Restoration
From dust to dust and ashes to ashes, everything returns to the earth. For generations, ranching families and Indigenous communities across the West have known this and developed ways of life that honor the relationship between humans, the land, and animals. This is Restoration—an ode to the land and a return to the traditions that strengthen the connection to its natural beauty and all that it is meant to be.
In the central coast of California, Avenales Ranch is dedicated to preserving and protecting the land through regenerative ranching. Since 1875, the Sinton family has been ranching and cultivating the land in San Luis Obispo County using historic methods of running cattle combined with scientific knowledge of the relationship between cattle and land. Through their system of regenerative ranching, they work endlessly to restore the health of the soil, producing better grass for their cattle that in turn provides better beef to feed the nation.
I'm a fifth-generation rancher. My great-great-grandfather came here in 1875. And throughout those generations, everybody's been trying to make sure that the next generation has an opportunity here. We have done several things that have been key to sustainability. And one of those biggest pieces is conservation. It will look like this forever with open space for people and plants and animals.
– Daniel Sinton, fifth generation rancher at Avenales Ranch
When you run cattle together in a high impact movement, we're able to generate growth that is both above and below the soil. There’s this huge system that we're a part of, and cattle are a really important part of that system, and us moving them around as ranchers is key in the timing of all of that.
– Daniel Sinton
The Texas Tribal Buffalo Project is a nonprofit organization committed to healing generational wounds and restoring cherished practices of Lipan Apache and other Indigenous communities and tribes in Texas. Despite enduring unimaginable hardship, the Indigenous nations exude pride for their native culture and strength in their community. Texas Tribal Buffalo Project aims to reconnect Indigenous Lineal Descendants
to each other and to the buffalo (lyane’e) through revitalizing their relationship to the land as they care for the grass, soil, buffalo, and each other.
The mission and goals of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project are to reconnect our Texas Indigenous community members to each other by rekindling our kinship. If we rekindle our kinship and repair some of the trauma that our ancestors experienced, and we also connect to the buffalo as a relative, we're building the kinship to help and reconnect with our Indigenous ways.
– Lucille Contreras, CEO and Founder of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project
When we caretake for the buffalo, we in turn are also taken care of. Just as our ancestors used the buffalo, every single part of the buffalo, for survival, food, shelter, and spirituality, we are reconnecting with those ways. So, to be able to harvest a buffalo in a ceremonial way, gives us so much strength and fortitude. Our connection is generations and hundreds of years deep with who we are as native people.
– Buffalo Woman, Iani Izanet
This land represents a powerful return to Indigenous stewardship, allowing our buffalo relatives more room to roam and enabling our community to embrace our true Lipan Apache spirit.
– Lucille Contreras