2. Buffalo Facts: •Buffalo have an average lifespan of 20 to 40 years.
•Buffalo are very fast runners (65 km/hr) but are also very fast in the water too!
•Buffalo are the heaviest land animal in North America, averaging about 1600 lbs!

4. Buffalo Facts:
•For ~6000 years First Nation people hunted buffalo with weapons & tools. They also would hunt them by ‘stampeding’ them over cliffs.
•Example: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, Alberta.

6. Buffalo Facts:
•30 to 50 million buffalo once ranged freely from northern Canada to northern Mexico.
•After European contact, buffalo started drastically reducing in numbers! This was due to:
Massive settlements.
Introduction of rifles.
Unregulated hunting.

7. Buffalo Facts:
•By 1889 the buffalo population had decreased to only 1100!
•Today there are ~5000 buffalo in Canada, living in protected areas in southern & northwestern Saskatchewan, northeastern BC , and Northwest Territories.

8. First Nation Wisdom Keepers & Story Telling
•First Nation story telling is very important as it is how they pass on their traditions and cultural practices and beliefs.
•Only ‘Wisdom Keepers’ have the right to pass on First nation stories.
This is a great honour, and one must be trained before receiving the right to pass on the stories.
These stories are considered ‘admissible evidence’ and are considered to be fact.

9. ‘Honouring the Buffalo’
•The ‘Creator & Buffalo’ portion of this story is told by Ray Lavallee. He is a ‘Wisdom Keeper’ and ‘Medicine Man’ from the Piapot Cree First Nations.
•In this story really pay attention to how many uses the buffalo really had to First Nations people.