Vision Statement
The
vision has about it the suggestion of prophesy and the tacit implication
that it will be acted upon. A vision must not be wasted. The vision quest is
in some sense a covenant between the seeker and the sought. The seeker does
not necessarily know what it is that he seeks, but he knows that it is a
relation that will change his life and give it strength, direction, purpose,
and meaning.
N.
Scott Momaday
The
Buffalo is more than an animal. It is the sun’s shadow. Our lives are
bound to it. If it lives, we live. If it dies, we die. It is our life and
our living shield.
An old Kiowa man
at Medicine Park, Oklahoma spoke these words to me several years ago. I hear
them often in my mind. In the near distance were buffalo, mostly cows and
calves. The newborn calves were lying here and there in the tall grass of the
rolling plains. There were orange and umber colored and they were beautiful. The
sky was clear and blue. The Wichita Mountains were lofty and sharply defined. It
was a day out of Genesis, the first of all days. This is where, according to
Kiowa oral tradition, the buffalo emerged from the underground, and it is where,
when the Plains culture came to an end, they returned to the earth. The Kiowa
believe that they will emerge again, and the people and their animal
representation of the sun will flourish once more.
The buffalo is
an appropriate symbol for the sacred in the Native American world. It stands for
the many elements of sacred which have been lost to Indian peoples. I believe
that the greatest threat to the survival of Native Americans –more than the
wars, the disease, the poverty, the discrimination, and the pervasive
indifference that have defined their existence from the time of European
occupation– is the removal of the spiritual matrix of traditional life, the
theft of the sacred. From the beginning, American
Indians have centered their worldviews upon profound belief in the spiritual.
That belief has become tentative in our time. Fewer and fewer Indian young
people are acquiring those aspects of sacred being which have always defined
them. I am deeply concerned to expose this theft of the sacred, and to see that
American Indians, young people especially, are allowed to define themselves in
terms of the spiritual values that inform their ancient heritage. The sense of
the sacred, which essentially informed the world of their ancestors, has been
stifled.
The Buffalo Trust will be a place, on sacred ground, where Indian people
can come immediately into the presence of sacred matter –objects, stories,
music, dances, feasts, and ceremonies of all kinds. I envision the Buffalo Trust
as a physical, geographic place, and eventually, places, study centers; but the
Buffalo Trust will also carry the experience of the sacred to Indian people
wherever they are located, in outreach activities directed both to Indian
audiences and broader audiences. The Buffalo Trust will afford opportunities for
elders and medicine people to share their wisdom with others, for scholars to
exchange ideas in an atmosphere of learning and participation, for Indian and
non-Indian people to congregate freely in a spirit of celebration, good will,
community, and reverence for the sacred and human being. Above all, the Buffalo
Trust will provide experiences of sacred space where American Indian young
people can and will regain that sense of the sacred that distinguishes them as
the inheritors of a rich and venerable culture, that will throughout their lives
enable them to know who they are in the spirit of their unique inheritance.
The Buffalo Trust does not offer an entertainment, nor even a learning
experience in the usual sense. The Buffalo Trust evokes sacred reality and
restores the native and human spirit. The goal of the Buffalo Trust is to
restore and preserve the sacred, and perpetuate the sacred cultural inheritance
of American Indian people. I believe with all my heart that we must undertake
this task. The identity of a people is at stake – and a way of looking at the
world that is vested in wonder, delight, belief, and grace.
Mission Statement
I
founded the Buffalo Trust, having concluded that young Indian people are
drifting inexorably from the ancient center of their traditional world. I
have seen evidence of this all my life, and indeed I have been acutely aware
of my own loss of traditional values.
N. Scott Momaday
The Buffalo Trust will present to Native American people, young people
especially, the opportunity to take active part in the perpetuation and
development of their own Native American cultural identity through exposure to
and interaction with elements of their shared ancestral heritage under the
direction of knowledgeable tribal elders and scholars. This process will serve
to counter the deprivation of American Indian culture and religious identity
caused by the theft of the sacred.
Working towards the goal of developing inter-tribal as well as
inter-cultural appreciation of the sacred, the Buffalo Trust will disseminate
knowledge of and stimulate interest in the preservation and development of
Native American cultural identities and religion. Outreach programs will include
lectures, publications, video and audio recordings, dance and personal
interaction with traditional sacred art and artifacts. In its outreach
activities, the Buffalo Trust will involve Native American audiences and broader
audiences with living culture, such as dance, ceremony, and oratory. In
addition, presentations will include art, artifacts, and other examples of
Native American material culture.
The heart of the Buffalo Trust is its study center, first one and
eventually several, where Native American elders and medicine people, scholars,
and people who express the sacred through ceremony, art and the spoken, sung,
and written word, can come together to preserve and perpetuate the living
culture. Each study center will be located at or near a site of sacred and
cultural significance; initial candidates for consideration will include San
Diego Canyon in the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico, and
Kiowa-Comanche-Apache land in Oklahoma near Rainy Mountain. In addition to
taking back to their communities and institutions the fruits of their
interactions, participants in study center activities will work together at the
study center to develop outreach activities directed to schools across the
country, and to other audiences in Indian country and Indian population centers.
In addition to its outreach activities, the mission of the Buffalo Trust
to preserve and perpetuate the living culture and the cultural inheritance of
the sacred will include providing a repository, in Native American custody and
control, for sacred cultural artifacts that are being lost, either because
traditional custodians are dying without heirs and will not entrust what they
hold to non-Native custody, or because repatriation is refused to Native
American repositories for lack of curatorial facilities or expertise. At the
study center, the Buffalo Trust will hold a permanent collection of donated
materials of a sacred nature and cultural artifacts, together with similar
material loaned to the Trust. With appropriate safeguards that respect the
sacred nature of the materials, they will be preserved and made available for
sacred use and, as appropriate, for use in outreach activities and personal
interaction and study.
The Buffalo Trust will also maintain an archive of printed, audio and
video documentation preserving its activities at the study center and its
presentations across the country for further dissemination and use. The archive
will also include written as well as video and audio oral histories.
The Buffalo Trust will be a non-profit educational corporation
established and operated for the benefit of all Native American communities and
society at large, open to all interested and qualified individuals without
regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, or disability.
Vision/Mission 
