Behind the rainbow buffalo: The story of an accidental icon

Patrick Lalley

June 21, 2021

The story of the rainbow buffalo began about 25 years ago.

Time is a good way to start an origin story.

And it’s true – more or less – at least true enough for the mythology of it.

Because the rainbow buffalo is something of a myth.

You see it everywhere in Sioux Falls today. On cars, bikes and storefronts. On flags, T-shirts and face masks.

The buffalo is the enduring symbol of strength of the people of the Northern Plains. The rainbow flag is the enduring symbol of strength against inequality.

It would be easy to believe that the fusing of the two icons was the purposeful intent of LGBTQ activists, with the spectrum of reactions and emotions that creates. There are people who will find nefarious motivation in every action, including this one.

That would be shortsighted, at the very least.

It would also be wrong.

The story of the rainbow buffalo is one of happenstance, circumstance and maybe a little fate, like all good myths should be.

*******

Thea Miller Ryan didn’t set out to create a symbol of LGBTQ rights.

In fact, she didn’t really set out to do anything all.

Thea was the first executive director of The Outdoor Campus. That’s the oasis of woods and walkways run by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department between 49th and 57th streets along the Big Sioux River.

She held that job for 25 years. And while the title and the term would suggest that one would be above the small tasks of operation, that wasn’t the case.

So it was that Thea was answering the phone over one particularly slow lunch hour.

Before her was construction paper, glue and time.

Reaching back to her elementary education, she remembered the mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow. That’s the actual rainbow, the physical manifestation of the bending of light that we perceive in our retina.

Roy G. Biv.

Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.

She glued the strips of paper together.

Now what?

First, she cut out an eagle, using a machine intended for kids’ craft classes.

That was pretty cool. What else?

“I was like, ‘Should I do a frog?’ ”

No. A buffalo made more sense.

And she hung it on the front door as if her kid brought it home from the first day of kindergarten.

That was it.

“It was seriously nothing more than that,” Thea said. “It was me messing around with glue and construction paper.”

Until it became much more than that.

*******

Construction paper morphed into symbolism on a day like any other at The Outdoor Campus in 2018.

Thea was taking pictures of a preschool class and getting permission from parents to put the images on social media.

The activity had something to do with ducks.

After class, Thea got a phone call.

“It was a mom who had just been at the class, and she was beyond belief angry. She was screaming at me on the phone. She said, ‘You are teaching my preschooler how to be a homosexual.’ ”

It took a few minutes for the woman to calm down enough for Thea to figure out what she was talking about.

It was the rainbow buffalo.

The woman told her to take it down.

Thea said no.

“She said, ‘I’ll call the mayor’s office, and I’ll call the governor’s office. I’ll make your life hell.’ ”

Initially, the GF&P home office in Pierre called and said they would stand behind her.

Then, the mayor’s office called.

Then, someone in the governor’s office – at that time Gov. Dennis Daugaard – called the GF&P.

“They told me I would take it down. And I would tell anybody who asked me why I took it down that it was because it’s a political symbol,” Thea said.

That’s the moment when the rainbow buffalo became more than construction paper and glue.

“I wasn’t going to take it down, and I wasn’t going to say those words.”

******

Thea took some time off.

She didn’t want to get fired over politics, particularly over something that wasn’t political.

The larger social principle found her, however.

Word about the dust-up at The Outdoor Campus leaked out through chatter and social media. But it didn’t go beyond that, primarily because of Thea’s self-imposed seclusion.

Without a source, there is no media story. And the only source wasn’t talking.

Which only added to the mythology.

Thea wasn’t talking publicly, but she was commiserating with friends and family. From one of those discussions came the idea to make something good from something bad.

How about selling rainbow buffalo stickers and donating the money to Sioux Falls Pride, suggested one friend.

And that was that.

“I called (Sioux Falls) Pride and met with them,” Thea said. “We said, ‘If it’s OK with you guys, we want to give you the rainbow buffalo.’ They were grateful and said thank you.”

*********

It was Pride Week three years ago that the rainbow buffalo was introduced to Sioux Falls.

The response has been beyond what anybody could expect. People post photos on social media of their stickers on cars and their T-shirts while on vacation. Somebody made a frosted sugar cookie.

A native two-spirit couple who won “The Amazing Race Canada” wore the logo during the competition.

The literal buffalo – technically the American Bison – survive pounding blizzards and searing drought on the open prairie. They turn into the storm rather than run from it. The buffalo goes deep into our psyche, the legacy of the Native American culture that preceded the rest of us but is tied to our home in ways we cannot understand. Or choose not to.

“I feel like it’s a powerful image, and I just hope that the power that it has is always used for good,” Thea said. “I don’t want to see anybody make it something bad.”

Still, things haven’t changed much in three years for LGBTQ issues. Every January, South Dakota is embroiled in yet another legislative discussion about bathrooms and birth certificates.

Somehow, it has become a sports story.

But for every bill or self-serving political speech, another sticker is stuck, a flag is waved, and a T-shirt is pulled on.

The thing about imposing one’s social mores upon another is that they can push back.

And if you push too hard, if your standing allows you to pull in the mayor and the governor, what you may get is a bumper sticker, an icon, a movement.

You push people to action.

“It made me an activist,” Thea said. “It was an accident, but it made me that. I have met the most amazing people, and I will stand up against any kind of legislation. I will stand up. I am proud of that.”

******

Sioux Falls Pride took the buffalo and ran with it. They’ve turned the symbol into a fundraising and awareness tool.

Go to SiouxFallsPride.org, and you’ll find a rainbow buffalo store where you can buy all manner of merchandise.

All the money raised goes to provide scholarships to LGBTQ students.

The total recently passed $30,000.

There’s a parade and celebration at Cherapa Place in downtown Sioux Falls on Saturday to celebrate Pride Week. Sales are sure to be brisk.

“The rainbow buffalo has become an immediately recognizable symbol of our fight for universal inclusion in the Sioux Falls area,” said Rachel Polan, marketing director for Pride. “Its origin story is one people resonate with instantly. Sioux Falls Pride wanted to build on the nationwide attention the original bison received to help local youth achieve their goals through post-secondary education.”

They also changed it a bit, adding a band of brown and black to reflect people of color and feathers that represent the two-spirit identity of Native American culture. They also flipped the color order because red first symbolizes being part of the community and purple first symbolizes being an ally – like Thea.

“Sioux Falls Pride recognizes that we live on Native American land and that they have their own unique identities within their culture,” Polan said. “Our community includes everyone who lives in the Sioux Falls area, and we want to visibly recognize the identities people might not know about.”

*******

Thea left her position at The Outdoor Campus shortly after the controversy.

It wasn’t just the buffalo incident. It no longer felt right for a lot of reasons.

Today, she’s the director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, or OLLI, at the University of South Dakota in Sioux Falls.

And life is good.

“I feel like I have a mission or a goal to make people be kind,” she said. “That’s all I’m asking, be kind. For me, it was fulfilling, maybe something that I needed, a reason to be me.”

*****

Maddy Ryan was a winter baby.

When it was too cold to take the stroller outside, Thea would pack up her infant daughter and head to The Empire Mall where it was warm, with a lot of things to occupy that growing little brain.

It was the buffalo that Maddy latched onto. Two huge, stuffed bison heads on the South Dakota Made store.

“We’d stop and look at them, and she’d sit there forever,” Thea said.

Over time, the word came slowly to Maddy’s little lips.

Bu… Buff… Buffalo.

“I called her my baby buffalo,” Thea said. “I’ve always called her that.”

Maddy turned 25 not so long ago. She’s on her own now, living the life of a young professional.

When she turned 18, she got a tattoo to mark the entry into adulthood.

It’s a little buffalo on her right arm.

Thea recalls this seemingly unrelated anecdote about her daughter in a newly built bar and grill on the far north side of the city, where the suburban sprawl meets emerging warehouses of the commercial giants of the world.

She stops for a moment, caught in the intersecting themes of time.

“I think it was probably supposed to happen,” she said. “I’ve never made that connection before, but I guess I do have an affinity for buffalo. It was meant to be.”

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