11:15 - 11:45 am
Yellowstone Ethnography
Rosemary Sucec
Yellowstone Center for Resources

Transcript

Rosemary Sucec: Hello my name is Rosemary Sucec and my profession is as a cultural anthropologist and I came here to Yellowstone about it’s going on now 4 years. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about the Ethnography Program but before I begin I would like some folks who are not from Mammoth to just throw out what you think it is the ethnography program does or what I do at the park. And it doesn’t matter what you say so just go for broke here. Anybody want to take a guess now and again someone who is not from Mammoth and who hasn’t worked with me.

Laughter – inaudible remark from audience

Audience Member: Well I’ll take a guess, you study the American Indian?

Rosemary Sucec: All right, great, thank you. I want to say Mary Rose, is that right? Kathy Jean, Kathy Jean. OK, good, all right, thank you all right great yeah

Anybody else? I think that’s…

Male voice: Liaison with the affiliated tribes?

Rosemary Sucec: Excellent, good. That’s it, bingo.

I’m just… I’m gonna (laughter) We’ve worked together but that’s all right. I’m just gonna provide you with some background information about why the ethnography program exists at Yellowstone and what it is the program does.

Indians have almost continuously occupied Yellowstone country for about ten thousand years until the park was established in 1872. In treaties Congress recognized that almost three fourths of this land mass belonged to the Crow and Shoshone. In the Crow Treaty, all the land east of the Yellowstone River up to its headwaters was designated as Crow aboriginal territory. All the land to the north of Shoshone Lake and along the Snake River was identified in a treaty as Shoshone aboriginal territory. Five other treaty tribes were recognized as having use rights all the way up to the headwaters of the Yellowstone. This map is from the Indian Claims Commission. This commission’s job was to adjudicate all tribes’ claims against the federal government for compensation and the claims commission decided approximately in 1954 you can see this is Crow land, here’s Yellowstone Lake, again reaffirming the aboriginal territory. Now this white area was referred to by the claims commission as ‘commons’, so common ground used by multitudes of tribes so it couldn’t be identified as being owned by a singular tribe. And you notice that corridor between the Snake and Yellowstone River is again part of that commons.

American Indians relationship with Yellowstone is recognized by the federal government and precedes all legislation establishing the relationship of the National Park Service to park land though Yellowstone has been and continues to be portrayed as an uninhabited wilderness, and that’s no value judgment.

I want to briefly talk about a bit of the history about how Yellowstone became wilderness, as we know it today. When the park was established in 1872, Indians had already been placed on reservations. During legislative debates about the set aside of Yellowstone, congressional delegates said that “ no Indians live there”. The legislation creating Yellowstone mandated the protection of the park’s “natural history”. In decades of communiqués after the park was established, Indians were referred to as intruders and interlopers thereby implying that Indians were strangers to Yellowstone. The wilderness act of 1964 affirmed that wilderness was untrammeled by man and man is a visitor who does not remain. And today the National Park Service manages Yellowstone in a way that allows for the natural processes to ebb and flow largely unimpeded and use is allowed as long as it is consistent with the preservation of natural resources.

It’s also important to note that these two very different representations of Yellowstone nature also reflect the different perspectives about humans’ role in that nature. In our system of wilderness management, natural processes are allowed to occur with as little interference from humans as possible. The social and cultural are segregated from natural. This separation of the human and the cultural is reflected in our division of natural and cultural resources. In what I refer to as American Indian holistic management and I actually borrowed this from an anthropologist who wrote in 1957 about his observations about American Indians’ framework or frame of how they view nature. In holistic resource management, tribes view humans as integral actors. All resources are cultural resources. Indian people perceive themselves to be an integral part of the natural landscape their traditionally occupied lands and they often refer to parklands like Yellowstone as holy lands. They believe that their responsibility to care for and be stewards of these lands is derived from the supernatural. This seems to be something of a universal belief about Indians’ relationship with nature. Their stewardship is perceived as critical to their persistence as people and to the wellbeing of the land. Humans then are essential actors in the natural landscape.

Examples of this philosophy are manifested in the four years that I have been here with the visitations particularly by Crow and Shoshoni but other tribes to minister to sites in the park. On a routine basis tribes come in and out and make offerings or visit certain sites but I think the epitome of this philosophy is best illustrated in their relationship to bison and bison management here at the park. Many plains Indians people particularly the Sioux tribes early in their history made a covenant with a spirit, White Buffalo Calf Woman, to act as stewards of the buffalo. As part of the pact, if buffalo do not survive for lack of adequate tribal stewardship, native peoples will not survive. To fulfill their stewardship responsibilities and to continue to renew their cultural conditions tribes have been and will remain actively involved with bison management issues both at this park and in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

So what the heck does this have to do with the Ethnography Program?

In treaty-making the federal government, in exchange for the lands, essentially agreed to insure that tribes remain distinct political and cultural entities. From this flows obligations particularly for land managing agencies such as the National Park Service who are now the stewards of aboriginal territory. Our agency recognizes that tribes as first stewards have religious and cultural ties to the mountains, the water, the landscapes, the natural resources that Yellowstone manages. An extensive body of laws, executive orders and policies including those of the National Park Service (and that’s that green handout on the back) speak to the federal government’s obligations in managing lands that are also aboriginal landscapes.

In keeping with these mandates and in fulfillment of the preservation mission of the National Park Service, the National Park Service is directed to identify and document ethnographic resources important to tribes in each park unit. Now the agency defines ethnographic resources as a site, structure, object, landscape or natural resource feature assigned traditional significance in the cultural system of a group traditionally associated with it.

One of the primary responsibilities of the Ethnography Program is to identify ethnographic resources through consultations with tribes and then document these resources just as we are mandated to inventory and document natural resources.

The Ethnography Program accomplishes this research here at Yellowstone in several different ways. A baseline study (and this is the document) was completed in 2000, which identified then 70 ethnographic resources and ten tribes. The book is… This is now a book and it is available in the visitor center. We have been… I have been conducting oral histories with now almost half of the 26 tribes and we’re continuing to do that work. A contract has been let to conduct research on the significance of wikiups to tribes and there are contracts that we hope to soon let to the five treaty tribes to find out how they used, historically used, natural resources here at Yellowstone National Park. Today we now know that 26 different tribes have an association with the park and we have identified almost 300 ethnographic resources. That includes animals, plants, geology and archeological sites.

In a nutshell, Yellowstone, before the National Park Service and the Army managed it was a place that was teaming with activity by Native Americans. That topic alone would take up one, probably two or three four PowerPoint presentations. And I’m not really going to get into that detail at all.

The ethnographic…  the Ethnography Program places data about ethnographic resources and their meanings and historical uses by tribes into a database known as the Ethnographic Resources Inventory. The goal of this is to assist all other park divisions with their work and that includes Planning and Compliance, Resource Management and Visitor Education. Is Eleanor Clark still here? I do have to give kudos actually all of you, many of you have helped, but the Federal Highways Project was instrumental in helping to fund that baseline study. Visitor education activities for example we downloaded a number of files on American Indians, the geological and hydrothermal resources that are important to tribes and their meanings. And then we provided that information to the Division of Interpretation who will include that in the visitor centers that are coming online I think in 2008 or 10 and into the future.

In the process of learning about the ethnographic resources, the ethnography program also learns about the preferences tribes have in the management of those resources. In conjunction with park management, Frank Walker, Suzanne Lewis, John Varley, the Ethnography Program works with individual tribes to negotiate appropriate management strategies. For example, this is Tasha Felton and I’m so pleased to say that I have the good fortune to have her as a half time assistant. And you can see a remnant of the Bannock Trail here. This is out on Blacktail Plateau. The Shoshoni Bannock tribes want Congress to approve the Bannock Trail as a National Historic Trail much like the Nez Perce Trail is in Yellowstone National Park, the only congressionally designated nationally significant resource in the park. They also want it nominated to the National Register; they want the park to develop media for the trail and to interpret that history. Ethnography coordinates that work with other divisions particularly with the Division of Interpretation. The Ethnography Program is also responsible for organizing yearly intergovernmental meetings with 26 associated tribes and 54 bison interested tribes. In addition, a second meeting in every year where we go away to meet with tribes on the reservation.  At both meetings, Yellowstone hears feedback about its management of ethnographic resources as diverse as bison, wolves and bears through archeological sites and museum collections. Bison I would say is probably the most important resource among all tribes who have a vested interested in management at Yellowstone. Tribes, particularly the Inner Tribal Bison Cooperative want the park and other agencies to give live buffalo to tribes. ITBC was instrumental in the movement to a quarantine pilot project and they successfully lobbied the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee for a seat at the table, it’s not a voting seat, so that their voice, their tribal voices are there along with agriculture and the National Park Service. Ethnography works with wildlife management to assist in the consultation processes. Ethnography also assists other divisions in their consultation work with tribes. If you take a look at the management policies as it pertains to Native Americans, you’ll see that almost all divisions here at Yellowstone have some responsibilities or work that they do do with American Indian tribes who are associated with the park.

So what’s the relevance of all of this? I mean despite the fact that there are legal obligations to consult and to manage resources that in a sensitive manner, I would have to say a definitive yes that there’s relevance above and beyond “it’s the legal and right thing to do”. We are clearly fulfilling the National Park Service mission by inventorying the broad range of resources that exist in the park and then managing them in a culturally sensitive way that also meets our federal obligations to tribes and to our preservation mission. Tribal input contributes to better management of those resources and brings dimensions of understanding to them and enriches the visitor experience of them. Through consultation with tribes a whole new facet of Yellowstone is being discovered. We are learning about tribal histories, their historical ecology and management regimes and how humans affected uses of the natural and cultural resources we see a day. At the same time, the Ethnography Program helps tribes understand the value of managing Yellowstone as wilderness. When I first came here I was called an “Indian wannabee”, and I was giving away the park and I, it’s all right, I understand but I do want to tell you that I see myself as an advocate for the wilderness that is all dear to, that is so dear to us and has value on a global scale. So it’s representing our ecological perspectives, our management perspectives to tribes. And the… what’s pleasing is that after those conversations and I know Frank has those conversations and John, tribes say you know ‘doggoneit I wish we hadn’t been kicked out, but thank God you’re doing what you’re doing because we can come here and we can experience this place the way our ancestors knew it’. So that’s pretty remarkable. It’s like a good pat on the back for all that you’re doing, for all that we’re doing.

In ethnography’s work with tribes, we are facilitating on behalf of the park and the federal government. This isn’t just an ethnography issue. The ability of tribes to reconnect with places important in the maintenance of their cultural identity and that enables a continuation of their traditions. Here are only two poignant examples of events that ethnography helped organize, and kudos to Matt Vanzura in a particular event he helped with, again many of you have been involved in assisting here, so that ethnography helped to organize on behalf of the park and in fulfillment of federal responsibilities but there are many more of these events.

The Nez Perce commemorative ceremony was held for the first time this year in Yellowstone and the Nez Perce memorialized at that event the hardships their ancestors endure including the loss of life when passing through the park. Yellowstone in this instance represents sacred battleground. The 1877 Nez Perce War in large part continues to define who they are today. And so making that connection and I have to tell you that one of the folks who went on the horse ride after this event with Matt and Frank said she was deeply moved because she got to ride among the buffalo and she again felt like she was being, she was present in a place that her ancestors would have recognized and it was a deeply moving experience. She’s gone back and relayed that information to her children and it’s changed her life. Interestingly, the Nez Perce War was not the only Indian war fought on park land and emblematic of the era of American expansionism and placement of tribes on reservations.

Yet another story that can be told at Yellowstone National Park.This Ogallala Sioux woman, Elaine Quiver, who watched the wolves for the first time suddenly remembered all the songs, wolf talk, yes, wolf talk and behavior that her great grandfather had taught her. She had never seen a wolf, yet she predicted a wolf hunt based on her grandfather’s information. In fact Rick McIntyre was standing there and he said ‘yes, that’s just exactly what she did’. She was able to take her recollections back to the children of the tribe and teach them. Because of the reintroduction of the wolves at Yellowstone and her visit to the park, traditional knowledge of wolves will live on at Pine Ridge. In return, the park has many accounts about the significance of wolves to the Sioux including one about the wolves leading the Teton Sioux to the geyser fields.

The landscapes of Yellowstone evokes for so many tribal people memories of cultural traditions that they thought they had forgotten and in coming here are revived. The Ethnography Program’s work with tribes on behalf of the park is broadening Yellowstone’s preservation efforts to include cultural diversity as well as biological diversity. And in return, our understanding of the park that is also so precious to us is being deepened and enriched.

Thank you for your attention. I would have to say that I have been remiss and I haven’t gotten out to the districts and I would be more than happy to start making those journeys out to other places in the park. I did also want to bring your attention to the fact that we are having… a couple dates. On May 19th we are having the inter governmental meeting here in Yellowstone and on that evening we have a potluck and you are all welcome to attend and I have a flyer in the back and then shortly, I guess, I’m not clear, I’ve been away on vacation, and we’re working with the Nez Perce tribe. They had such a remarkable time here they want to hold another commemoration ceremony at the Nez Perce Ford. I think I guess that’s somewhat unheard of, they usually move the location around. And so it’s sometime toward the end of August or the beginning of September. But we, I will start including a date, a sort of a list of schedule consultations in the weekly reader so you’ll see it there too. Thanks very much. Any questions?