Treat Them as Buffalo by Blair Palmer Yoxall
“Do Indians Still Exist?” On Intergenerational Trauma and Indigenous Resilience Blair Palmer Yoxall Remembers the Family History That Inspired His Debut Novel Treat Them as Buffalo fertilized when I was five, riding in the backseat of my mom’s blue minivan along Cowboy Trail in the Alberta foothills. “Do Indians still exist?” I’d seen Indians in Westerns and comics and TV. They frightened me. From the rearview mirror, my mom seemed embarrassed when she chuckled. I knew my mom and I were Indigenous because her dad was. But the Indians I’d seen in movies dressed nothing like the people in my mom’s family. The Indians in Westerns had war paint and whooped like savages. The Indians in my family were all cowboys and cowgirls. Then when I was thirteen, my maternal grandfather passed away. My mom remembers my grandpa having an uncomfortable relationship with his mother. But I was close with my mom. Why couldn’t grandpa be close with his? By that point...
