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Kiipippoistoyii: 100 Winters
A history conference on the creation of Glacier National Park 100 years ago.

Friday, August 21, 2009
10:00am to 4:00pm

Cuts Wood School, Browning, Montana

Free and Open to the Public

Glacier National Park, for most Americans, evokes a place of dramatic mountain vistas, pristine glacier fed lakes, rich forests and meadows filled with wild flowers. It’s founders referred to it as the “Crown of the Continent” because it represented the best of America’s natural places. It has been championed as a place of unpeopled and uncultivated splendor. Even today the Park hopes to gain federal “Wilderness” status where it will be defined as a place that is,“...untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” However, for thousands of years the Blackfeet and other tribes have utilized this place called Glacier National Park. For the Blackfeet, Glacier National Park is a contested ground.

Kiipippoistoyi is a one-day conference sponsored by the Piegan Institute which will explore and debate the controversial history of the creation of Glacier National Park and it’s upcoming 100th anniversary celebration. The conference is free and open to the public and will be held on Friday, August 21, 2009 at the Cuts Wood School from 10am to 4pm. Presenters will include:

Shawn Bailey, Ph.D. student, Department of History, University of Montana. Mr. Bailey will discuss how the effort to create Glacier National Park included a class struggle between a small group of wealthy, upper-class, East-coast conservationists and lower-class, local Montana citizens who relied on the natural resources of the western lands of Glacier for subsistence. PDF Article.

David R.M. Beck, Professor of Native American Studies, at the University of Montana, will discuss how the Great Northern Railroad utilized the newly created Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet it employed to both market for the creation of new towns and settlements along its railroad and to promote tourism in the Park at the United States Land Shows of 1912 and 1913 in Chicago. Website.

Joe Gone (GrosVentre), Assistant Professor of Psychology and American Culture, University of Michigan, will discuss how Native Americans suffer disproportionately from higher degrees of psychological distress. Many professionals associate this distress with historical trauma which originates from depredations of past colonial subjugation and historical experiences of colonization. PDF Article.

Louis S. Warren, W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, University of California at Davis, and the author of The Hunter’s Game: Poacher’s and Conservationists in 20th Century America will discuss the part of the history of the contentious relationship between Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet. PDF Article.

Piegan Institute is a private not-for-profit organization on the Blackfeet reservation which sponsors programs dedicated to researching, promoting and preserving the Blackfeet language.

For questions please call Rosalyn LaPier at 406-338-3518 or rrlapier@pieganinstitute.org.

Directions to Cuts Wood School: On Highway 2 in Browning go to the second traffic light (from either direction), turn north, drive two blocks, turn east, drive one block. Cuts Wood School is a large light brown stucco building with a dark green metal roof.