Buffalo Meat Helps Native American Group Revitalize Their Community

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, 90 miles from the nearest city and the third poorest county in the U.S., a Native American community is revitalizing their nation by returning to their roots.

Karlene Hunter

Karlene Hunter, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has spent more than 25 years working on educational and economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation, an area with steep unemployment and rampant obesity. In 2007, Hunter and her business partner Mark Tilsen started Native American Natural Foods, a food company that produces a line of buffalo snacks made on the reservation, including Tanka Bar, Tanka Bites, Tanka Dogs and Tanka Wild. Their goal was to build a national brand strong enough to improve the diets, economy and lives of the 35,000 tribal members.

“More than 100 years ago, the Lakota Indians were put on this reservation and our whole way of life was taken away,” Hunter says. “The buffalo provided our economic needs. In order to revitalize our culture, we had to revitalize who we were and where we came from.” She continues: “We looked at all the land around us and thought, Why aren’t we using this?”

They started by creating a snack bar based on a traditional Native American food called wasna, a pounded mix of dried buffalo meat and berries. “People said you have to use phosphates. Our people never did. We hit on how we can do it naturally by going back to our roots and relying on our buffalo nation again—on what we knew made us a strong, vibrant culture. Then we revamped it to today’s society,” Hunter explains. The buffalo are raised on open grassland, and there is no use of low-level antibiotics, hormones, drug residues or preservatives.

To date, the food company has created 18 fulltime positions, educated hundreds of young people about the history, sustainability and health benefits of lean buffalo, and put hundreds of thousands of dollars back into the Native American community through the purchase of buffalo meat.

“These are career positions. These aren’t lower level jobs,” Hunter asserts. And each job has a ripple effect. “When you come from 70 percent unemployment, one job makes a huge dent in your community. We have ladies that are employed here who then hire babysitters. We’re turning the dollar over more than once.”

They’ve also created the Tanka 501c3, a charitable fund that allows consumers to directly support programs and activities that will help return buffalo to the Great Plains and bring renewed health and opportunity to Native-American communities. “We didn’t create this business to get rich. We’re really trying to change our situation, our economy,” Hunter says. “We’re rising to where we began as a strong nation.”