Tribes honor the birth of a rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone, spotted on June 4, and reveal its name: Wakan Gli.
This is the second reported birth of a white buffalo this year. The last one was born April 25th.
A white buffalo calf named Miracle was born on a farm in Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1994, according to the National Park Service (NPS). Previously, there hadn’t been a known white calf birth since 1933. Another white calf was born in 2012 in Avon, Minnesota, but survived only a few weeks. Last year, Wyoming’s Bear River State Park saw the birth of another white bison – this animal’s coloration likely comes from cattle genes mixed into its lineage rather than albinism or leucism, and its mother is also a pale white hue.
Native American tribes say this is a blessing and a sign of good things to come.
White buffalo calves are sacred to a number of Native American tribes, including the Sioux, Cherokee, Navajo, Lakota and Dakota.
“There are prophecies about white buffalo calves being born at a time of great change,” Jason Baldes, a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe and executive director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, says to National Geographic’s Jason Bittel. “We have stories of the Eastern Shoshone people hunting and pursuing white bison or white buffalo from well over a century ago.”
Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, tells BBC News that the calf’s birth is “a blessing and a warning.”
