Becoming | Portraits of the West

Lewis and Clark are celebrated yet controversial. If you know what to look for, their names still echo through the park today. We examine their legacy from a variety of perspectives.

Edgar Paxson painting: https://mhsmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/1885CEC9-39C3-4B45-889D-242479808699 Charlie Russell’s painting: https://mhs.mt.gov/education/Capitol/Capitol-Art/House-of-Representatives

See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm

Lewis and Clark are celebrated yet controversial. If you know what to look for, their names still echo through the park today. We examine their legacy from a variety of perspectives.

Edgar Paxson painting: https://mhsmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/1885CEC9-39C3-4B45-889D-242479808699 Charlie Russell’s painting: https://mhs.mt.gov/education/Capitol/Capitol-Art/House-of-Representatives

See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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

Daniel Lombardi: This summer, Gaby went to Helena, Montana's State Capital. She went to look at a painting, but she was also trying to get some perspective. To see one historic moment from another point of view.

[door slams, voices echoing]

Jennifer Bottomly O’Looney: Later, we can go to see the rotunda.

Gaby Eseverri: [in the field] The ro-tun-da. Cool.

Daniel: An expert from the Montana Historical Society, Jennifer Bottomly O'Looney, took Gaby around the Capitol building.

Gaby: [in the field, to Jennifer] Okay, so once we walk out, it'll connect us to the House of Representatives chamber?

Daniel: Hanging on the walls are two very different pieces of art that depict one particular chapter in Montana's story: the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Jennifer: Entering the anteroom, and here are the murals by Edgar S Paxson. Probably the best known is this painting, Lewis and Clark at Three Forks.

Gaby: [in the field] This painting, it depicts them kind of in the center of the image. They're kind of standing up straight, holding their guns, looking off to the distance. They all kind of look like action figures a little bit. The way that they're standing and looking off to the side. It feels—

Jennifer: Very formal. Yeah, very formal type.

Gaby: [in the field] It puts them at the center of the story. Yeah. And it feels a bit stereotypical to what we know of Lewis and Clark or kind of what's depicted in in history books, at least when I was growing up. It reminds me of what I learned in high school.

Jennifer: And this image is used in a lot of history books. It's been requested over and over from us to provide an image for this. So you probably have seen this exact image in your history books.

Gaby: [in the field] That is good to know. [both laughing] And not surprising at all.

[pensive music begins to play]

Daniel: This is not the painting that Gaby went to Helena to see. This is the painting that everyone expects. Lewis and Clark, as painted by Edgar Paxon, wearing fur hats and fringed buckskin jackets, with their guide Sacagawea pointing at the horizon. Edgar Paxson didn't break the mold here. This is how Lewis and Clark are usually depicted, and it's probably the image you have in your head right now. But Gaby was touring the Capitol building to see something different, a much larger mural by the artist Charlie Russell, that depicts Lewis and Clark as they're meeting the Salish or Flathead people.

Gaby: [in the field] And then through here is the, the Charlie Rose mural. Okay. Okay. So we are—Jennifer is opening the doors, unlocking them, [keys jingling] and we are about to enter the chamber.

Gaby: This version is a totally different point of view. It's not what I was expecting, and it's definitely not the history book painting I felt like I'd seen before. [music building, drumbeat gaining momentum] It's a single freeze frame of a pivotal moment, and it turns my whole understanding of the expedition on his head.

[door opening]

Gaby: [in the field] Wow. Wow.

[Headwaters season 3 theme begins to play, with the strumming of a string instrument, a flute, and drumbeats]

Daniel: Welcome to Headwaters, a podcast about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else.

[theme plays and finishes]

Daniel: We are calling this season Becoming. It is by no means a complete history, but rather a collection of stories exploring how this place became what it is. This episode is about understanding history by finding different perspectives. Specifically, it's about one of the single most important moments in American history: the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These were the first representatives of the new American government to set eyes on what is now Glacier National Park. Lewis and Clark are celebrated yet controversial, memorable and misremembered. Either way, their names still echo through the park today. The main mountain range through the park, that's called the Lewis Range. Montana's State Flower, the bitterroot, it has the Latin name Lewisia. So does Montana's State Fish, the cutthroat trout. And of course, you can't forget the Clark's nutcrackers. [laughing] And we can blame Lewis for confusingly naming one of Glacier's most iconic flowers, beargrass, which is neither a grass nor eaten by bears.

Gaby: [laughing, to Daniel] This will all be very helpful for my Lewis and Clark Junior Ranger book.

Daniel: Well, personally, I think there's no better way to get an introduction to a park site than a Junior Ranger book.

Gaby: Our story starts and ends at the Montana State Capitol. But I made three different stops on my journey there. Three different attempts to understand this expedition and this history. And my first stop was becoming a Junior Ranger.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: Junior Ranger Activity Journal. Two explorers look into the distance.

Gaby: These are clips from videos that describe the booklet and make it accessible. It covers the basics, like how far the expedition went…

Junior Ranger Audio Description: 4900 miles.

Gaby: How long it took…

Junior Ranger Audio Description: Three years between 1803 and 1806.

Gaby: And whose homelands they crossed.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: Territories of 65 plus tribes.

Daniel: The Lewis and Clark Expedition, which is also called the Corps of Discovery, was a special military unit of the American Army. It was created by Thomas Jefferson to explore the brand new Louisiana Purchase. But he also wanted to see how the country could make money out in the American West.

Gaby: The booklet uses hand-drawn maps to remind me of the route they took.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: The route winds along the Ohio River, southwest from Pittsburgh to Saint Louis.

Gaby: A long and winding path to the West Coast.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: The route continues west along the Columbia River to Astoria and the ocean.

Daniel: On both the way out to the Pacific and on the way back, the Corps of Discovery traveled extensively through Montana. On their journey back, part of the Corps took a detour up the Marias River to just outside what is now Glacier National Park.

[pensive, sparse music plays softly]

Gaby: That ends up being one of the most fateful moments on the expedition. They have a violent encounter with a group of young Blackfeet men that results in two of the native boys being killed.

Daniel: That was in the summer of 1806, and it was the first military conflict between the U.S. and a Plains Indian tribe.

Gaby: The Junior Ranger book does a good job getting you to think about these kinds of encounters and their interactions with native groups more broadly. On one page, it asks the reader to think about the Lewis and Clark expedition like a stranger barging into someone else's house.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: How do you show respect when visiting someone's home?

Gaby: And while we're just sharing the audio descriptions, the Junior Ranger book has full color illustrations that help bring it to life. It was a much more diverse expedition than I'd remembered. There was Pierre Cruzatte, a one-eyed, fiddle-playing, French and Omaha guide. And then there was a man named York.

Junior Ranger Audio Description: Credited as the first African-American to cross the continent, tribes sometimes cooperated with the expedition just so they could meet him, though he was enslaved, the body servant to William Clark.

Gaby: Another way these stories are brought to life is through living history. Hasan Davis, a performer who contributed to the jury in your book, gives programs, as you mark.

Hasan Davis: My presentation of York brings audiences into the triumph and the tragedy, the pride and the pain of being a part of, but separate from, what some would argue was the greatest American expedition ever mounted.

Gaby: This booklet does a remarkable job presenting different sides of a story I'd only really heard from one point of view. Such a good job, in fact, that the woman behind it won, the Freeman Tilden award, one of the highest honors the National Park Service gives out.

Caiti Campbell: [on the phone] How do you do justice to this very complicated story that is rooted in colonialism, exploitation, slavery, destruction? Those things are part of this story.

Gaby: This is Caiti.

Caiti: Well hi, I'm Caiti, Caiti Campbell, and I am an interpretive specialist for the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.

Gaby: [to Caiti] So what does the Corps of Discovery mean to American history and and why, why do you think it matters?

Caiti: Yeah, it's it's absolutely pivotal. It's almost hard to think of a more pivotal moment. And it's one that's interestingly kind of misremembered. So most people think of the expedition as Lewis Clark, as, you know, Sacajawea or Sacagawea in a canoe exploring unknown wilderness. But there was already a huge network of trade and complex politics already in place among the tribes of the West, among each other, and also with French traders and British traders. And additionally, at this watershed moment in history, you've got this moment in time where you have the young United States, you know, coming up with and starting its diplomacy with all of these tribes of the West.

[thoughtful music plays softly]

Gaby: [to Caiti] Were they on a diplomatic mission, do you think?

Caiti: I mean, this question is at the heart of the whole legacy of this expedition. Right. There are so many different perspectives on this. And the, the expedition's legacy is remembered so differently, and especially if you're from a tribe. So in a way, I think they thought that they were doing diplomacy, and yet they would use words from Thomas Jefferson that said that “we are your new white father.” That is how Thomas Jefferson, you know, wanted it to go out to tribes.

Gaby: With so many points of view on the same story. It makes me wonder, how does the National Park Service and those of us who work for and visit park sites, how do we fit into this?

Gaby: [to Caiti] What role do you think the National Park Service plays in interpreting history?

Caiti: I love the idea that when you come to the actual place and when you stand in that place, that learning about history, culture, nature just becomes so much more profoundly meaningful when you are doing it with your two feet on the ground in that place. I just think that that's kind of the point of the National Park Service—by saving that place for us to come to really think about what is so important. Think about some of these big themes of our history.

Gaby: [to Caiti] It feels like almost everyone has a different perspective and a different way that they approach studying this history. How and why do you think perspective is important with unpacking this history?

Caiti: Yeah. Yeah. The way I the way I think about it is the more angles you examine, the more perspectives you hear, the closer you get to the truth. And at times, we won't ever get a crystal clear picture of an event of something that may have happened. But any time that we can include additional perspectives, it's, it's like a puzzle. And it, it…it just completes the picture. And I believe that's true even when the perspectives or especially when the perspectives are opposing. Mm hmm. And that's a really long answer to your question. But that question, like I said, is the heart, you know, is at the heart of what this Lewis and Clark Expeditions legacy means. It's complicated.

[drumbeat plays, marking a transition]

Gaby: It's no surprise that an expedition that traveled over 4000 miles crossed paths with so many different people and points of view. But as I've researched the Corps of Discovery, those paths kept converging on one name: Charlie Russell, the painter behind the giant mural at the Capitol.

Daniel: Today, Russell is considered one of the most famous Western artists that has ever lived, and he painted mainly romantic scenes of the Old West.

Gaby: I hadn't heard of him really until I moved here. But when his name kept popping up in my research, I was excited to see it show up on the schedule for campground talks here in the park.

Mary Jane Bradbury: When he was a 16 year old boy in 1880, and he wanted to come west, he wanted to see the West that was passing. Because in 1880 it was. The buffalo herds were almost gone. The railroads, the development, the mining, everything was changing. So he got here just in time to see the last little bit of what he grew up listening to stories about and what he'd read. And of course, he read the Lewis and Clark journals until they were in tatters because he just loved that that era of the mountain men.

Gaby: That's Mary Jane.

Mary Jane: My name is Mary Jane Bradbury, and I am a storyteller.

Gaby: She gives a program on the life and legacy of Charlie Russell, but she does it through the eyes of his wife, Nancy.

Mary Jane: And I like to tell it from her perspective. But in order for me to do that, we all have to use our imaginations. You use your imagination, and we'll both just pretend Nancy's going to walk out of the forest and step right up here and tell us her story.

Daniel: Living history is the art of portraying historical figures by dressing in their clothes, talking the way they might have talked, and giving a performance in character.

Gaby: To be honest, I wasn't that familiar with living history, and at first glance I thought it sounded a little corny. But then I met Mary Jane.

Mary Jane: When I put the clothes on, I get the strut going. I get the, you know, voice going… [in a southern accent] I mean you don't get my way now because I'm Nancy Russell and you will pay for this painting because this is what it's worth and there will be no more Charlie Russell art, so you want it, you pay for it!

Gaby: [laughing, to Mary Jane] I love that!

Daniel: Okay, Mary Jane Bradbury. She's kind of a character herself. I think I usually associate living history with more Revolutionary War, Civil War reenactments. The Park Service does a lot of those.

Gaby: But Mary Jane uses her outfit, her accent, and her strength to tell a more personal story.

Mary Jane: I asked Charlie one time if he ever thought he'd run out of ideas for paintings, and he said a man couldn't live enough lifetimes to run out of all the ideas that he had for stories in his art. And if he ever lost the use of his hands, he'd learn to paint with his toes, because he had to paint not only what was in his mind, but what was in his heart.

Gaby: And Mary Jane shared that while Charlie was a talented artist, he wasn't much of a businessman.

Mary Jane: Charlie was blessed with a great amount of talent, but not a lot of ambition. So lucky for Charlie, at a very critical moment in his life, he met Nancy Cooper, who became his wife. Together, they could create the legacy of art and stories that we have now that is a remarkable chronicle of the West.

Gaby: Charlie would make paintings, and Nancy, his fiery, no nonsense wife, would get people to buy them. She'd travel all over the country to sell his art New York, Los Angeles…

Daniel: And here in Glacier too. Charlie and Nancy started coming here before Glacier was even a park, and they loved it so much they ended up building a cabin on Lake McDonald. They named it the Bullhead Lodge, and it was a really big part of their lives.

Gaby: Glacier was a special place for them.

Daniel: After the park was established, Lake McDonald Lodge was eager to capitalize on having the Russells as neighbors. So they set up a special gallery where Nancy could wheel and deal and sell Charlie's art to wealthy tourists. The two of them were amazing storytellers and would give captivating, impromptu performances to tourists in the lobby. Charlie would even join in on visitor pack trips as the official storyteller.

Gaby: It sounds like they really loved this place. And people here really love them back. Mary Jane always pulls a huge audience to this talk.

Mary Jane: I love telling the stories from the first person perspective, the historic portrayal. That brings alive the history that we've been through and gives us a little bit of an insight as to where we are now and hopefully where we're going next.

Gaby: What I love about this approach is that you get to see the people behind the paintings—the man with a vision, the woman with a plan, and the couple that spent summers in Glacier for decades. And it's easy to imagine why the people building the Montana state capitol hired Russell to paint its largest mural.

Mary Jane: When the Capitol was built, they wanted a mural. They had asked a number of Montana artists to contribute. Of course Eastern artists were all the rage in those days. You know, if you really wanted something of high notoriety, you would hire a big Eastern artist. And Charlie said, "Fine, if you want angels and cherubs flitting through the skies, go ahead and hire an Eastern artist. But if you want history, hire me." And so they did.

[drumbeat plays, marking a transition]

Daniel: Hey Gaby, uh, tell us about living history and meeting Mary Jane Bradbury. Like, what did you like about it?

Gaby: It was really cool. I thought the way Mary Jane Bradbury captured Nancy Russell and shared her experience with us was amazing. I'm somehow relating to this person hundreds of years ago.

Daniel: I think it's neat that you're learning about one person, Charlie Russell, but you're doing it through someone else who knew him. And their—from their point of view, like Nancy, his wife.

Gaby: Exactly.

Peri Sasnett: Often history is kind of presented as just one thing, a set of facts in a textbook, but… I think that's a good reminder that you can learn a lot from different people's interpretations. All history is someone's interpretation.

Daniel: Yeah.

Gaby: Peri, and the way you're describing this, I'm imagining my family and I looking at a piece of art, and we are all looking at the same thing. But somehow we are taking away different meanings, different interpretations.

Peri: And so often we study history through art. You know, my high school history textbook was full of old paintings.

Daniel: What I'm hearing you to say is that there's a lot of power in understanding the past through not just different perspectives, but using art, whether it's a painting or a living history performance that an actor's doing, there's a lot of value in understanding history through that art because it forces you to see something from one perspective or one point of view.

Peri: Right. I think we're really comfortable with the idea that art can have a lot of different interpretations, but we don't often think of history that way.

[drumbeat plays, marking a transition]

Gaby: I'm finding that history gets a lot more complicated when you start considering multiple perspectives. I just wanted another take on Lewis and Clark, but that led me into a history of Turley Russell, and then that led me to seeing things from his wife, Nancy's point of view. And I'm not done yet.

[warbling vireo sings; a knock on a door; the door opens]

Gaby: [in the field] Hello!

Daniel: [in the field] Hey!

Gaby: Before I see Charlie Russell's painting in the Helena Capitol building, I wanted to get one more person's thoughts. So we stopped at Germaine White's beautiful home on the Flathead Reservation.

Germaine White: Do you guys want a drink of water. Anything? I have both Lacroix and Waterloo.

Gaby: [to Germaine] So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the Charlie Russell painting, because we're going to go see it tomorrow.

Germaine: [emphatically] I love it!

Gaby: [smiling, to Germaine] Why? How so?

Germaine: I think that when you look at it, what you'll see is Salish people. They're on horses. They're dressed in their finery. Front and center. That's like, hero of the story. You know, that central perspective of a painting. And, and then on the side is this little straggler group of folks that kind of look like they're lost. You know, it's it's a direct collision of cultures that is about to occur. And it's really, it's really quite powerful. When Daniel called and I thought, “oh, my gosh, really? I don't know if you want a tribal voice talking about Lewis and Clark,” who I sometimes irreverently call Clueless and Lark. They're revered by so many, and there really has not been until recently, I believe, Indigenous people included in history. Indigenous people are eloquent, but dead. Or dead. Did I mention... Did I mention that.

Gaby: Germaine is now retired, but she started the Cultural Resource Protection Program on the Flathead Reservation and is currently serving as a board member for the Glacier National Park Conservancy, the organization that funds the show. But I'm talking to her because she helped create a book telling the Lewis and Clark story from the Salish perspective.

Gaby: [to Germaine] So I'm curious, like, how did you get involved? Where you kind of contributed slash wrote this book.

Germaine: We wanted to tell a story that that was really framed by, by the voices of our elders. The title of the story is not Lewis and Clark and the Salish People—it's the Salish people and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They entered a homeland that was known and loved and that was fully occupied. As the people watched Lewis and Clark, it appeared that they were aimlessly moving across the landscape, that they really had no sense of the world they were moving through. And for us, our lives in so many ways are deeply connected to the natural world. It appeared that these people were kind of bumbling across the landscape, and those that observed them thought they might be ill. They looked unhealthy. They didn't appear to be moving with purpose and clear direction. You know, they're upside down face people. They have hair on the bottom of their their face, no hair on the top of their face. And who are these strange, unhealthy looking people? And as the people observed them, there was great discussion among the leaders and the people in in the camp. And there were those among the tribe that said we should eliminate them. You know, we were a large population. We were strong and healthy. And they were not. [pensive music plays softly] And there were also those among us that said we need to visit upon them traditional norms of hospitality. That's who we are. The more pitiful they are, the more in need they are. So we need to help them. Those that had said we should help them prevail. So we met them and, you know, we gave them buffalo robes to be warm. We gave them food stores because they had very little we gave them vast stores of goods that we had gathered to make our winter successful. And that really is profoundly important because we came with kindness and generosity and hospitality. It didn't appear that they did. It appeared that they were coming to catalog and inventory resources for appropriation. And I think that really set the template for a lot which was to follow.

Gaby: [to Germaine] Do you think their mission was exploratory and diplomatic or colonial and capitalistic?

Germaine: Can it be one disguised as the other? So, for example, we could have this nice introduction. I could welcome you here. We could, you know, I could offer you a beverage, you know, “La Croix?” [laughing] “Would you like a little sparkling water?” And also, “look at that really nice recorder you have here” and think about how I could have a hostile takeover and acquire that before you leave, regardless of your intent of leaving with it. So Lewis and Clark inventoried, cataloged, moved through, went back, reported to the government.

Gaby: [to Germaine] It's funny that you say that they were like coming in just like taking stock, because I kind of just like imagine them being like, “oh, okay, like there's this, cool, I'm taking notes” and like…

Germaine: Of course they had, you know, the journals were basically an inventory. That's what Jefferson sent them out to do. Their mission was clear. Hmm.

Gaby: [to Germaine] So what do you think, then, that history has gotten, like, incorrect about this feeding.

Germaine: The whole story that this land was known and loved and occupied. Our elders knew the place, not just encyclopedic, but they knew it intimately. Our elders knew the curves of the hills and the lines of the trails as intimately as they knew the lines and curves of their mother's faces. That story has really not been told.

[music builds and finishes]

Gaby: The Corps of Discovery met dozens of tribes on their years-long journey, not just the Salish. And versions of this encounter happened over and over again. And in every case, there's one story we can read in the Lewis and Clark Journals. But there are many others, too—even if they're less well known. Carrying what I've learned from Caiti, Mary Jane, and Germaine, I finally feel ready to see the painting at the Capitol.

Gaby: [in the field] Okay. So we are. Jennifer's opening the doors and unlocking them, [keys jingling] and we are about to enter the chamber. Wow. Wow. Oh, my God. It's huge.

Gaby: This is, no joke, the biggest painting I've ever seen. It's the entire wall of the chamber above where the Speaker of the House sits up on a platform. I'm surrounded by legislative desks, all of which face the painting. I walk up the center aisle and I kind of feel like I'm walking up to an altar.

Gaby: [in the field, laughing] I think I'm overwhelmed.

Gaby: The painting shows a broad Montana valley, and I'm imagining the sun just under the horizon. It's kind of just turning the clouds pink. The center is dominated by Salish people on horseback, their camp of teepee lodges behind them.

Gaby: [in the field] It's hard not to be overwhelmed just staring at this. I can't look away. [laughing]

Jennifer: Yeah and it is in itself just an amazing painting. The way the center of your vision is right here in the front where you see the Salish Indians swirling.

Gaby: [in the field] Kind of feels like there's a frenzy in camp. There's an energy.

Jennifer: There is an energy. Yes. Yeah.

[thoughtful music begins to play, with a dramatic drumbeat echoing the horses’ hooves]

Gaby: Russell's painting is loud and dynamic. I feel like I can almost hear the thunder of horses running through it. It is the exact opposite of the first Lewis and Clark painting I saw here in the Capitol, for one. No one is pointing at the horizon. But more surprising, Lewis and Clark themselves are barely in it. The Salish on horseback are charging toward and past the viewer, but the Corps of Discovery are tiny, off to one side.

Gaby: [in the field] Somehow the emotional and intense energy does not reach them. [laughing]

Jennifer: No. It doesn't.

Gaby: [in the field] They're kind of just standing there and there's not much emotion on that side.

Jennifer: And you can see, you know, the focus in Paxson's painting, of course, is is Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. And here the focus are the Salish Indians.

Gaby: Near the bottom of the frame. There's a dog that I assume belongs to the Salish. And from my perspective, it looks like it's stalking… [haunting violin music begins to play] directly behind the Speaker of the House, watching the politicians of Montana. Without saying a word, the painting comments on the sweep of history about to unfold.

Jennifer: Charlie never talked about it. Hmm. There's no recorded documentation of—that I know of, of what he thought about this painting. So what happens next? That's up to the viewer to decide.

[music continues to play under the credits]

Daniel: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Season Three of Headwaters, Becoming, was made by me, Daniel Lombardi, along with Peri Sasnett, Michael Faist, and Gaby Eseverri. Frank Waln wrote and performed our music. Eric Carlson created this season's cover art. Special thanks this episode to Germaine White, Caiti Campbell…

Gaby: Thanks for signing my Junior Ranger book!

Daniel: Jennifer Bottomley O'Looney, and Mary Jane Bradbury.

Gaby: Or should we say Nancy Russell?

Daniel: Making this season is a huge team effort, and we couldn't have done it without Lacy Kowalski. Melissa Sladek, Sierra Mandelko, Brent Rowley, Darren Lewis, the whole team at the archives, and the Montana Historical Society. Thanks for listening.

[music finishes; a drumbeat begins]

Lacy: Next time, on Headwaters.

Gaby: We visit the 100-year-old cabin of a complicated character to untangle the fur trade in Northern Montana and what it left behind.

Kyle Langley: And at the end of the day, you know, we’re left with kind of a semi-unclear picture of what kind of a guy Joe Kipp was.

Jack Gladstone: What happens when the sun goes down, hell is not our fault, they’re the ones taking the drink, we didn’t make them drink…

[drumbeat finishes]

Gaby: That’s next time on Headwaters.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Smith: Hi, Gaby.

Gaby: [to Andrew] So Headwaters is made possible by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Andrew: That's right.

Gaby: [to Andrew] What else are you guys supporting?

Andrew: Another project we're supporting is to add Indigenous languages to interpretive signage in the park. This project's really cool because it's a big collaboration. It's going to involve Glacier National Park, the Department of the Interior, as well as the Blackfeet and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. And the goal is really to add that authentic language back on to a lot of the signage in Glacier.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Yeah, that's really cool. When I spoke to Germaine this summer, she talked about how important place names are.

Andrew: Yeah. and she's a really big part of this project. She believes and we believe that when this language is included, it recognizes the connection these places have to so many Indigenous people. But it also enriches the experience of the person reading it and learning about that connection and just deepens their knowledge of the park.

Gaby: [to Andrew] Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So if people want to learn more about this project, where can they go?

Andrew: They should check out our website, Glacier.org