‘Everything is here now’: Wanuskewin elder reflects on bison baby boom

On a rainy afternoon in May, bison manager Craig Thoms checks on a group of bison nestled in the grass at Wanuskewin Heritage Park.

Ten calves were born in the spring, the most births recorded since the bison were reintroduced to the land in 2019.

The calves go from running and playing with each other to nursing with their mothers to hiding behind the adult members of the herd.

Thoms said bison are one of only a handful of animals that celebrate the birth of a new calf.

“They run like 60 miles an hour. They’ll just start burning circles when a new calf is born,” Thoms explained. “After like half an hour or so after birth, they’ll start running, but prior to that they all get in there to guard that calf, get that calf standing, get it going, get it up nursing.”

Staff members don’t interfere with the births, and typically only find out that it happened after the fact.

“They fend for themselves and have adapted to the land for the last probably 100,000 years,” Thoms said. “They’re just naturally adapted where they don’t need the care that other livestock do.”

With the arrival of the 10 new calves, the herd has grown to 43 bison since 2019.

Park elder and cultural advisor Mary Lee was on site the day the bison were reintroduced to the land.

“You feel that completeness … everything is here now,” Lee said.

“Now it’s up to us to share those teachings with the people that come here.”

Coincidence, or something more?

According to the park, plains bison nearly became extinct in the late 1800s. Wanuskewin partnered with Parks Canada in 2019 to reintroduce the animals to the same region where they once grazed nearly 150 years ago.

Four of the initial group of bison that arrived from Grasslands National Park and Yellowstone National Park were pregnant when they got here, and three of those births happened on auspicious days.

The first was born on Earth Day in 2020. The second was born on May 5 that year, National Truth and Reconciliation Day. The third bison arrived on Mother’s Day.

For Andrew McDonald, director of marketing and communications for Wanuskewin, this is no coincidence.

“The second year that we had babies born here, the last one of the season was born very late. It’s actually born on September 30, which is Orange Shirt Day,” he recalled. “For a baby to be born that late is unusual, and certainly to be born on that day, this is something else.”

Another coincidental moment happened during Governor General Mary Simon’s visit to the park in April of this year.

After touring the site, and answering questions from students, Simon visited the bison with Ernie Walker, Wanuskewin’s co-founder and chief archaeologist.

“While she was out watching the bison, a baby was being born. And we know that because as she left and she’s driving out of the park, our bison manager jumps in his truck and he goes out to check on the bison, and there is a freshly born baby (that) can barely walk,” McDonald recalled.

“It usually takes about 20 minutes total for them to get up and nursing, so we know that this baby bison had been born while she was watching the bison out in the paddock.”

The bison births on symbolic days do not surprise elder Mary Lee, who said the bison will continue producing calves now that they are back on their ancestral lands.

She said the bison have also brought traditional teaching back to the area.

“It was up to us to do that awakening of bringing the bison back to re-teach what was left for us to remember, so our next generations to come will understand why,” she said.

Lee added that future generations will continue to benefit from the traditional knowledge held on the land, with the growing bison population finally flourishing where it belongs.