Shock & awe at the Smithsonian bison exhibit

Good morning, DMV! It’s Thursday, May 7.

This year marks the U.S. semiquincentennial. Let’s take a beat and break that down:

That is, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That’s what several events around town (and the country) are commemorating, including a bison exhibit that opens today at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I went Tuesday morning for a press preview of the show.

(Warning: The following information is interesting and enlightening, but not my usual fare of comfort and joy.)

“Bison: Standing Strong” includes a full-sized bull bison specimen and the six-foot-wide skull of an ancient bison ancestor. But what struck me most were two images, including a reproduction of this drawing of a bison herd that stretched beyond the horizon.

It reminded me of the wildebeest migration as captured in the 1994 documentary “Africa: The Serengeti,” which I saw in my college years at the IMAX theater of the other museum of natural history in New York City. More than three decades later, the footage and James Earl Jones’s voice are still imprinted in my memory.

Bison — also commonly called buffalos — have been in North America for more than 100,000 years, according to the exhibit, with 35 to 45 million estimated to have once roamed the land. (According to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, there were 30 to 100 million bison on the Great Plains before 1800.) Indigenous communities lived alongside them for thousands of years, depending on bison for everything from food and clothing to shelter, said the museum news release.

Then in the late 19th century, the release said, the U.S. government “encouraged buffalo hunting as part of a larger effort to displace Native communities and upend their traditional ways of life.” The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, brought settlers who encroached on Native lands and bison ranges despite treaties. The trains also brought sportsmen armed with high-powered rifles — one of which is in the exhibit, next to a giant cutout reproduction of this photo.

It’s two men posing with a mountain of bison skulls. “Between 1870 and 1880, the bison population was reduced to a few hundred individuals,” says exhibit signage that includes the bolded text. Bison hides were processed for use as industrial machine belts, while their bones were used to refine sugar and ground up for use in glue, fertilizer and bone china.

In 2016, President Barack Obama signed legislation designating the bison as the national mammal of the United States. Bison depend on conservation efforts for survival.

Today about 30,000 bison survive in conservation herds (managed by government, tribal and nonprofit organizations), according to the National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, while 500,000 are managed commercially as livestock.

Now, the Trump administration is pushing to remove bison from public lands in Montana.

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I plan to join a community bike ride, 5:30-8 p.m. today, around the 16-mile Arlington Loop. Riders meet at Conte’s Bike Shop at 1350 S. Eads St. in Arlington. Click here for details and to register.

And if you do go on the ride — please send me your photos, so that if I write about it, I can use your pics!

Also, I found another cool event this weekend: The Potomac Bonsai Festival at the U.S. National Arboretum. The event, with a preview Friday of vendors and displays, will include workshops and demos on Saturday and Sunday.

Sam Freund, a resident of the Brookland neighborhood of D.C. who is always up to fun things around town, took this pic last Friday and sent it in with with a brief note: “Galactic Empire metal band, at a concert on Barracks Row in honor of May 4.”

Wow, here’s their version of the Imperial March.

Share your recent photos of life in the DMV here.

😉