ADMINISTRATION WANTS MONTANA MONUMENT
Even as the Trump administration is planning to shrink two sprawling Utah national monuments, it is talking with the Blackfeet Indian Tribe about creating a new one. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke described the Badger-two Medicine area as “one of the special places in our country” and deserving of national monument status.
BILLINGS, MONT.» Even as it clashes with American Indians over reductions to national monuments in the Southwest, the Trump administration is engaging with a Montana tribe over the creation of a new monument on the border of its reservation.
The Blackfeet Indian Tribe has long fought oil and gas drilling and other development within the Badger-two Medicine area — a mountainous expanse bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the tribe.
Blackfeet Chairman Harry Barnes said protection of that 200-square-mile area is paramount. But he sees a “workable solution” in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s proposal to co-manage the area with the tribe.
Zinke says he’d seek cocongressional approval for the co-management proposal, part of his recommendation to create national monuments at Badgertwo Medicine and two other sites — a Civil War camp in Kentucky and the Mississippi home of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
Barnes cautioned that the tribe would be unwilling to surrender treaty rights dating to the 1800s that let its members hunt, fish and gather timber from the Badger-two Medicine.
“The Blackfeet Tribe’s interest has always been protection of the Badger-two Medicine,” Barnes said. “We have fought a long time and we see it not being over yet.”
The Badger Two-medicine has deep cultural significance as the site of the tribe’s creation story and a place where traditional plants are still gathered for medicinal purposes.
The land was part of the Blackfeet Reservation until 1896. That’s when the tribe sold it and adjacent property that would later become Glacier National Park to the U.S. government for $1.5 million .
Badger-two Medicine is now within the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Zinke, a former Montana congressman who grew up around Glacier National Park, recently said he recognizes the area’s sacred value to the Blackfeet. He described the Badger-two Medicine as “one of the special places in our country” and deserving of national monument status.
“Here is a virtually untapped area to do it right, to generate income through tourism, a greater understanding of the culture,” Zinke said on a conference call to discuss the administration’s actions on national monuments.
Informal talks on the Badger-two Medicine are underway between the Blackfeet and Zinke’s office, Barnes said. Still, Barnes said the tribe remains united with a coalition of tribes in American Southwest that have joined with conservationists to fight Trump’s reductions to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-escalante monuments in Utah.