintain colonial collections for research and exhibition reinforces the belief that tribal communities cannot reclaim their items. If you’ve worked with settler institutions, you know the challenges that hoarding information in a hierarchical system establishes: “experts” in an academic field not grounded in relational knowledge, harmful and salvage-collecting practices, and misinformation excluded because of gender and sexual binaries. Instead of seeing us as living cultures, institutions historicize tribal communities in a particular way. Museums may claim ethical practices, but their definition of community is debatable. While institutions like museums currently seek to address extractive harmful practices, those institutions are still confined to the policies and procedures defined by colonial legacies as opposed to community-based collaborations and shared intergenerational learning not bound by settler frameworks. But through community-based sharing, we can still learn as experts, and collecting to hold for the next generation should evolve with differing knowledge systems. 

With the support of Lisa Mni, Arlo Iron Cloud, and a small crew of family and friends, we harvested a small bison bull on that snowy winter day. Lisa and Arlo have built a collecting and harvesting practice that combats shame, challenges antiquated gender roles, and leads by and through questions and mistakes with grace. As a family, we had been following their harvest journey, and when we decided to orchestrate our harvest, we asked if they could support us. With each step of the process, Lisa and Arlo created an environment of community-based knowledge sharing and learning without fear of making mistakes. They explained that they wanted an “environment that is free of ‘rules’ so participants stay comfortable and relaxed, and that their only goal is to learn through the butchering process.”

For tribes, transitioning to reservation life resulted in a disconnect from traditional food and collecting practices like foraging and game harvesting. In the past thirty years, tribal organizations and families have focused on community-centered bison harvests. Each harvest provides unique, intangible, hands-on lessons using various animal parts (organs, bones, etc.). For our harvest, we got to try the bile, spinal fluid, and fat, and at one point, we got to witness the capacity of the lungs. Collaboration in this manner disrupts the monopoly on cultural narratives and creates space for communal decision-making beyond institutional confines.

Lisa and Arlo’s approach reflects an awareness of the challenges stemming from settler colonialism and highlights the importance of adaptability in overcoming internalized shame about not knowing. Although there was loss of knowledge as bison populations dwindled, we are slowly learning again through shared empathy. For instance, when we hadn’t brought a tarp for the harvest, Lisa and Arlo seamlessly transitioned to using the hide and the back of the trailer. We shared experiences of missed opportunities and fears of asking questions throughout the day. Our elder aunt recounted being excluded from gendered opportunities, like hunting. At the same time, our father revealed he never taught us to butcher deer due to the stigma around hunting as a sign of poverty. We emphasized the joy of sharing lessons intergenerationally with our elders, children, and grandchildren present. Our harvest experience underscored the importance of focusing on health, well-being, and ongoing intergenerational learning, not confining lessons to specific times and places.

Utilizing a bison harvest as relational pedagogy emphasizes connecting teaching practices across generations and communities. Despite the presence of Indigenous-informed policies, access remains limited due to colonial collecting practices. Instead of merely collecting to hold, we should focus on sharing knowledge without institutional barriers perpetuating harmful practices. Intergenerational learning spaces can foster community connection and the reclamation of knowledge. True collecting happens through the collaborative act of gathering, preparing, and sharing knowledge, emphasizing a living process rooted in Lakota teachings instead of preserving for display.

After the harvest, we understood that intergenerational gathering, learning, and teaching was the goal. According to our aunt, the point was to “get this young generation in there and get it done—and that builds the community.” We are harvesting to hold onto a continuum of practices and not keep them from one another, which means engaging with collecting practices led by community-centered guidance. Unlike the antiquated collection process that historicizes cultural practices, Lisa and Arlo shared one of many possibilities of learning beyond the systemic processes that fail us. We are offering this alternative, the remembering and holding, so that collecting practice reflects knowledge sharing and growth.

On reflection, we experienced cultural continuity and a community-centered practice rooted in land-based knowledge systems. The bison is a keystone animal to our land and harvesting practices within our historic homelands and present-day reservation boundaries, which also engages in an ongoing creative continuum and demonstrates collecting to hold, not keep. Our harvest is just one example of the reclamation of traditional knowledge and the possibilities of alternative collaboration projects and collecting practices inside and outside institutions. We encourage any institution to engage in collecting practices to challenge the hierarchies of settler preservation and lean into collaborative learning that grows with time.