Relationships With Associated Indian Tribes

Ethnography Program staff foster and maintain positive and effective working relationships with the 26 tribes traditionally associated with Yellowstone through personal contacts with individuals and groups. Staff maintains a listserv that provides park press releases; special information related to winter management of the bison herd and other ethnographic resource information; and announcements about grant opportunities, job announcements, and other germane information. In one year, staff receives and makes more than 150 tribal phone calls. Since 2000, tribes have gathered annually at the park to engage in information exchange meetings about ethnographic resource issues. When associated tribal members request it, arrangements are made so that they can conduct religious ceremonies and other non-consumptive traditional activities at places in the park used historically for such purposes. For example, in 2004 and again in 2005, Yellowstone National Park was one of seven places along the Nez Perce Trail where Nez Perce chose to gather for a traditional pipe ceremony to honor the ancestors who tried to flee from the U.S. Army in 1877. (The circuitous route taken by the Nez Perce over 1,170 miles from northeastern Oregon to northern Montana was added to the National Trails System by Congress as the Nez Perce National Historic Trail in 1986.) Ethnography Program staff have consulted or developed relationships with tribes via or in regard to the many projects.

Ethnography Projects (in chronological order):

• Intertribal/intergovernmental consultation meetings. Also referred to as intergovernmental information exchange meetings (2000—2005).
• Community potlucks (2000—2005)
• Coeur d’Alene Tribe: cutthroat habitat (2000)
• Nez Perce Tribe: Nez Perce National Historic Trail (2000—2005)
• Oglala Sioux Tribe: elders’ accounts of wolves (2001)
• Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma: visits to Yellowstone (2001)
• Lower Brule Tribal Council and Council of Elders: visit to Yellowstone (2001)
• Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes: oral history project and production of the film, Before Yellowstone (2001—2003)
• Crow Tribe: oral history provided by elder (2002)
• South Dakota Sioux tribes and bands: Yellowstone National Park managers and staff visit to South Dakota (2002)
• Eastern Shoshone: singers and dancers perform Old Faithful (2002)
• Shoshone—Bannock Tribes: oral history interviews regarding Obsidian Cliff and use of Yellowstone National Park (2003)
• Consultation regarding Mammoth-to-Norris road development (2003)
• Nez Perce pipe ceremonies (2004, 2005)
• Consultation and determination of cultural affiliation at Yellowstone National Park regarding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (2005)
• Crow Kids Project (2005)

Current/Future Endeavors:

• Annual intertribal/intergovernmental information exchange meetings
• Nez Perce pipe ceremony
• Reservation visits regarding various ethnographic resources topics
• Bannock Trail
• Nez Perce National Historic Trail
• Ongoing consultation regarding bison management