The Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is explicitly discussed by Shepard
Krech in his book, _The Ecological Indian: Myth and History_ (W.W.
Norton, 1999). Krech uses the site to begin his chapter on
Amerindian buffalo hunting. Krech writes:
"In 1981, UNESCO selected Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump as a
World Heritage Site. An interpretive center was built with the
stated aim to present a native rather than an anthropolological or
archaeological perspective. The interpretive center offers 'much to
ponder,' the _New York Times_ reported, including 'the skills' of
native people who cooperated to drive buffaloes toward a precipice
and death and 'the wastefulness' of white hunters who caused
extermination of sixty million bison. Others agree. In _American
History Illustrated_, one can read that Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
is 'representative of the North Americans' ingenuity, of their
understanding of ecological balances, and of their economical use of
the land and its bounty.' This is the rhetoric of buffalo hunting on
the Plains: White people wasted and caused the extermination of the
buffalo, whereas Indians were skillful, ecologically aware
conservationists. Since 1987, well over have a million visitors have
heard this message at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and even more have
been exposed to it through the wide publicity this site has garnered.
Yet this story about conservation and waste is more complicated, as
most stories are" (123-4).
There's a chapter available online at the amazon.com web site (not
the buffalo chapter) that can give anyone who's interested a feel for
Krech's work. But the subject of waste at buffalo jumps gets a
pretty sensitive treatment in the book.
Jim
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