Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness A C A S E S T U D Y Native Lands and Wilderness Council 2005 Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes The Mission Mountains have served as a guide, passage way, fortification, and vision-seeking grounds as well as a place to gather medicinal herbs, roots, and a place to hunt for food for the Pend d’Oreille, Salish, and Kootenai Indians since they have lived at the foothills of the Missions… They have become for us, the descendants of Indians, sacred grounds. Grounds that should not be PREPARED FOR THE disturbed or marred…Lands and landmarks carved Native Lands and through the minds of our ancestors through Coyote Wilderness Council stories and actual experiences. Lands, landmarks, trees, mountain tops, crevices that we should look up to with respect. BY THE Confederated Salish Clarence Woodcock and Kootenai Tribes Salish Culture Committee WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY TOM MCDONALD TERRY TANNER LESTER BIGCRANE DAVID ROCKWELL © 2005 CONFEDERATED SALISH AND KOOTENAI TRIBES PABLO, MT Our elders have many stories to tell about experiences in the mountains…They are lands where our people walked and lived…We realize the importance of these mountains to our elders, to ourselves, and for the perpetuation of our Indian culture because of these stories. Clarence Woodcock Salish Culture Committee These mountains belong to our children, and when our children grow old, they will belong to their children. In this way and for this reason they are sacred. Doug Allard Save the Mission Mountains Committee FOREWORD A long time ago…all over this land, the people’s medicine was put here…It was good! Their home life was good, they were growing up in a good way, the children of the long-ago people. The land was clean, the air was clean, everything was good. Mitch Smallsalmon Pend d’Oreille, 1978 The area known today as the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness was a small part of a vast landscape that our people have taken care of from time immemorial. We were not only connected spiritually and physically to this place, but we enjoyed an intimate relationship with all of the lands in our aboriginal territory. We were tied to this land by our ancestor’s and elder’s stories that related our oral history and told us of Coyote’s travels and activities. John Stanislaw, tribal elder, told me that every drainage, every lake, and every mountain, valley, and prairie had a significant story. Today we still depend on this land for our game and our fish and our plants. The elders have told us how important it is to protect it. We not only have to protect the Mission Mountains Wilderness, but we have to watch over all of the places in our aboriginal territory. Our ancestors kept our rights to continue our relationship with our homelands in the 1855 Treaty of Hell Gate. We honor our ancestors through our stewardship of the land and by maintaining and exercising the rights we kept in our treaty. This is our generational responsibility that we grow up with as Indian people. Terry Tanner CSKT Wildland Recreation Program September 7, 2005 vii viii Contents Foreword viii Chapter One 2 History THE FIRST TRIBAL WILDERNESS Chapter Two 10 Protection THE TRIBAL ORDINANCE Chapter Three 14 Management THE PLAN AND HOW MANAGEMENT SETS THIS WILDERNESS APART Chapter Four 28 Benefits WHAT HAS BEEN GAINED THROUGH WILDERNESS DESIGNATION Chapter Five 32 Challenges and Solutions ISSUES AND THREATS AND SOLUTIONS AND APPROACHES x Chapter One HISTORY: The First Tribal Wilderness Before he died, Pete Beaverhead, a tribal elder, said that he would go up into the mountains for weeks at a time and then would be afraid to come back down because “…it was so clear up there. I knew the air down below would be bad. It was the stink from the roads and the other things the white man has made.” he striking peaks found in the Mission Mountains of Flathead Nation of western Montana crown a T wilderness range unique in the United States both in majesty and management. Standing more than a mile above the farm lands and towns of the Mission Valley, the western front of the range provides one of the most spectacular valley landscapes in the Rocky Mountain region. But the range is more than a natural wonder. It is the first place in America in which an Indian nation has matched, and possibly exceeded, the Federal Government in dedicating lands to be managed as wilderness. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are comprised of descendants of Salish (Flathead), Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai Indians, tribes that traditionally occupied a twenty million acre area stretching from Central Montana to Eastern Washington and north into Canada. 2 The signing of the Hellgate Treaty of 1855 ceded the vast Reservation by the Indian Civilian Conservation Corps. That majority of those ancestral lands to the United States year, the newly established Tribal Council voted to set aside Government in return for the approximately 1.2 million about 100,000 acres of the western slope of the Mission acres now known as the Flathead Indian Reservation. Mountains as an Indian-maintained national park. The In the words of then governor of the Washington Tribes sought to retain ownership of the lands but planned Territory, Isaac Stevens, the Treaty gave access to “much to parallel the National Park Service in its administration of valuable land and an inexhaustible supply of timber” and the area. With support of the local Bureau of Indian Affairs enabled “settlers to secure titles to land and thus the growth (BIA) Superintendent, the Council wanted to encourage of towns and villages.” The loss of this vast wilderness meant Tribal member use of the park. They envisioned an area of the potential loss of traditional Indian society. Every aspect traditional encampments and opportunities for Indian of the Indian culture, from hunting and food gathering to guides to bring visitors into the park. religious practices, was dependent upon a wilderness setting. In a 1936 press release, the BIA Superintendent of the To the Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai Indians, the Flathead Agency wrote: Mission Mountains were one part of this wilderness It is planned to maintain the park in its present natural homeland, distinct in its incredible ruggedness and extreme state. Roads will not be built …A complete system of trails will weather but no more wild or primeval than anywhere else. be, and some trails are already constructed…These trails will, And, like other features of the landscape, the Mission for the most part, follow old Indian trails. At natural camp Mountains influenced the culture and economy of the Tribes. places, shelters will be erected for the convenience of the traveler The area could be crossed only through certain passes on a and explorer, with corrals in connection where necessary. Indian network of trails that had been used for thousands of years guides will be available to conduct parties through the park. by the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Kootenai, and other tribes. Nothing ever came of the Tribal Council action They enjoyed the striking natural beauty, fished the lakes, requesting establishment of the park. Correspondence hunted elk, deer, goats, and sheep, and harvested plants from suggests the idea died in Washington D.C. in the office of the forests and ridge tops. They also practiced spiritual the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which has trust traditions throughout the area. responsibilities for Indian lands. The first attempt by the Tribes to officially protect the Ironically, just one year later, the then Commissioner of Mission Range occurred in 1936, during a period of Indian Affairs, John Collier, signed an order drafted by then extensive trail construction in the mountainous areas of the Chief Forester for the same Office of Indian Affairs, Bob Marshall, that classified the Mission Range as a roadless area. Jesuits establish a mission Earliest known Indian presence in Hellgate Treaty creates Reservation opened to at the base of the Mission North America. Flathead Reservation. non-Indian homesteaders. Mountains. 40.000 BP 1804 1854 1855 1891 1909 Lewis and Clark arrive and are Bitterroot Salish moved from welcomed by the Salish. Bitterroot to Reservation. The order established twelve such roadless areas and four Flathead Reservation. He wild areas on twelve reservations across the country. Its stated proposed the idea of purpose: establishing a tribal wilderness area to the Council. Also at If on reservations, where the Indians desire privacy, sizeable areas are uninvaded by roads, then it will be possible for the about this time, three greatly Indians of these tribes to maintain a retreat where they may respected grandmothers escape from constant contact with white men. (Yayas)—Annie Pierre, Chris- tine Woodcock, and Louise A second goal was to preserve some untouched land for McDonald—protested the future generations. But because the federal government timber sales proposed for the established the areas without consent of the tribes, the Missions and led the way for affected nations petitioned to have them declassified. The other community leaders to Confederated Salish and Kootenai formally protested the organize the Save the Mission Marshall Order in 1939, and in 1958 they officially Thurman Trosper was key in gain- Mountains Committee, a requested that the part of the order applying to the Flathead ing the wilderness designation. group led by Tribal Reservation be withdrawn. The Mission Mountains Roadless businessman Doug Allard. Its purpose was to stop the timber area was declassified in the Federal Register in 1959. sales proposed for the Missions. The Committee circulated During the early 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ a petition in 1975 asking the Council to designate the range Flathead Agency proposed to log portions of the remaining a Tribal primitive area in which logging would be banned.