![]() In 2016, the National Park Service modified its regulations to allow federally recognized tribes to gather and remove plants or plant parts for traditional, non-commercial purposes, but the result isn’t a blanket entitlement. We won’t disturb things, we won’t bother things. “I think what we’re asking for is to allow us to tell our story, but also allow us to have access,” Eastern Shoshone Business Council Member and historian John Washakie said during a panel discussion on Native people’s historical and cultural connections to the park. “Maybe people don’t believe it, maybe we need more time trust to build, but that is a two-way street,” Sholly told a panel during a discussion about sovereign relations in Yellowstone at a sesquicentennial symposium in Cody. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)ĭarrell Shay, a land-use policy commissioner for the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, speaks at an August 2022 Old Faithful gathering that honored his peoples’ ancestral connection to Yellowstone National Park. Shoshone-Bannock Chairman Nathan Small and Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly converse at an Old Faithful tribal gathering in August 2022. At the Shoshone-Bannock gathering where Wadsworth spoke, Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly presented the tribe’s chairman, Nathan Small, with a medallion adorned with 23 bison to symbolize all that remained of the species before bison were brought back from the brink at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch more than a century ago. Much of the effort has been ceremonial: There have been roundtable discussions, teepee villages erected, a rematriation performance and artwork showcase and other activities and gatherings celebrating Yellowstone’s tribal heritage. The National Park Service has embraced Yellowstone’s 150th anniversary as a historical pivot point and an opportunity to mend tribal relations and bolster Native American involvement. “Ultimately, re-indigenizing Yellowstone can restore the shine to the nation’s original crown jewel and help ensure that all Americans can look forward to the park’s next 150 years and beyond.” Pivot point “Yellowstone can once again change the world,” authors Kekek Jason Stark, Autumn Bernhardt, Monte Mills and Jason Robison wrote. Re-Indigenizing Yellowstone, a 94-page article recently published in the Wyoming Law Review, outlines several paths that could reverse course on a century and a half of ignoring, erasing and marginalizing the history of Indigenous exclusion, absence and disconnection from Yellowstone. ![]() Amid Yellowstone’s 150th anniversary, there’s a growing sense that it’s time to reverse historical wrongs, honor treaty promises, recognize Yellowstone and other parks as traditional Indigenous lands and incorporate tribes into National Park Service decision-making. ![]() Tribal leaders, Park Service administrators, legal scholars and others are reconsidering the past and reimagining a Park Service future in which Native American tribes play a much larger role. Wadsworth is not alone in calling for change. It also means fishing, it also means gathering - we did not have a word in our language to differentiate between those things.”Ĭhad Colter, the fish and wildlife director for the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, speaks at an Old Faithful tribal gathering in August 2022. “And … I want y’all to realize that hunting doesn’t just mean going out and hunting animals. “This is what gives us the right to keep hunting,” Wadsworth, with treaty text in hand, told a crowd of his tribal members inside a Yellowstone gymnasium. ![]() Wadsworth, the captain game warden for the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, suggested the federal government didn’t uphold its end of the deal. Yet, today, with a few exceptions, hunting isn’t allowed by tribal members or anyone else in Yellowstone or the rest of the National Park Service’s 400-plus units in the Lower 48. Signed at Fort Bridger on Jin what’s now southern Wyoming, the treaty granted the Shoshone and Bannock native people the right to “hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States” in perpetuity, so long as game was found and peace with white people maintained. ![]() OLD FAITHFUL-Tom Wadsworth read straight from the 154-year-old treaty that displaced his ancestors from their land as he made a case that Shoshone and Bannock tribal members should be allowed to hunt, fish and gather inside Yellowstone National Park. Thanks for your support of WyoFile! We rely on loyal members like you to sustain our reporting and grow the WyoFile community. ![]()
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