Texas Tribal Buffalo Project is a pathway for Indigenous communities of Texas to rematriate, says Lucille Contreras, 
founder and CEO of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project that is modeled after a traditional Indigenous matriarchy. Following her own journey of healing through the buffalo, Contreras found her calling to establish an organization with the goal of rekindling native kinship through shared reconnection with their heritage.

Over the years, I've been gaining my own indigeneity, my own sovereignty as a Texas Indigenous lineal descendant, she shares. When I was in South Dakota, I learned the healing power of the buffalo. How amazing that the buffalo can provide spiritual healing, mental healing, and physical healing. I wanted that for our people back home in Texas. So armed with this vision, with this dream, with this prayer, I was able to get a USDA beginning farmer and rancher loan. We purchased 77 acres and formed the nonprofit all at once. As soon as I came back home, we hit the ground running so that we were able to bring the buffalo home. The first thing that we did was a ceremony to give thanks. It was like kissing the land of my ancestors.

Empowered by the return to Texas and the return of the buffalo to the land, Contreras was able to help other native people find their strength. Most notably, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project provided a space for the community to return to their matriarchal customs and restore women to leadership positions.

Contreras explains, The majority of our Indigenous communities are led by older women. And one of the goals of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project is to role model the aspect of being a strong Indigenous woman with leadership and guidance from the buffalo, from our ancestors, and from each other. What I want for future generations of Indigenous women are for us to love ourselves, to walk with grace and dignity, to draw upon our own wisdom and strength for leadership. That's the healing that the buffalo bring to our people, the leadership.

Izel Lopez, one of the women leaders at Texas Tribal Buffalo Project who is working on curating an online museum of native history, shares that rematriation is of vital importance in keeping their cultural traditions alive.

In our culture, matriarchs have been around since time immemorial. Men held the women to very high regard. Women held council. Through research I've learned that women went to war. Women are also our firekeepers. In essence, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. We always go back to our mothers. When we're sick, or when something's wrong, or we need someone to talk to, it's always our moms that hold that for us. In working with this project, it's been great to be able to move women outside of Western civilization and rematriate and reintroduce them back into the traditional ways of our people where women are the caretakers for everyone.

In addition to restoring the cultural traditions of the Lipan Apache, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project connects with the buffalo as a vessel to help native people rediscover their ancestry and ceremonial practices.

Speaking about one of the first buffalo harvests the organization held, Contreras shares, We had one buffalo that was harvested by my son, Enrique Josekuauhtli, and we had 150 Lipan Apaches from all over the state arrive. These were people who had been connecting over the years but may not have met in person. They connected through oral histories, through DNA tests, ancestry, and genealogy. For these families to come together for the first time was so healing.

The harvesting of the buffalo is as much about the gathering of the community as it is about breathing new life into sacred traditions that may have been lost over the years. Contreras continues, We harvested this buffalo in a really good way, with prayers from the elders, giving words of encouragement to my son. Then after the buffalo was taken, we all sang, we gave thanks, and we prayed. And then the butchering started, and all our tribal people automatically just started organizing. That proves to 
me that our Texas Indigenous people, if we are given the chance to be our true selves, are leaders. We are expressing our sovereignty and our indigeneity by leading ourselves with the tools, and the knowledge, and the skills that our ancestors left us.

Each time the community applies these skills to use all parts of the buffalo according to Lipan Apache traditions, they reconnect with their centuries-old culture and find healing and strength. “When we caretake for the buffalo, we in turn are also taken care of,” says Contreras. 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. 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.

As Texas Tribal Buffalo Project restores the cultural practices of the Lipan Apache, they are also working to restore the buffalo to their native habitat and improve the health of the land for future generations.

Contreras explains that the buffalo’s natural life cycle benefits many other types of animal species, and that Texas Tribal Buffalo Project is focused on restoring this natural relationship between the animals and their environment. I often get asked what is the biggest difference between cattle and buffalo? And one of the biggest differences is the way that the buffalo live on the land. They create wallows. They create this amazing, beautiful biodiversity for other animals to come. Since we've been on this land, we have seen burrowing owls. We have seen flickers. We have a whooping crane that stops every year coming and going as the whooping cranes migrate to Canada, to the Wood Buffalo Preserve.

To monitor their buffalo, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project uses traditional regenerative agricultural techniques that promote the buffalo’s natural role in maintaining the health of the land. Traditional ecological knowledge and skills, or regenerative agriculture, is the movement of acknowledging the earth and the soil as our relative, and acknowledging every blade of grass as our relative. If the grass is healthy, our buffalo are healthy, says Contreras. She also explains how their regenerative agricultural process allows the earth to heal naturally through the buffalo. We monitor the grass and rotate the buffalo. We pay attention to the buffalo's fur, horns, eyes, and [manure]. We pay attention to how the buffalo walk on the land. The buffalo are the best stewards of the earth. By being on this land, the buffalo help improve our climate. They also are the number one carbon sequestrators in the land just by existing on the earth. The way that they walk aerates the soil, and the way that they wallow creates another environment for other animals. It is true biodiversity and restoration of the land.

Through the work that Contreras and her team at Texas Tribal Buffalo Project do every day, members of the Lipan Apache community find a space to connect with one another, their culture, and the bison that are of vital importance to their heritage and traditions. At the same time, they are working to revive the population of buffalo back in their native land of Texas and caretake for the earth through natural practices. At Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, mutual healing can be found for the buffalo, the Lipan Apache, and the land. Together, they are a community strengthened by tradition, spirituality, and native leadership.

I hope that the work that I do as Lipan Apache woman lives on way after my lifetime, that for generations, those that come after me, all the indigenous children will be able to know that we are strong Lipan Apache people. We are from this land for generations, for thousands of years. We have the DNA of the buffalo within us, and we rise strong with forbearance, with fortitude and walk with grace and beauty just like the buffalo do.

– Lucille Contreras

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