The Buffalo that could not dream
Felix von der Osten
2025 — Montana, USA
About this series
The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation sits in the high plains of northern Montana, between the Milk River and the Little Rocky Mountains. The shared homeland of the A’aninin (Gros Ventre) and Nakoda (Assiniboine) peoples, two nations historically in conflict, forced to live together by the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty and the dispossession that followed the Appropriations Act.
The project documents the “Rez” with a focus on how and where people live, and their struggle to maintain a deeply spiritual culture against two forces: the indifference of greater America, and the growing distance between young people and their own traditions.
Today Fort Belknap spans 2,600 square kilometers and is home to around 3,000 people. A fraction of the territory both tribes once moved across freely, and a place where poverty, isolation, and few ways out define daily life in direct contrast to a spiritual richness most of the outside world knows nothing about.
The work grew from close proximity. Living with families, attending ceremonies, spending time with people before ever photographing.
The title refers to the buffalo as the center of indigenous cosmology, and to a generation that carries that inheritance while living a world that was never built for them.
Photographer: Felix von der Osten
Nationality: German
Based in: Cologne, Germany
Website: www.vonderosten.de
Instagram: @fvdo
Felix von der Osten (b. 1989) is a documentary photographer and filmmaker from Cologne, Germany. He completed his Bachelor of Photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund in 2016 and works primarily with analog large and medium format photography, with a focus on social identity and cultural community subjects.
His photographs have been published in The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, CNN, and brand eins, among others. He won the BJP Breakthrough Undergraduate Series Award in 2015 and was named an Emerging Photographer by PDN. He was also shortlisted for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award and Magnum’s 30 Under 30.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Delhi, Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Festival Circulations in Paris, “The Way Back” in Lyon, “30 Jahre Kunstgruppe” in Cologne (2025), and “Keep Your Eyes Peeled XI” at AFF Galerie in Berlin (2026).
He lives and works in Cologne alongside his creative duo partner, photographer Kayla Kauffman.