Montana Poet Laureate says Yellowstone making progress on re-indigenization

BILLINGS – In the summer of 2022, as Chris La Tray drove toward Madison Junction in Yellowstone National Park, the sight of 13 tepees perched along the Madison River overwhelmed him.

“I had to pull off the road and weep,” he told George Bumann during a recent Yellowstone Summit online conversation. “It was magnificent. It was beautiful. It was soul stirring to see the evidence of what should have been there all along.

“Because as we know, as part of the darker history of the park that we have to reconcile, is the fact that the Indigenous people … one of the last things done before it became a park was chasing the last native people out.”

Glacier guy

La Tray, who grew up in Frenchtown, Montana, is Métis, a member of the Montana Little Shell Chippewa Tribe and the Montana Poet Laureate. This summer his third book, “Becoming Little Shell: Returning Home to the Landless Indians of Montana,” will be published by Milkweed Editions.

Because he grew up in northwestern Montana, he was always more of a Glacier National Park guy, he said. But since he’s conducted workshops in Yellowstone, as well as participated in the 2022 All Nations Teepee Village that made him so emotional, the first national park has become life affirming for him.

Established in 1872, 2022 marked the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone and the beginning of an era of honoring Indigenous people at the national park. This summer will be the third year of the Yellowstone Revealed “immersive cultural and art exhibition” in the park. It will also be the third year for the Tribal Heritage Center at Old Faithful.

“No one can tell the stories like the tribal members directly to the public,” park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in his interview with Bumann.

The heritage center annually hosts around 30 or more tribal scholars who interact with the public.

“That’s become very popular,” Sholly said. “Thousands and thousands of people going in and interacting with the tribal members. That’s been incredible.”

Sholly said the Tribal Heritage Center could easily become permanent, and the park’s staff has been open to other tribal requests.

“There’s a lot of other ideas out there for how we can continue to work with them and have them in the park, tribal internships and other things that we’re doing,” he added.

Spiritual animals

The opportunity to be a tribal representative at the All Nations Teepee Village was “transcendent,” La Tray said, noting his people and others have been a part of the region for thousands of years. The fact that Yellowstone still contains much of the wildlife that has lived in the region for millennia is also significant.

La Tray noted the Anishinaabe, which includes the Métis and Inuit, have principles of character to live by known as the Seven Grandfather Teachings. Each principle is represented by an animal: The turtle (truth), bear (bravery), buffalo (respect), raven (integrity), eagle (love), beaver (wisdom) and wolf (humility).

These animals still can be found in Yellowstone, “shoulder to shoulder,” La Tray said. “That’s our salvation, just rerecognizing our relationship with everything else.”

Because of its wildness and wildlife, Yellowstone has a “deep, spiritual energy,” La Tray added. “That is one of the things that connects everyone … the relatively untouched nature” of the park and its wildlife.

The Anishinaabe believe everything used to communicate. Nature spoke to those who listened. Rocks are the oldest storytellers.

“We have distanced ourselves from it,” La Tray said. “That is what makes Yellowstone so universally connected. It has that kind of power. Spiritual power to me.”

“I love the world, but I have a special spot in my heart for Yellowstone.”

Renaming history

La Tray is impressed with the progress being made by Yellowstone as officials work to build closer relationships with 27 tribes, but he also noted the park has a long way to go. He pointed to the Roosevelt Arch, at the North Entrance, as one example. The arch just outside the community of Gardiner honors the 26th president of the United States, who laid one of the cornerstones at a ceremony in 1903.

Roosevelt, a figurehead for conservationists, also was responsible for overseeing assimilation of native people during their relocation to reservations.

Consequently, Roosevelt is a controversial figure for Natives. In 1886, he was quoted saying, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”

“Roosevelt’s signature achievements of environmental conservation and the establishment of national parks came at the expense of the people who had stewarded the land for centuries,” wrote author Christopher Klein in an article for “History” magazine.

“How do we feel welcome in a place where one of the major landmark gates is named after someone like that?” La Tray questioned.

Although La Tray said he feels like there’s a groundswell of interest in the Indigenous worldview, highlighted by books like “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, it will take time to figure out what the concept of “re-Indigenization” means.

For instance, if place names are changed, which tribe’s name should be used? If signage reflects native history, which tribe should be consulted?

“Just the fact that there’s a conversation is, I think, a decent start,” La Tray said, a discussion that shouldn’t be relegated only to places like Yellowstone.