Amid the expansive grasslands of South Dakota, Matte Wilson and his family and friends are using food to reclaim their Native American culture, one dish at a time.

 

Words: Zoey Goto. Photographs: Matt Dutile

Written by John P. Joyce

The last two glacier periods in North Dakota occurred between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago, and both times glaciers buried the northeastern three-fourths of the state under several hundred feet of ice. The southwestern one fourth of North Dakota, though spared from the ice sheets, became part of a world-wide, frozen belt of tundra known as the Mammoth Steppe—not an easy place to settle. Rather than one long stretch of frozen hell, the Ice Age had periods when the ice melted back. [1]

Over 30 million buffalo grazed the rich grasslands of the great plains and prairies of North America. Then, nearly 140 years ago—between 1880 and 1883—they made their last stand in the region between Hettinger ND and Lemmon, Bison and Buffalo SD. The Buffalo Trails Tour takes visitors to the sites of some of the last great buffalo hunts in a rugged section of badlands, buttes and fertile grasslands.

It all begins with an idea.