Description
Book SynopsisThe heated controversy over proposals to exterminate the herds in Wood Buffalo National Park is a reminder of the significance the buffalo has acquired, standing symbolically at the point of interaction between aboriginal and white cultures and the plains environment. In Buffalo, specialists in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and fine arts examine the involvement of the buffalo in plains ecology and culture from its prehistoric evolution and migration to its present and uncertain future. The importance of the buffalo in plains Indian culture is explored in essays on the development of the Cultural World Heritage Site at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and in an historical study of the last decade before the extinction of the wild herds. Its imaginative appropriation by white culture is traced through a survey of verbal and pictorial images of the buffalo from the sixteenth century to the present, culminating in a display of full-colour prints of paintings by Clarence Tille
