The moment seemed to call for drastic action. Lucille Contreras’ youngest son was on his own, ranching buffalo on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in South Dakota where both lived. Her other kids were financially stable. For the first time, this mother of three didn’t have to consider what anyone else wanted.
The COVID-19 pandemic had her locked down and looking every day at the heaping stack of U.S. Department of Agriculture loan application papers that had lingered on her desk for years. Finally, she decided. It was time.
The career computer information tech worker from San Antonio would return to Texas and start to ranch buffalo, just as she’d learned in six years living with the Lakota. She believed her own people, the Lipan Apaches, needed buffalo too.
