The Future of the Tribes and the Parks

The MHA Nation lives just north and a little east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but under drastically different circumstances than the people in and around Medora. Time and again, the MHA reservation was reduced by federal fiat and exploitative deals—from more than 12 million acres to less than 1 million. The dispossessions continued well into the 20th century: During construction of the Garrison Dam and Reservoir on the Missouri River in the 1940s and ’50s, up to 80 percent of the reservation population was forced to relocate away from the fertile river bottoms that had given them life and defined them as a people for centuries.

In the 1860s, long before the dam was built, the MHA had lived mostly at a place called Like-a-fishhook Village, Royce Young Wolf, the collections manager at a new cultural center the MHA are building, told me. “It’s all under the lake now, flooded out,” she said. We were standing at Oxbow Overlook inside the park, looking down at the Little Missouri River as it wound lazily through acres of cottonwood and grassy clearings. “They were self-sufficient,” she said. “Each village had its own garden. Many families had sacred bundle-keepers.” The dam was planned without any meaningful consultation of the MHA Nation; after the Army Corps of Engineers threatened to confiscate the land it needed, citing eminent domain, the tribes had little choice but to come to the negotiating table and eventually cede territory. By 1949, they had received settlements totaling only $12.6 million for the more than 150,000 acres that were taken.

“They moved us from where water was plentiful to where there wasn’t any,” Young Wolf said. “Our river bottoms were the most fertile in the whole state … But when we were flooded, we were moved to areas where there’s poor soil and no water and we couldn’t sustain

large gardens.” The tribes’ rights to use the land on the reservoir’s shoreline—for hunting or fishing or plant-gathering—were denied.

In recent years, the MHA have been in the grip of rapid, violent, and remunerative fracking enterprises. As I drove north from the park, I saw land bearing scars—pipes, gas vents, and fracking pads dotting the hills. In 2014, the former tribal chair Tex Hall promised the tribes “sovereignty by the barrel,” and he wasn’t wrong: The tribes are wealthier than they have been since before the first Treaty of Fort Laramie. But by encouraging and facilitating oil extraction, they put themselves at odds with their own cultural legacy and connection to the land.

Native American nations such as the MHA are in a difficult position. They have endured state-sponsored assaults on their families, communities, land, and ways of life. Their traditional political structures and institutions have suffered under the paternalism of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which controls Native land by holding it in trust.

On one hand, we are sovereign nations with our own laws and law enforcement, courts, and municipal infrastructures, all derived from those rights that we have managed to retain. Contrary to popular myth, neither casinos nor the right to gamble were “given” to tribes as a kind of pity payment or as the recognition of a debt owed us. The casino industry is the modern expression of a civil right to gamble that we had before white people came along, a right we have retained and that was affirmed by the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, without a strong tax base or much commerce—extractive industries, casino gambling, and tax-free cigarette sales are notable exceptions—we are dependent on federal support for education, health care, infrastructure, and our continued survival. We are, in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, “domestic dependent nations,” and thus live in constant tension.

The MHA have had their struggles— with unemployment, substance abuse, a destructive marriage to the oil-and-gas industry, and intergenerational trauma inflicted by the U.S. government. But tribes are much more than the sum of their troubles. The MHA are also keenly protective of their heritage and culture. The cultural center they are constructing is a state-of-the-art facility in service to these ideals.

The MHA Interpretive Center is on Army Corps of Engineers land because that land is near the river, which is so essential to MHA history, Delphine Baker, the director of the Interpretive Center, told me. She was instantly recognizable to me as a kind of fierce, no-nonsense Native auntie. Government officials didn’t want the tribes to own that land, she said matter-of-factly—the tribes now hold a lease instead—out of a concern that the tribes would take control of recreation rights and not allow nontribal members to have access. “The tribe never is interested in blocking access. But, you know, that’s a fear.”

The facility is gorgeous—swooping embankments and curving walks mirror the rolling hills and grasslands of the MHA tribal area. Inside is a partial replica of an earth lodge, the traditional dwelling of the three tribes, and gallery space that tells the story of the MHA. The Interpretive Center will be the home for hundreds, if not thousands, of artifacts taken from the tribes over the years. And it will not be merely a show-and-tell kind of endeavor. The center will cultivate traditional plants on a rooftop garden. A café will serve traditional foods. There is a recording studio for preserving tribal languages, and a research space where tribal members will be able to trace their lineage. For so many Native people who have been separated from their tribes because of federal meddling, reconnecting is an important service the center can provide. To call this an Interpretive Center isn’t quite right. It is more like a cultural mothership.

“If you lose your culture, you lose your sovereignty and your tribe,” Baker told me. “And that’s what we’re fighting against.”

It is not the first such fight. During the early reservation period, a difficult and fractious time when the people at Likea-fishhook Village were trying to figure out a new way of living, a splinter group wanted to hunt and garden in the old communal ways. So they left, relocating outside the reservation, about 120 miles upriver. “That group became known as the Xoshga, and they were led by Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull,” Young Wolf told me. “When they separated, they were taking a stand against assimilation and Christianity. They stayed away for over 20 years.” They revived ceremonies and songs and dances. They preserved knowledge of local plants. While they were gone, Young Wolf said, the community at Like-a-fishhook Village suffered from being split apart into small plots of land. But the Xoshga “kept our traditions safe while they were away. And it’s because of them we have many of our traditions today.”

In 1894, the government forced the Xoshga back to the reservation. They were treated badly at first by many of the MHA members who had stayed behind, Young Wolf told me. They were looked at as backward and savage. But now, to be Xoshga is to be connected to the land, to tradition, and to a spirit of resistance. The Xoshga were saved by the land, and their return to it saved their tribe.

Opposite page: Evan Thompson grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. An attorney, he works on issues of tribal sovereignty, civil litigation, and general tribal advocacy throughout the Northwest.

THE AMERICAN WEST BEGAN WITH WAR BUT CONCLUDED WITH PARKS.