Becoming | A Destination

This is the history of how a corporation marketed Glacier National Park into existence. We use art to study how the Blackfeet took control of their own histories.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J

See Winold Reiss’s Art: https://iacbmuseums-viewingroom.exhibit-e.art/viewing-room

This is the history of how a corporation marketed Glacier National Park into existence. We use art to study how the Blackfeet took control of their own histories.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J

See Winold Reiss’s Art: https://iacbmuseums-viewingroom.exhibit-e.art/viewing-room

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

[a robin sings; footsteps]

Gaby Eseverri: [in the field] Can you grab my wallet too, just in case I need the ID?

Michael Faist: Same pocket?

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah

Michael: You will need the ID, Tom Hanks is going to greet us like, Polar Express style.

Gaby: [in the field, gasps dramatically] There it is Michael!

Michael: Oh my God it’s coming quickly.

[train sounds; bell clanging, train braking, hissing, and coming to a stop. Conductor calls out indecipherably]

Michael: [sounds of passengers wheeling luggage over the cement in the background] We are waiting to board the Amtrak that just pulled in, the Empire Builder, at Belton, in West Glacier.

Conductor: You guys are good to go.

Michael: Great!

Gaby: [in the field] Alrighty, thank you so much.

Conductor: You bet.

Gaby: It's a beautiful morning when Michael and I finally decide it's time to ride the train. Michael is more interested in the experience, but if I'm being honest, I'm here for the destination.

[over the train loudspeaker, cheerfully: “There is no saving seats. Please make room for everyone who’d like to get a seat in the lounge car. Everyone would like to see this beautiful view! With all the space. Thank you!”]

Michael: There’s one, but…

Gaby: [in the field] Let’s see…

[passenger in the background: “Mind if I sit…somewhere?]

Gaby: [in the field] Okay, we made it to the lounge car!

Michael: We did.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah. This is cool, there’s more windows here…

Michael: Yeah it’s got skylights, wraparound windows.

Gaby: [in the field] Are we train people now?!

Michael: [laughing] I think I’m a train person now

Gaby: We're riding rails that were once run by the Great Northern Railway. But today we're on the Amtrak.

Gaby: [in the field] That was really quick!

Michael: Yeah, oh my gosh. I’m just picturing a plane where you’re sitting on the runway for 45 minutes.

Gaby: [in the field] Totally. But it was so smooth I didn’t actually feel it, I just saw the trees going by.

Michael: Yeah no, genuinely.

Gaby: [in the field] It is so beautiful. The nice thing about riding the train this early in the morning is that you have beautiful views with that morning light.

Michael: We are right along the river.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah.

Gaby: JJ and Louis Hill are revered here—the father and son duo who made Glacier the destination we know today. But while JJ Hill cared about express shipping, Louis saw the potential of tourism.

Michael: For 40 years, this was the only way to get through this canyon, really. James J Hill rode on this line. Thousands of laborers toiled away to lay the tracks that paved th way for this. To be on it is kind of—powerful.

Gaby: [in the field] I can see how the train really opened up Glacier to the world.

Michael: Me too.

This train runs along the southern boundary of the park. These tracks have been here for well over a hundred years, and their placement set both freight and tourists in motion.

Gaby: [in the field] I feel like what we’re experiencing is not necessarily JJ Hill’s vision. So I think what we’re actually experiencing is a little more of Louis Hill’s vision, his son.

Michael: Mmhmm. JJ saw passenger travel as a waste of space; Louis saw an opportunity.

Gaby: We'll be disembarking at the Glacier Park Lodge. That is where this history starts.

Conductor: [over loudspeaker] We’ll be arriving at East Glacier in the next 20 minutes; if that is your final destination, this is a good time to return to your seats and collect your belongings.

Michael: Okay, we gotta say goodbye to the lounge car, go back to our seats.

Gaby: [in the field] Bye lounge car!

Michael: Bye!

Daniel Lombardi: In the decades just after the park was established, the train was the primary way to get here. When visitors disembarked at the Glacier Park Lodge, they were greeted by Blackfeet people in full regalia, paid by the railway to sing and dance, and to promote Glacier as a place to see the "vanishing Indians." This is season three of Headwaters and it's called Becoming. [Headwaters season 3 theme begins playing; starting with mandolin] It's a collection of histories about how Glacier National Park came into being.

[theme continues; a drumbeat, a flute line, and other instruments come in, before the music finishes]

Daniel: They say history repeats itself—the same old stories again and again. One of those stories is people doing just about anything for another ounce of power or wealth. But just when you think history is making another spin back around, you notice something different. That just because something started as a scheme to get rich doesn't mean it stayed that way. This is one of those stories. This episode is about the economic forces that pushed Glacier National Park into existence. But it is also about the people who got rolled up in that history and found a way to make it their own.

[sparse electronic music begins to play]

Gaby: [in the field] After walking this exhibit, what kind of moves through you? How do you feel?

Darnell Rides At The Door: A feeling of, I guess, some more pride, dignity. But the closeness that I felt, all those people that are gone. I start thinking of them, my grandmothers and my mother, and how that that whole era is—it is a piece of history now. And when I was younger, I always thought, you know, time was so, so forever. Now it's short.

Gaby: I'm touring the Museum of the Plains Indian with the curator Renee Bear Medicine.

Renee Bear Medicine: My name is Renee Bear Medicine. I am the current curator for the Museum of the Plains Indian. It's been an awesome experience. This was my first job out of high school, in 1990, so I think it was my calling.

Darnell: It's an honor to have one of our own be the curator. It's an honor for us to be able to write our own history and have our own stories told the way that that we know them.

Gaby: Darnell Rides At The Door is with us, too, telling me about her family's connection to this exhibit.

Darnell: Okii niistoo unnikkok niitookimmii, no'm"tootoo umsskaapiipiikuni. I am Darnell Rides At The Door, my native name or Indian name is Niitookimmii, which means Lone Camper, given to me by my great grandfather, John Eagle Calf Ground. He and my grandmother and my family have been closely associated with the—the series, the Winold Reiss series.

Gaby: In this episode, you'll hear people say both Winold Reiss [pronounced Veenold Rice] and Winold Reiss [pronounced Win-old Rees]. That's the same person.

Darnell: Some say, Winold Reiss [pronounced Win-old Rees], but the Indians just call him "Winol." There was no D on there, just Winol.

[Quiet electronic music begins again]

Gaby: Darnell takes out a small piece of paper. It's a copy of a painting of two young girls. She holds it in a way that feels like she's caressing it. Her eyes never leaving theirs.

Darnell: But that's them when they were painted by Winold Reiss, and they got six silver dollars for sitting there.

Gaby: [in the field] Wow.

Darnell: She told the story. My sister wrote it up. How old were they? Well, my mother was born in 35, and her sister was born in 34, so they must have been six and seven maybe?

Renee: That's your momma, you know?

Darnell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So those are the things that we hold dear. And I think that those connections is a great, great word.

Gaby: [in the field] Thank you both so much. Thank you. Bye bye.

Michael: Okay.

Gaby: [in the field] That was really special. I feel like they shared a lot with us.

[car doors slamming; car noise]

Michael: Do we want to pretend like we're arriving?

Gaby: Oh yeah, because someone forgot to hit record when we were on our way.

Gaby: [in the field] Oh, we're stuck in traffic because of construction on Highway 2. I think we're going to get to the museum soon. In fact, I see Browning coming into view.

Gaby: I'm holding a pamphlet that Renee gave me, and it describes the exhibit.

Gaby: [in the field] So this exhibit is called Connections: the Blackfeet and Winold Reiss. It's a series of portraits, and they were created for the Great Northern Railway.

Gaby: The exhibit includes both Reiss's pastel portraits and personal items that belonged to the people he portrayed. An intricately beaded purse sits next to the painting of the woman who made it. A police uniform hangs beside the person who wore it. The portraits themselves are incredible, but these objects add another dimension to these people.

Gaby: [in the field] I really like the sentence, "these portraits connect us with Blackfeet individuals who grappled with the imposition of the tourism industry." The imposition of the tourism industry. It's powerful.

Michael: Your last question too, got some of the best tape of the whole day. Like, “would you want to be—would you get your portrait done?”

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah.

Michael: Darnell had an amazing outfit on.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah. Well, she looked like a straight up queen.

[drumbeat marks a transition]

Gaby: I'm interviewing Bill Schustrom, one of Glacier's longest-tenured rangers. I want to know how the Great Northern Railway helped push for the creation of Glacier National Park.

Bill Schustrom: I just love working with the people I work with. Michael came in there as a young kid

Gaby: [to Bill] Awww!

Bill: Yeah and I watched him grow up, and watched a few—watched a few romances come and go, and I had to do a lot—

Gaby: [to Bill] Do you ever, like, set people up?

Michael: Oh, my gosh. He's the he's the office matchmaker, Are you sparking with anybody?? Are you sparking with this one? [all laughing]

Bill: Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, are you sparking yet?

Michael: All right, this isn't the point. [laughing]

Bill: I'm Ranger Bill, Ranger Bill Schustrom. Been around the park for many, many years. Very interested in the Going-to-the-Sun Road. And obviously the Great Northern Railway and its impact on Glacier National Park, especially during its early years.

Gaby: So Bill is the kind of park ranger that gives evening programs or afternoon walks—someone that's happy to answer any question. And he loves trains. So he's been talking about the Great Northern at Glacier for a long time.

Bill: Now, the big thing was that James J. Hill was interested in profit. He was really trying to promote bringing people out to homestead. And then along came Louis. But Louis Hill was the you know, he was a hard core businessman, but he was also a romantic.

Gaby: Louis was a bit of a dreamer. He wanted to live the Glacier lifestyle, that for him was riding horses and camping in cold temperatures and then jumping into lakes—nude. True story.

Gaby: [to Bill] How is he different from his dad?

Bill: Louis? He wasn't. He was the one that was closest to him. He paralleled his dad in their line of thinking and everything, except when it came to Glacier Park.

Gaby: [to Bill] So then Glacier was kind of this thing between them where they disagreed on their approach and how to, I suppose, make money here.

Bill: Well, James J wasn't interested, and he said, “why'd we put a lot of money into a bunch of mountains when we could be making money, bringing crops and things and cattle and stuff like that back east, which is going to give us a really great net profit of money.” He was in it for the money. He was a money man. Now, Louis was, too. He lobbied for this to become a national park. That was one of his goals.

Gaby: [to Bill] So Louis didn't really invent this idea of kind of profiting through national parks and railroads, because he kind of saw this happening in Yellowstone.

Bill: Louis immediately said a railroad goes right along the southern border of these incredible mountains. And so why can't we do that up here?

Gaby: Northern Pacific Railroad paid for a lot of Yellowstone's infrastructure to invite tourism. And Louis Hill wanted to do that here. So he started pushing for Glacier to become a national park.

Bill: Okay he didn't want to get in trouble with the federal government.

Gaby: [to Bill] Why?

Bill: Because he felt that they would say “all you want is to make money from the mountains.”

Gaby: [to Bill] Which is not wrong. [laughing]

Bill: So that's exactly—that's exactly right. So but the thing that he did do was encourage George Bird Grinnell to promote the area for a national park.

Gaby: George Bird Grinnell is seen as kind of the grandfather of Glacier, responsible for developing the public and political support for a park here.

Bill: So Louis just kind of came in on the tail end of it very much wanting it to happen, but didn't want to get his name out there with the idea that the feds would say, we're not going to do it because all you want of was the money.

[wistful music begins to play]

Gaby: [to Bill] He was so ready for it. Like you already had construction happening, the Belton Chalet. He already had these plans in motion.

Bill: Oh, yes. Louis Hill was a big backer.

Gaby: And then on May 11th, 1910, this place got a new name: [music ends] Glacier National Park. And soon after the hotels came, it was becoming a destination.

Bill: And right away, bingo. The Belton Chalet went in.

Gaby: In 1911, the park had a budget of $15,000, which even then was basically nothing. But the Great Northern Railway was ready to pick up the slack because they stood to make a profit. They spent over $90,000 in one year—six times the park's budget—and continued to outspend the park for the next decade.

Bill: He was looking ahead. He was a far, far reaching person. He had a vision. He followed every single thing of the construction from the beginning to the end. He was involved in that to make sure that it was what he wanted.

Gaby: It's impossible to know what Glacier National Park would have become without the influence of Great Northern. The railway put Glacier on the map, building hotels, spinning yarns, and creating a mythology to draw people here, whatever the cost.

[sparse music sets off a transition]

Gaby: [in the field] Do you think you would have sat down for a portrait?

Darnell: Um… I don't know. That's a good one. So I don't think I would have at the time. I would it—might have been if I was along with my mother or my grandmother and they happened to be there. Yeah. Maybe.

[sparse, emotional music begins]

Renee: You know believe it or not, I think our people are still in the era of... Not distrust, but being careful. And…mand we still have that guard up. And the question arises, what are we being used for? Yes, it's almost like we're props. Like a lot of people come in here, they take pictures or whatever, and then they make calendars and it go somewhere else, sell them. So it was a big thing. You know, they, they really utilized the Blackfeet Indian people to launch that tourism in Glacier National Park.

Gaby: The Blackfeet were used—I might even say exploited—to promote Glacier as a destination. The railway had their portraits painted, then use those portraits on posters, calendars, playing cards... So many of their promotional souvenirs.

Darnell: Right. And that's happened in our families. My daughter, when she was about four or five, we were camped over here at the campground. Her and my sister's daughter, they're close to the same age. Somebody peeped in our lodge and took a picture of them, and we had just dressed them to go to dance. And Smokey's aunt found it in Glacier Park on sale and bought it and said, this is my relatives. And so native people were, I guess, part of that history. So there's the good history, and there's the history that's the true history, and there's also the history that's from our perspective.

Gaby: [in the field] So this isn't—it sounds like this isn't the first time that you're seeing a lot of these pieces.

Darnell: Oh, no.

Gaby: [in the field] You've been seeing these since you were—

Darnell: Since I was a kid, you know, and that was a big subject who was painted by Winold Reiss. The last two living people were my mother and Floyd Middle Rider. And my mother passed in 2020. So she was the last one. My mother, a great historian, told us for years I was one of the ones painted by Winold Reiss. None of us believed her. "Oh, yeah, right." You know, and then it came, came to be when, I believe a book came out with Reiss's prints in there, and they were inside the book. Said, “okay, Mom, we believe you now.” She said, yeah. And then she told us a story about getting those six silver dollars. She said they didn't really mean a hill of beans. She had a way of talking, she had a language all her own.

Gaby: Reiss was known for paying his models generously, in this case, giving six silver dollars to two little girls.

Gaby: [in the field] Darnell, do you remember any more details of, of your mom and aunt being painted by him or other family members?

Darnell: Everything had to be perfect, Grandma said. We had a lot of preparation to do, she said. Then when we were called to go greet the tourists.

Gaby: [in the field] Getting off of the train.

Darnell: Getting off of the train, coming to East Glacier. Usually it was groups, but a lot of times it was special groups like dignitaries, presidents, people of prominent nature. There were people that came from all over the world would come to Glacier Park, and the ones that were the biggest advertisers were the Blackfeet people. My grandparents were part of that.

Gaby: It was Darnell's family who would greet visitors to the park when they got off the train. Her family was one of many who helped sell the romantic image of the park.

Darnell: They couldn't do a lot of the things that we can do freely now. It's a, it's a part of me that I've always had that I wasn't... Shouldn't be in there. Because I didn't feel like I was welcome. Now we go up and bless the big hotel. We go up and welcome the tourists. Not like my grandparents did, but almost on a similar basis. So the relationships have changed.

Gaby: A lot has changed. They say history repeats itself. But I've also heard something else—that it doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. I like that better.

Gaby: [in the field] After walking this exhibit, like what kind of moves through you? How do you feel?

Darnell: It is a piece of history now. And when I was younger, I always thought, you know, time was so, so forever. Now it's short.

[subtle electronic music marks a transition]

Gaby: Darnell is flipping through a binder with small prints of painted portraits. Some are her family, and many are decades old, bright pastels of Blackfeet people, safely tucked into plastic sleeves. These portraits that I once saw as exploitative are something Darnell treasures.

Darnell: And this is my grandpa. That's Eagle Calf. This is one of the many portraits that, I think Eagle Calf had four or five. But he's on this calendar. He's—he's the one gave me my Indian name.

Gaby: [in the field] Thank you!

Darnell: Nice to meet you.

Daniel: Bye!

[music continues]

Gaby: Maybe history can't repeat itself because it isn't something that's over. Not a loop starting back again, but something still present and happening now.

Ray Djuff: A friend once described it as a medical affliction, and he said, "Once you're bitten by the Glacier bug, there is no cure." So I'm not looking for a cure. And I'm having a hell of a lot of fun being infected.

Gaby: That's Ray. And he might be one of Glacier and Waterton's biggest, and if I may, nerdiest fans.

Ray: I'm Ray Djuff. I'm a writer. My focus is on Waterton and Glacier International Peace Park and I'm from Calgary.

Gaby: [to Ray] Why do you study history?

Ray: I study history to know why. The questions have just kept coming. I learn a little bit and I want to know a little bit more.

Gaby: [to Ray] Yeah. I can certainly relate to that in pursuing this story.

Ray: There is a connection between the Blackfeet and what was called the Buffalo Nickel, a coin that came out in 1913, and the connection was created by the Great Northern Railway as part of a publicity effort to get people's attention and have them come to Glacier Park. So the head of the Great Northern Railway at the time was Louis Hill. Louis Hill had just returned from the bank and gotten some change. He looks at his change and sees this new nickel and recognizes the similarity between the Native American on the coin and Two Guns White Calf, a Blackfeet man whom he had just met. Louis Hill sees the coin, writes to his publicity guy Hoke Smith, and says, "Would you please issue a press release thanking the American government for putting White Calf on the buffalo nickel?" Every single citizen in the U.S. has a nickel in his purse or in his pocket. So the advertising is there. All you have to do is get somebody to reach in, pull that nickel out for some candies or bubble gum or something. And you're looking at a promotion. It's phenomenal. Well, all of that was malarkey. It was no truth to any of it. The artist himself said he had never met Two Guns when he designed the coin. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember all of the people who had been the inspiration for the design of that Native American.

Gaby: To the Great Northern, it didn't matter who was actually on the nickel. It connected Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet to millions of people across the U.S. And this was only one piece of their promotional machine. Louis Hill had all the killer instincts for successful advertising, but he also hired quite the creative ad man, named Hoke Smith.

Ray: A man who could create something out of nothing. If you go into the railway station at Whitefish, you will see mounted on a plaque, a trout that is covered in fur. He immediately thought of Iceberg Lake, and then he started to create a story.

Promotional Movie: [old timey music plays while a narrator speaks in a jaunty accent] From here, the hiker, to whom Glacier Park is practically a mecca, can follow the foot and horseback trails to such popular objectives as Iceberg Lake.

Ray: Iceberg Lake is so cold that the fish have to grow fur to keep warm.

Promotional Movie resumes: Usually frozen over solid into July, the lake actually is filled with miniature icebergs, and it is here that the legend of the fur bearing trout was born.

Ray: The myth of the fur bearing trout is something that's now seen, heard, read, and shown in pictures and stories across the Rockies. But Hoke originated it. Louis Hill sold the idea that you could come to Glacier, see the Blackfeet, and experience that Old West. Louis Hill wanted them to wear their traditional dress, to speak their language, to practice their culture, because all of that was important for drawing tourists to the park. In doing that, he was running counter to what the American government wanted.

Promotional Movie: [another clip with similar early 1900s music and narration style] There's an Indian encampment nearby. We're on the edge of the great Blackfeet Reservation, and it's like turning back the pages of history to watch them sing and dance.

Ray: Also, because you've got people like Louis Hill having authors write their stories, you've got artists being paid to paint their portraits, the record for the Blackfeet is very extensive compared to some tribes in North America, and it was all unknowing. They hadn't intended it necessarily. They weren't trying to counter the government. They were doing this for their own purposes. Louis Hill wanted to show that this was the place to come see Native Americans before they all disappeared. Did he believe they were going to disappear? I don't know.

Gaby: On my first pass through the story, I thought it was a history of exploitation, a giant corporation using people as props to make money. But now, after turning the story over a few times, I still see exploitation, but I see something else as well.

Ray: His efforts actually helped preserve Blackfeet culture. The Native American Speaks program in Glacier, I almost see as a continuation of something that the Great Northern was doing, but in a less colonial way. And you're getting a new way of looking at the history of this park rather than through Euro-American eyes. What Louis Hill started was a multi-pronged effort to promote Glacier Park, and authors and artists were another part of the Great Northern Railway campaign.

Gaby: One of those artists was Winold Reiss. He was a German-American artist who was captivated by stories of Native Americans.

Ray: He was definitely a part of the Great Northern's advertising campaign.

Gaby: Reiss was based in New York City and created famous portraits of important figures in the Harlem Renaissance. But he also spent a lot of time in the Blackfeet homelands on the eastern side of Glacier National Park. He first came to visit the Blackfeet Reservation in 1920, and he spent several months painting and building relationships with people he met.

Ray: Louis Hill hires him, this is about 1927, and it starts a whole new advertising campaign that nobody had quite anticipated, but became incredibly successful.

Gaby: His portraits that hang at the Museum of the Plains Indian were used everywhere. For several decades, the Blackfeet became the face of Great Northern and of Glacier because of Reiss's art.

Ray: What makes Winold Reiss's paintings really stand out is that they're colorful and they're detailed. Winold Reiss worked with pastels, and immediately you're going to get something that's denser and darker and can be brighter. Also Winold Reiss really focused on the details. The clothing looks realistic. The hands and the faces look realistic. They're also large panels. They weren't small. When you saw a Winold Reiss painting, you're drawn into it immediately. The person is—as if they're standing right or sitting right in front of you. These are posed, yes, but there's a humanity about them. He would talk to them during the sittings. Some of these people became his friends.

Gaby: [to Ray] And Louis Hill immediately was enamored with these paintings.

Ray: So much so that he bought everything Winold Reiss did that first year and would continue to buy most everything Winold Reiss produced over the next 20 years.

Gaby: In the end, Reiss ended up creating more than 250 works of Native Americans. And he was more than an artist—he was a teacher. Many summers in the 1930s, artists from Europe and across North America came to the shores of St Mary Lake to learn from him. Blackfeet artists trained alongside them, and they influenced Reiss in turn. The exhibit features several pieces from these artists, including Victor Pepion, who went on to inspire his great nephew, John Pepion. He is now a renowned pictographic artist and muralist whose work is also featured in the Museum of the Plains Indian.

[electronic beat sets off the transition]

[Beeping of a car]

Gaby: [in the field] Oh here’s Darnell. “In traffic construction,” says “it shouldn’t be long.” She put a bunch of exclamation points. [laughing] She put five excalamtion points!

[footsteps on wood decking]

Gaby: [in the field] We're going in through the back.

Renee: Hi.

Gaby: [in the field] Hello! Are you Renee?

Renee: Yes I’m Renee! [laughing]

Gaby: It's so great to meet you!

Renee: I know. It's like email email email. [all laughing] Yeah. Okay, well, we can start in here with the intro panel.

Gaby: We walk into the main gallery room, which has the intro panel and several of the portraits on display. They're big and colorful, and we all take a moment to admire them. So if you had to describe Winold's work in like a sentence, how would you do that?

Renee: He captured an awesome likeness.

Darnell: He captured the, the features of the person as well as their, I guess their... almost their thoughts.

Renee: You realize that these are our people.

Gaby: [in the field] While using very bright colors, and, I mean, these pieces are big.

Renee: There's no paint. There's no acrylics or oils. It's all pastel work. Almost see, the, the ridges on the crayon, or the ridges on the pencil? Yeah. Yeah. But his. His ability to capture a person's features is phenomenal. Winold's.

Gaby: [in the field] Darnell so you, you described feeling some heavy emotion. Was, was this another piece that brought you some of that?

Renee: Oh, yeah. White Calf is very prominent, a very most recognizable Blackfeet, because he's also the one on the Buffalo Nickel. But I remember him so distinctly. White Calf the old, old man was our neighbor. And he would come and he'd walk by us. And to see this original? It brought it brought me back tears to my eyes. So Two Guns is important. Very important to me.

Gaby: This portrait of Two Guns White Calf stands out to me. The colors aren't as bright, but his gaze is powerful. He isn't looking off to the side or down like most people are in the paintings. He looks directly at me.

Darnell: He's looking directly at us.

Gaby: [in the field] Directly at us.

Darnell: And it makes it more real. It makes it alive.

Gaby: [in the field] It feels really—it just feels more intimate.

Darnell: It does. You feel that connection through just a piece of art. So it is very powerful. Very, very powerful. White Calf will always be very special to me.

Gaby: As the museum curator, Renee helped name this exhibit Connections. It's all about the links between these portraits and the present day.

Renee: What do you want to connect? We're connecting the Great Northern Railway with Glacier National Park, Glacier National Park with Winold Reiss, Winold Reiss with the Blackfeet people, our Blackfeet people with their past. It's just a total connection.

Gaby: [in the field] Everything connects

Renee: Everything connects.

Darnell: It gives me the chills when Renee says "connections." That connection is strong. That connection is valuable.

Gaby: But when I ask her about the history of the portraits, she points out the relevance for future generations too.

Renee: So that's how we came up with that, the title connections. Our people are always looking towards future generations. What can we do to set things up for future generations of our people?

Darnell: One of the best things that could have ever happened is bringing Winold Reiss portraits here.

Gaby: [in the field] Home.

Darnell: Yeah, home. This is home. This is home.

Gaby: What I saw is a story looking backward, full of loops and repetitions and rhymes—they see as a connection to the future.

Darnell: If it wasn't for these portraits, we wouldn't be able to sit here and tell you stories about them. If they didn't happen.

Renee: Reiss, when he came here, he came here to do—he was hired to do portraits. But when he got here, he became so close to our people, he was accepted as just one of our own. Up the road is Red Blanket Hill, and Red Blanket Hill was always kind of a spiritual place for our people. So when Reiss passed away, he wanted to be cremated. My Grandpa—Great Grandpa George Bullchild took his ashes up to Red Blanket Hill and scattered them.

[sparse, pensive music begins to play]

Darnell: They gave him an Indian name. And his ashes are here to prove that—that he was part of this... this world, our world.

Gaby: It's tough to pinpoint what exactly changes when a place becomes a destination. Who brings a new narrative and who writes it down? Who profits and who gets remembered? A destination brings people and cultures together—publicists, painters and people trying to make a living. Some find power, some find meaning, and some leave a legacy.

Gaby: [in the field] After walking this exhibit like what kind of moves through you? How do you feel?

[music resumes, with an added beat layered over it]

Darnell: It is a piece of history now.

[sample from the old timey narration of the early 1900s promo video is layered over the music] Lyrics: And it’s like turning back the pages of history to watch them sing and dance. Sing and dance. Dance. Sing and dance. And it’s like turning back the pages of history to watch them sing and dance. Sing and dance. Dance. Sing and dance.

[haunting violin music plays softly under the credits]

Daniel: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. This season of Headwaters was made by Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Michael Faist, and Gaby Eseverri. Frank Waln wrote and performed our music, and Eric Carlson created this season's cover art. Special thanks this episode to Darnell Rides At The Door, Renee Bear Medicine, and the Museum of the Plains Indian. Ray Djuff, Scott Tanner, Cookie Zwang, and John Pepion and of course, Bill Schustrom and all his gossip. This season depended on a lot of hard work from Darren Lewis and Lacy Kowalski, and we always depend on help and support from Melissa Sladek, Sierra Mandelko, Brent Rowley, and the whole Glacier National Park archives team. And I also want to shout out the Conservancy's Virtual Book Club—we got a lot of great ideas from that. Thanks for listening.

Lacy: Next time on Headwaters.

Gaby: For nearly 50 years, there were no wolves in Glacier National Park… until one wolf bent the arc of history.

Michael Wise: One of the first, in a way, like cooperative, democratic kind of processes on the ground is like, okay, we all have to work together to kill wolves.

Diane Boyd: There's many parallels between wolves and humans in terms of a social structure. And sometimes I wonder if that if that bothers people.

Gaby: That's next time on Headwaters.

[music finishes]

Gaby: [to Andrew] Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Smith: Hey, Gaby.

Gaby: [to Andrew] So we are so lucky here that Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Andrew: Yeah.

Gaby: [to Andrew] But you guys do a lot of other work with the park too. What are some examples?

Andrew: Another project we're funding right now is protecting Glacier from emerging wildlife diseases.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Oh, cool. So that's work being done by park biologists that you're helping to fund. What diseases are we looking for?

Andrew: We're looking for a handful of diseases that have not yet been found in park wildlife, but we want to make sure we identify them right away if they do reach this area so we can take preventative measures.

Gaby: [to Andrew] So what kind of diseases are we talking about?

Andrew: So one is the rabbit hemorrhagic disease, which affects rabbits, but it also can affect pika [Gaby gasps] because they're lagamorphs, they're related to rabbits and hares.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Oh no!

Andrew: So whenever a dead rabbit is found in the park, it's tested for rabbit hemorrhagic disease, though it has not been detected yet in Glacier. They're also looking for avian influenza and chronic wasting disease, which affects ungulates, our deer and elk populations. And chronic wasting disease has been detected very close—within 20 miles of Glacier National Park. So now when we find dead deer, they actually will cut out the lymph nodes and send them to a lab to be tested, because that's the only way to determine if a deer has chronic wasting disease.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Wow. This sounds really important.

Andrew: Yeah, it's it's not the sexiest project, [both laugh] but it's so important for keeping our wildlife safe.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Absolutely. So if people want to learn more about this project or about the Glacier National Park Conservancy, where can they go?

Andrew: They can check out our website. Just type in glacier.org and you'll be there.

Bill: And then the chalets, you know, then he picked out eight sites in the park.

Gaby: [to Bill] Have you stayed at the chalets?

Bill: I did stay in the Prince of Wales, my wife and I stayed there one night.

Gaby: [to Bill] How was that?

Bill: Oh, it was elegant. It was all a bunch of high-rollers from Kalispell. So they said, “well, what all the poor people are doing today?” I looked at my wife and she looked at me, and we said, “here we are, baby!”

[everyone laughs]