''Singing Back the Buffalo'' is a Canadian documentary film, directed by

Tasha Hubbard Tasha Hubbard is a Canadian First Nations/Cree filmmaker and educator based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Hubbard's credits include three National Film Board of Canada documentaries exploring Indigenous rights in Canada: '' Two Worlds Colliding'', a ...

and released in 2024.Randall King
"Giving a voice to the North American buffalo: New documentary tells overdue story of bison ‘genocide’"
''

Winnipeg Free Press The ''Free Press'' (or FP; founded as the ''Manitoba Free Press''; previously known as the ''Winnipeg Free Press'') is a daily (excluding Sunday) broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It provides coverage of local, provincial, natio ...

'', September 14, 2024. The film profiles

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

efforts to restore the buffalo to the North American plains ecosystem after the animals were driven to near extinction.Andrew Parker
"Hot Docs 2024 Review: Singing Back the Buffalo"
'' TheGATE.ca'', April 26, 2024. The film follows the path of the buffalo during the spring, summer and fall of 2022, across the Northern Plains of Canada and the United States.

Production

In 2016, Hubbard was invited to film a historic transfer of buffalo, which were returned from Elk Island National Park to their original territory on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. However, she put the project on pause following the controversial death of

Colten Boushie Colten Boushie (October 31, 1993 – August 9, 2016) was a 22-year-old Indigenous man of the Cree Red Pheasant First Nation who was fatally shot on a rural Saskatchewan farm by its owner, Gerald Stanley. Stanley stood trial for second-degree mu ...

, and turned her attention to making '' Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up'', her film about the Boushie incident which was released in 2019. Hubbard was then approached to make other films about similar incidents of anti-indigenous violence, but returned to ''Singing Back the Buffalo'' after being convinced by her family that she needed to take a break from telling difficult stories and make a film that brought her joy. She resumed production on the film in 2022.

Release

The film premiered at the 2024

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is an annual non-fiction film festival held in Missoula, Montana each February. The event showcases documentary films from around the world. The festival first began in 2003 as a seven-day event. It is now a ten- ...

,Taimur Sikander Mirza
"In Brief: Singing Back the Buffalo to world premiere at Big Sky fest"
'' Playback'', January 16, 2024. and had its Canadian premiere at the 2024

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and Jun ...

. A shorter edit of the film was broadcast by

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

in March 2025 as an episode of ''

The Nature of Things ''The Nature of Things'' (formerly, ''The Nature of Things with David Suzuki'') is a Canadian television series of documentary programs. It debuted on CBC Television on 6 November 1960. Many of the programs document nature and the effect th ...

''.

Awards

References

External links

* {{Tasha Hubbard 2024 films 2024 documentary films Canadian documentary films Documentary films about First Nations English-language Canadian films English-language documentary films 2020s Canadian films Films directed by Tasha Hubbard