ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on lessons about bison, extractive industries, and wildlife management shared by Métis individuals in Fort McMurray, Alberta. In the first case study, I argue that an oil sands company uses a bison herd living on reclaimed land as a spectacle of corporate social responsibility. For Métis people, however, these corporate bison are “urban buffalos,” as one Métis trapper stated: they are distinct from free-roaming bison and represent an obfuscation of Métis legal orders that focus on autonomy and relationality in human–animal engagements. Second, tracing a brief history of the Wood Buffalo National Park, I demonstrate how federal and provincial governments regulated and restricted Indigenous harvesting over time, limiting opportunities for movement and practicing harvesting rights. The stories of bison in reclamation areas and in the park serve as a cautionary tale for a third bison population, the free-roaming and uniquely healthy Ronald Lake bison, whose territory intersects the footprint of a proposed open-pit mine. The chapter calls on wildlife management practitioners and industrial proponents to include Métis legal orders and reconciliation in their decision making.
