MEADOW LAKE — On a frigid prairie day, students from northern Saskatchewan gathered outside — not for recess, but for a lesson. Dressed in layers against the December wind, they stood around a freshly harvested buffalo.
There was no textbook. Instead, knives were passed between mittened hands as they learned to skin, gut, and cut the meat for their school lunches.
The buffalo harvest project, led by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council and its member First Nations, is changing how a generation thinks about food, tradition and self-sufficiency.
“It’s a food source, so there’s this nutritional value, but it’s so much more than that,” said Tammy Shakotko, a community nutritionist with Meadow Lake council. “The real value is cultural — the social and emotional connection students form with the process, the land and each other.”
Buffalo once roamed the northern Saskatchewan plains in dizzying numbers, supporting Indigenous communities for generations. Colonial expansion and overhunting in the late 1800s led to the deliberate near-extinction of the herds, disrupting traditional ways of life, food security and cultural practices.
A few buffalo were brought back to community land in 2019. The herd now numbers over 130 — enough to harvest from in a miniaturized version of the feasts of a previous generation.
Land-based education
Last year, the buffalo harvest project brought together students from four First Nations schools: Flying Dust First Nation, Clearwater River Dene Nation, Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation, and, later, Buffalo River Dene Nation. Over the course of the season, multiple harvest days were held.
Students gathered outside as Gary Gorst, the buffalo herd manager, prepped the harvest site.
"When I go out, I'll shoot them in the head," Gorst explained.
"If you shoot them in the heart, you waste a pile of meat ... by shooting them in the head, they'll just fall down. You don't waste any meat."
The herd lives on land just across the road from the school. Gorst manages a mix of bulls, calves and buffalo, and selects animals for harvest by tracking their age and condition throughout the year.
Once he has identified an older animal, he informs the community. The harvest is also done to maintain herd size and prevent overgrazing of prairie grasslands.
Then, he goes alone to avoid startling the animals and ensure the correct animal is harvested.
"If I bring two or three people or different boys, they [buffalo] get all excited and get running," he said.
Later, after Gorst delivers the buffalo carcass, students huddle in tents or stand nearby in heavy parkas and winter boots. The frigid weather is a critical ally.
"It's easier to handle meat," Gorst said. "You got your snow and all that stuff, and you lay the buffalo down and it's on the snow and keeps nice and clean."
Chelsa Moosehunter, a land-based teacher at Kopahawakenum Community School who helped plan the initiative with other schools and staff, said different nations each have their own way of butchering.
"We just let Clearwater do their process," Moosehunter said. "We hadn't butchered before. We didn't want to interfere.”
The buffalo's structure was different from moose or deer, she added. "It was interesting to watch how they butchered it, especially compared to Gary Gorst, who butchers all the time here."
Sarah McCloud, a Grade 8 teacher at Flying Dust First Nation School, pointed out that residents of Clearwater River Dene Nation, who had experience with moose and deer, kept the internal organs inside while carefully skinning the buffalo and removing the meat. The organs were then handled as the very last step. This approach stood out from more common methods, when gutting often occurs much earlier.
"They're a Dene Nation, so they harvest differently than a Cree Nation would," Moosehunter said. "It was really interesting to see the different cultures come together and harvest."
"It just comes to respect … Respecting how a certain nation does something."
Each group of students took part in skinning and cutting, first around the legs and tail, then slowly working toward the stomach. As they opened the chest cavity, the lungs, heart and liver were exposed.
Science teachers from the high school also attended, answering questions and connecting the experience to the curriculum, linking anatomy, biology and environmental studies.
Teachers recalled students pointing out the dead buffalo was "still twitching" and that its heart was "still hot."
Many of the students had never participated in a harvest like this. Some were hesitant to touch the animal at first, while others, already skilled from moose or deer hunting at home, stepped up to lead.
The harvest itself became a living classroom, said McCloud, whose class was the first to take part in the buffalo harvest last year.
"Kids taking turns kneeling using the knives... even holding a leg so they can get braided in there and get a piece of the meat off," McCloud said.
“It is a lot more different to get these kids hands-on experience, than to be sitting at a desk and reading about the steps of how to harvest a buffalo and answering questions on a worksheet or something,” she said.
Respect for the buffalo and the land guided every step. Elders led a pipe ceremony the day before the harvest to show deep gratitude for the animal’s sacrifice.
After harvest day and the initial processing, when the buffalo was broken down into large sections, the meat was taken to a local butcher shop where it was hung to age.
A week later, the students went back to the butcher shop to finish the processing. They cut the meat into smaller portions for hamburger, stew meat and roasts, then helped portion and vacuum seal it.
Once packaged, it was stored in the school’s deep freezer to be used for lunches there.
"It depends on the size of the buffalo, but one buffalo could feed 200 or 300 people," Gorst said.
Food safety
Bringing buffalo meat into school kitchens was no simple feat.
“The idea of food safety was difficult,” said Moosehunter. “Some cooks were saying, ‘We're not sure if we can serve this,’ or ‘We're not sure how to make sure the meat is safe from harvest to plate.’”
Schools closer to urban centres face stricter food safety regulations, according to educators.
"Here, it was more of a pushback because we're so close to the city … we have so many more rules than the northern schools do in what we can feed our students," Moosehunter said.
Shakotko, who worked with the community as a coordinator, said they brought in an environmental health officer to ensure traditional harvest methods met modern health standards for school meals. Their solution was to track the buffalo from field to fork — documenting where and when each harvest took place, how the meat was packaged, and making sure it met food safety standards and cultural protocols.
This is something many First Nations communities across Canada struggle with — barriers around food sovereignty and permission to use traditional foods in regulated settings, said Carolyn Webb, program director at Farm to Cafeteria Canada, a national initiative that helps schools integrate local and traditional foods into student meals and provided some of the buffalo project’s funding.
Cost savings and reclaiming identity
At Flying Dust First Nation, bringing buffalo back to the land is not only filling the freezer, but also cutting costs.
Moosehunter said rising food prices have made it harder for schools to provide nutritious meals.
“A lot of our meat comes from town,” she said. “We did this harvest to make sure our freezer was full. It just makes more sense.”
“This is another way for our school to save on those costs,” she said. “Being independent. Not relying on Meadow Lake or outside stores.”
But the impact goes beyond cost savings.
“We're like an urbanized community,” said Moosehunter. “For us, it’s very important that we start to show our kids in the school these traditional values that were lost.”
Learning about buffalo gives students a direct connection to their land, food and culture.
“I think for Flying Dust, it’s that sense of life,” McCloud said. “There is a lot of culture that’s been lost, so this is one of those things that helps us remember who we are.”
Having buffalo back in the community, she said, is a symbol —“A symbol that we’re moving in the direction of returning to who we were originally,” McCloud s
