The Bison Is America’s National Mammal. Here’s How Indigenous Tribes and Conservationists Aided Its Return to the Prairie Lands After Near Extinction

The past, present and future of the giant bovine are front and center in a new exhibition as the country approaches its 250th birthday

Alicia Ault | Museums Correspondent

May 6, 2026 11:02 a.m.

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They’re massive, shaggy and majestic—and best observed from a safe distance. The bison, North America’s largest land mammal, has long been an icon in the U.S. and hugely important to Native cultures. Officially named America’s national mammal in 2016, it is a perfect, beastly representative of the country’s natural history.

As such, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has created bison-centric exhibitions to coincide with the celebration of America’s 250th this year. Opening May 7, “Bison: Standing Strong” will run until May 2029 and chart the animal’s evolutionary history and relationship with Indigenous peoples, its rise and fall and its place in the future. A six-foot-wide skull of a prehistoric bison sits opposite a six-foot-tall taxidermy bull in the display.

From May 21 through summer 2027, “Imagining Bison,” will showcase a trove of material—artifacts, documents and photographs—illustrating the animal’s cultural importance. This exhibition will also offer further detail on the Smithsonian Institution’s efforts to conserve the bison, often in partnership with Native American communities.

Bison, also referred to as “buffalo,” have roamed North America for thousands of years. Through all that time, “they’ve been shaping us,” supporting ecosystems by grazing and migrating, and influencing culture and history, says exhibition developer Siobhan Starrs.

“They really are the American story, in a nutshell,” she says.

Rosalyn LaPier, a historian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe and Métis, explains the importance of the animal in a video for the “Standing Strong” exhibition. In 2023, LaPier wrote: “I learned from my Blackfeet grandparents that bison emerged from the supernatural underwater realm and were given to humans by the Divine to use as food and as material. In return, humans are to respect and revere the bison.”

Tens of millions of bison lived on the North American continent until the late 19th century, when hunters cut them down in huge numbers, aided by a rifle that accommodated large-caliber ammunition and could be fired accurately at long distances. Only around 1,000 of the mammals survived by the late 1880s.

Western expansion and industrialization contributed to the bison’s demise. The federally backed removal of bison by settlers purposely deprived Native Americans of a food source and culturally significant animal. Bison meat fed workers building the Transcontinental Railroad, and its hides were coveted by American and European manufacturers of clothing and industrial belts. The completion of the railroad brought even more hunters to the region.

The bison’s slaughter is eerily illustrated in the “Standing Strong” exhibition by an 1892 photograph of a man standing atop a mountain of skulls waiting to be processed at Michigan Carbon Works.

Now, thanks to restoration efforts, the U.S. is home to some 500,000 bison, most in commercial herds. Some are under management by conservationists and tribes, while others rove within the boundaries of national parks such as Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt.

Ervin Carlson, president of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, manages an 800-animal herd for the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. The council, which operates in 22 states and across close to 90 tribes, was formed in the 1990s to help bring bison back to Indigenous lands. Many of the animals come from national park herds. Those animals help inject genetic diversity into tribal herds, says Carlson, which is crucial to the species’ survival.

The Blackfeet Nation established its herd in 2016, when it received 87 calves from Canada. Carlson says that when he saw the animals’ energy and the way they uplifted fellow Blackfeet, he quickly became passionate about conservation. He believes that all Americans should care about bison restoration, as the animals represent “the history of this whole continent.”

North America’s “grasslands and all the animals that live in them are the single most endangered ecosystem in the world,” says ecologist Andy Boyce of the Smithsonian’s Great Plains Science Program and Migratory Bird Center.

The fertile, flat land has continually been taken for commercial agriculture and livestock operations. As a result, native birds and animals, like the bison, that are dependent on the ecosystem have been in decline, says Boyce.

Bison are keystone creatures in part because “grasslands need grazing,” Boyce notes. The bison’s behavior—applying pressure “in all the right places” by wallowing and making shallow depressions in the dirt, which creates microhabitats, and dispersing seeds through defecation—helps preserve plant diversity, he says. And that, in turn, nurtures mammalian, avian and insect life.

The Smithsonian works with the nonprofit group American Prairie and tribal organizations to preserve Montana grasslands and the bison. (On Monday, the New York Times reported that the Bureau of Land Management has canceled grazing permits for American Prairie, jeopardizing the bison’s future in the region.)

Great Plains Science Program ecologist Olivia Cosby helped put together the Intertribal Grassland Network, a consortium of tribal communities in Montana that trains participants, many of them students, to be stewards of the ecosystem. The tribes Cosby has worked with want to re-establish a relationship with the animal and “have them come home,” she says. “Having their communities be able to actually see buffalo and interact with them is really meaningful.”

Much of this work was being done by individual tribes—especially at Fort Belknap Indian Community, which started reintroducing bison in the 1970s. But many of those programs don’t have the resources for big projects. The Smithsonian is “creating an opportunity where we can think bigger together, more regionally,” notes Cosby.

“We’re looking at everything from soil health to the mammal community using camera traps and vegetation chemistry,” she says.

Managing an animal that has historically wandered freely in the wild is a big challenge. “If you get a ton of bison in a confined area, it’s not good for the land,” Cosby says. Conservationists must navigate a tension between the legal requirement for fences and protecting the bison’s wild nature.

Boyce notes that “we revere bison as a symbol of the wildness of our country,” and put their profile on sports team logos and various products. “If we value these animals,” he says, “we need to figure out a way to conserve them.”

Alicia Ault | | Read More

Alicia Ault is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Medscape Medical News, WebMD and Wired. She splits her time between St. Petersburg, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, exploring the rich variety of food, music, art and culture on offer in those cities.