Giving a voice to the North American buffalo Winnipeg Free Press [Video]

TORONTO — In 2016, Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard was at work on her documentary Singing Back the Buffalo. She was chasing a longtime dream to explore the subject of the bison that once roamed all over North America in herds of tens of millions until the late 19th century when they were slaughtered almost to the point of extinction.

An associate professor in the faculty of native studies and department of English and film at the University of Alberta, Hubbard had written a dissertation on buffalo consciousness and the subject was near and dear to her heart.

But the documentary was interrupted with the 2016 death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man who was shot by Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley. Hubbard explored the incident, and Stanley’s subsequent acquittal, in her 2019 film nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up.

“When I heard about Colten, I asked the buffalo to pause and wait and be patient,” Hubbard says during a coffee …