The figure and spirit of American buffalo, also known as bison, are entwined with the practice of Cannupa Hanska Luger, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and a descendant of the “buffalo people” of the Great Plains. Buffalo, as a symbol of sovereignty and freedom, is a recurring motif within his work—whether in public art projects where steel and ceramic buffalo skeletons speak to their near extinction in the nineteenth century at the hands of non-Native settlers or as bison-horned silhouettes exploring an Indigenous future in the installation, video, and land-based performance series Future Ancestral Technologies (2018).
As I spoke with Luger about his latest public project, Transmutation (2022), which was installed on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus this summer, one of his recent assertions ran through my mind: “So much buffalo has moved through our system … why don’t we understand that better? Why don’t we celebrate that better? … and why don’t we acknowledge their annihilation as collateral damage to the prosperity of this country?” As a prelude to our conversation, I shared that I was born and raised in Colombia, where water buffalo were introduced in the 1960s and are currently raised for meat and milk products. They are not an endemic species. But they have become an extension of the land, and it is hard to imagine such a vast territory without them.
Large herds of buffalo roamed the Great Plains before settlers pushed them to the brink of extinction in pursuit of progress and profit. Buffalo then moved through the American system by becoming an industrial product that advanced the development of the United States. While Luger shared how the installation came to be, I thought of how the land and the Native American peoples for whom buffalo are relatives have changed in their absence—even though the presence of these animals has lingered in a different form.
Although historical accounts of the buffalo’s slaughter and near-extinction in the nineteenth century might be familiar to some people in the United States, most of these stories have been whitewashed and tell of the annihilation of buffalo as a means—and perhaps even as an unwilling result—of westward expansion instead of an act of erasure. They fail to acknowledge that the massacre of these animals was deliberate, meant to eradicate the culture and foodways of Native American peoples.
Luger conceived a socially engaged project for the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial that speaks precisely to this seldom-told story. It reflects on how an entire economy grew around buffalo and their by-products with little to no recognition of their contribution to the industrial growth of the United States. Now, hundreds of thousands of people from Boston, New England, and beyond have the opportunity to engage with buffalo and their stories.
Luger conceived of Transmutation as a walkway or pergola comprising two portals connected by a large net, which holds dozens of ribbons tied by local Indigenous community members during a series of workshops. A larger-than-life resin casting of a bison skull made from an original ceramic artwork handbuilt by Luger is mounted on each portal. One skull is white, and the other is black, alluding to calcium carbonate and bone black pigment, two products made from charred buffalo bones.
Bone black pigment was, and still is, often used to refine sugar and help it achieve its white color by removing impurities, while calcium carbonate works as a slow-release fertilizer. There is beauty, even hope, in imagining how the slaughtered herds of American buffalo returned to the land where they were hunted to nurture it as fertilizer and promote life, as they probably would have nurtured it in life through grazing or by their natural deaths. There is also great irony, as the remnants of millions of buffalo enable the prosperity of a nation that sought to annihilate them and the Native American peoples for whom these animals are kin.
“The title was drawn from a basic understanding of alchemy,” Luger said. Alchemists sought to transform base metals like lead into precious metals like gold under the premise of purifying the original material. Efforts to reach perfection through alchemic processes extended to the body and soul, the ultimate goal being to achieve immortality or spiritual enlightenment. Though this transformation might be read as a metaphor for a human’s natural impulse to evolve, it’s worth acknowledging the value of what is being transformed—the original material or form. In Transmutation, Luger underscores this irony by alluding to how settlers disregarded the value of buffaloes as relatives, deeming them commodities instead. Bone black and calcium carbonate provided more worth to a developing industrial nation than the presence of buffalo in the land, which hindered westward expansion.
It is pertinent to remember—especially in this time of climate urgency—why and how modern ideas of progress and development have distanced us from land, animal, and plant relatives. Why have we ceased to know ourselves as part of an ecology and devoted to a system that praises extraction? In visually suggesting how large herds of buffalo were reduced to skulls and bones and then transformed into black and white substances, Transmutation invites us to picture the many ways in which buffalo moved through the American system. Whether by supporting farming in the Plains where the top field crops in the country—soy, corn, and wheat—are currently produced or by becoming intertwined with the growth of the sugar industry in the late nineteenth century, the spirit and matter of buffalo was unassumingly woven into the fabric of the United States.
Throughout the Triennial this summer, Transmutation encouraged a broad audience to think about buffalo from a place of gratitude, abundance, and reverence. Beyond the animal’s near eradication by settlers, Luger’s work honors the buffalo as a symbol of resistance and sovereignty concerning Native futures.
“The artwork’s placement at UMass Boston’s Arts on the Point is significant in terms of its impact,” Luger said. UMass is among the most diverse colleges in New England. Its location in Dorchester—Boston’s largest neighborhood where multiple perspectives currently converge—will allow a broader audience to meet and exchange ideas throughout the Triennial. The multitude of ribbons hanging from the net already represents the inclusion of local Indigenous voices in the project and the visibility of their perspectives. The Triennial will additionally host public programming and work with public art ambassadors to lead discussions around Transmutation and engage community members with buffalo and their stories of survival.
To visit Transmutation entails literally and metaphorically going through a portal, a journey leading to a confrontation with the buffalo, the “original being,” transmuted into bone black and calcium carbonate. Luger hopes visitors leave with an understanding of buffalo’s impact on the development of America. Luger hopes visitors grasp the power of the buffalo as it existed prior to colonization—a living symbol for Native histories, restorative futures, and rebuilding relationship to the land. Will we honor its story?
