Native Americans Fight to Take Back the National Bison Range in Montana

In the beginning, centuries before the Lewis and Clark Expedition discovered the land of the Flathead Indian in Northwest Montana, the tribes were the stewards of the environment, keepers of the bison, land, and wildlife. The water was clean, and everything was used and recycled. It was and is a natural state of existence for Native Americans.

Tribes comprising the Flathead Indian Nation were: Salish, Kootenai, Bitterroot and Pend d'Oreille. These tribes are native to the land and have lived in the area for 14,000 years. Today, they are simply known as the Confederated Salish, and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, or CSKT.

In the summer of 1855, the Hellgate treaty was signed between the United States Government and the tribes. But it was riddled with translation problems and neither side was able to negotiate terms, nevertheless 21 million acres of land was taken from the Indians in exchange for the 1.3 million of reservation land, now lying south of the Flathead Lake. The tribes were transferred to this reservation land to an area now called Lake County seat in Montana.

In 1908, the Federal government again stepped in to take 18,000 acres of land for a new wildlife refuge, now known, as the National Bison Range as an effort to save the buffalo. This at first galled Native Americans who were cheated out of their ancestral lands in the first place. They had to give up more land to the federal government. However, it made these peaceful tribes more on alert and they became determined to learn the laws of these foreign despots.

Ironically, Indian tribal member, Walking Coyote, saved the diminishing bison in the area that the federal government had signed to protect. He had secured two bulls and two cows of buffalo to develop a herd on the land in 1874 when the buffalo was near extinction. The government ignored this act of preservation by Native Americans and as time went on the management of the bison range was not handed to the true keepers of the land, but by what is now the United States Fish Wildlife and Parks.