Buffalo Stone

Buffalo Stone opens with a thousand hooves pounding the ground as we follow a herd of buffalo stampeding across the Blackfeet Reservation. Their caretaker, a vibrant auntie-figure named Shelly, leads the herd to its summer grazing grounds alongside her niece, Alia, who wants nothing of it.

Later, Alia’s older sister Nuna arrives on the reservation after more than a decade of absence and disconnection. It’s clear she doesn’t want to be back, but her recently deceased mother named Nuna Alia’s guardian, so she feels obligated to return. Alia resents her sister for leaving and resists her attempts to reconcile.

In the midst of this struggle, Nuna and Alia are roped into Shelly’s efforts to care for her buffalo, but they soon learn that neighboring cattle ranchers - two brothers - view the buffalo as an existential threat and there’s been a long-running conflict between them and Shelly. Nuna discovers one of the ranchers is her ex-boyfriend, and despite Nuna’s efforts to help, the tension only grows.

Meanwhile, relations between Nuna and Alia remain bumpy until Nuna challenges Alia to a traditional Blackfeet foot race and Nuna faints from exhaustion. Nuna wakes up in another plane and finds a buffalo stone - an ancient mythical Blackfeet stone known to bring prosperity and health to the tribe - which she brings with her back into her waking world. Shocked and altered by this experience, Nuna commits to repair her relationship with her sister and to help Shelly with her herd.

When the conflict with the cattle ranchers becomes deadly, Nuna is finally forced to face the pain she experienced as a child and discovers a new purpose and sense of place within her culture and the Blackfeet traditions. She steps into her power and finds a way to peace with the brothers, with Alia and the buffalo.

  • Daniel Glick
    Writer
  • Sarah Clark
    Writer
  • Ivy MacDonald
    Writer
  • Lily Gladstone
    Story By
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Genres:
    Indigenous, Women, Family, Drama
  • Number of Pages:
    94
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • SFFilm Rainin Grant Program
  • Illuminative and Netflix Producers Fellowship
Writer Biography - Daniel Glick, Sarah Clark, Ivy MacDonald

Sarah Clarke is an award-winning TV and film actress (24, Twilight, Bosch) who first learned about the Blackfeet buffalo program in 2016 when she helped write and produce Iniskim with Daniel Glick, the Emmy-winning short fiction film shot on the Blackfeet buffalo drive. It was after this project that she co-founded Thunderheart Films with Daniel and started work as a producer on the feature documentary, Bring Them Home with Ivy and Ivan Macdonald and Lily Gladstone. Bring Them Home tells the story of the Blackfeet mission to return wild buffalo to their lands, an experience that informed the writing of Buffalo Stone. The Documentary premiered at the 2024 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and won its Big Sky Award.

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