Confluence | Two Medicine

Glacier National Park, a place often celebrated for its natural scenery, offers an equally diverse and rich cultural landscape.

In this episode of Headwaters, food offers an introduction to the area’s Indigenous communities. We also explore the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service.

Featuring: Darnell Rides At The Door, Vernon Finley, Mariah Gladstone, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, Tony Incashola Sr., and Kelly Lynch.

For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters

Glacier National Park, a place often celebrated for its natural scenery, offers an equally diverse and rich cultural landscape.

In this episode of Headwaters, food offers an introduction to the area’s Indigenous communities. We also explore the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service.

Featuring: Darnell Rides At The Door, Vernon Finley, Mariah Gladstone, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, Tony Incashola Sr., and Kelly Lynch.

For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters

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TRANSCRIPT:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

COOKIES INTRODUCTION

Michael: This is Michael. [music starts] I am currently in my kitchen in West Glacier, because while I am not the most accomplished baker, I learned an interesting cookie recipe that I wanted to make for Andrew before recording tomorrow.

Michael: [kitchen] I don't know how much I need to add, but let's start with that.

Michael: Again, not the best baker, so I hope they turn out all right. But we'll see.

Michael: [kitchen] Into the oven they go [tray sliding into oven, timers going off]. Well, I think that's as good as I could have hoped for. I hope he likes them!

Michael: Hey Andrew, before we started out today, I have a surprise.

Andrew: Oh? Yeah, what is it?

Michael: Well, I made some cookies last night and I was wondering if you'd want to try some.

Andrew: Oh, for sure! Yeah. Hand me one of those.

Michael: Here you go.

Andrew: Oh, is that huckleberry?

Michael: I had some frozen huckleberries leftover that I put on the top. What do you think?

Andrew: [stammering with mouthful, both laughing]. They're pretty good! Not as sweet as I was expecting, but a really nice, fresh flavor to them. What's the occasion?

Michael: While these cookies are simple to make and tasty, what interests me the most is that they're made using only ingredients indigenous to North and Central America.

Andrew: Oh really? That's, that's pretty cool.

Michael: Huckleberries, for instance, are native here. And as you know, have been eaten and used by people for thousands of years.

Andrew: Yeah. Lots of people too, Glacier National Park like America as a whole is a place where a ton of different cultures have converged.

Michael: In each episode, you'll hear us acknowledge some of those cultures, the ǔmssk̇ǎaṗiiṗiik̇ǔni, Kootenai, Selis, and Qlispe people.

Andrew: Because while Glacier National Park has only been around since 1910, this area has long been and continues to be the traditional territory of these and other Tribes.

Michael: On the east side of the park, the Blackfeet Reservation is home to the ǔmssk̇ǎaṗiiṗiik̇ǔni South Piegan. Also known as the Blackfeet.

Andrew: On the west side of the park, the Flathead Reservation is managed by a Confederation of Tribes, the Kootenai, Selis, and Qlispe or Pend d’Oreille people.

Michael: And these Tribes aren't monolithic—like any other culture, they are diverse. And reservation boundaries fail to define the extent of their people today, or their place in a vibrant Indigenous community that stretches far beyond Montana.

Andrew: To date, throughout the United States, there are 637 federally and state recognized Tribes. Odds are, wherever you are right now is the traditional territory of one or probably several Indigenous groups. Yellowstone National Park, for example, has 26 associated Tribes.

Michael: And whether here or at home, learning about the people who came before you—whose connection to a place reaches beyond scholarly definitions of history itself—that could strengthen your understanding and appreciation of wherever you are.

Andrew: That's especially true here at Glacier. A place still visited and used by Native communities today.

Michael: But my question is what is the best way to start learning about another culture?

Andrew: Uhh. Let me think...

Michael: I'll give you a hint. It's not reading.

Andrew: Okay. Um...

Michael: [whispering] What did I bring in today?

Andrew: Cookies?

Michael: Yeah, well food.

Andrew: Okay. I like where you're heading.

Michael: So take as many of these cookies as you like.

Andrew: Don't mind if I do,

Michael: Because on my journey to learn this simple recipe, I learned a lot, lot more.

Michael: Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many Native American Tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people.

Andrew: We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here.

Michael: I’m Michael.

Andrew: I’m Andrew.

Michael: And we’re both rangers here. We had the chance to cover loads of different topics in this season of the show.

Andrew: And throughout it all, we’ve tried to seek out Tribal perspectives on concepts like wildland fire, the night sky, climate change—

Michael: But in this episode, we met with Tribal members directly to learn more about their cultures. How they shaped the place as we know it now, and how it shaped them.

NATIVE FOODS AND CULTURE

Michael: To kick off this episode, I drove to Two Medicine, the southeast region of the park,

Michael: [in the car] Welcome to the Blackfeet Nation,

Michael: Which means driving through the Blackfeet Reservation who shares our eastern boundary. There are some opportunities for recreation on the reservation, including a section of the continental divide trail, but you'll need to grab a recreation permit from the Tribe first. If you're going to the park though, you'll pass through the gateway community of East Glacier.

Michael: [in the car] Here we are in East Glacier, head straight to make it to Browning or turn left, to get to Glacier National Park.

Michael: That left-hand turn takes you under the train tracks at the East Glacier train station. One of the first places early tourists, disembarked from.

Michael: [in the car] My favorite part—driving under the train tracks.

Michael: And a short drive later, you'll find yourself in Two Medicine.

Michael: [in the car] Man. The view never gets old.

Michael: When I got there, just past the entrance station, I stopped at the first real destination on the drive in: The Running Eagle Falls Trailhead.

Michael: [outside] ...alright, as you hike around this trail, you see the option to go to Running Eagle Falls itself or along a nature trail.

Michael: But before we go any farther, have you hiked the Running Eagle Falls Nature Trail?

Andrew: I've definitely been out to the waterfall. I don't know if I've walked the whole loop there. Why?

Michael: Well it's a short hike, just under a mile, and it's one of the few wheelchair accessible trails in the park. Now the waterfall view is stunning, but on the rest of the trail, you'll find illustrated signs that teach you how to identify native plants.

Michael: [outside] Black cottonwood can be recognized by the deep, rough, furrowed, gray bark on mature trees...

Michael: And they also teach you their traditional names and uses.

Michael: [outside] the wood is said to be ideal for TP fires, because it does not crackle and produces clean smoke. Huh?

Michael: I have one of them here. I just sent to you for thimbleberry, if you want to look at it.

Andrew: Sure. Okay. Oh, wow. This is a nice watercolor illustration here at thimbleberries one of the best berries in the park. I agree. I'm like a raspberry. Um, okay. This must be the Blackfeet name then, otohtoksinii.

Michael: Yeah. So there are seven different signs on that trail, all teaching you something about different native plants and foods. And, I said at the beginning, that food is the best way to start learning about other cultures. And I stand by that. I mean, we all need to eat. So you immediately have something in common with folks you may have never met before. You're pretty well-traveled. Do you agree with that take?

Andrew: Definitely. Yeah. You learn so much from, you know, having some yakitori in the stall of a Tokyo market, or sharing some fresh mango on the banks of the Mekong, it's—in many cases, it can be hard to know where to begin otherwise.

Michael: Yes, precisely, which is doubly true of the Tribes in and around Glacier, who have been here for a long time.

Darnell: [Speaking in Blackfeet] What I just said is: "hello, my name is lone camper and I am from the South Piegan. You know, it as Blackfeet, but we call ourselves the ǔmssk̇ǎaṗiiṗiik̇ǔni.

Michael: I met with a Blackfeet Tribal member whose English name is Darnell Rides At The Door, who told me about the history of the Blackfeet in this area.

Darnell: Well, we've been here since time immemorial. We have always been here is what we say as the niitsitapiiysinni, the real people, and creator gave us this, this area to take care of. And, um, we are very unique because we are as the Blackfeet, the Blackfoot Confederacy, we're the only inhabitants that are in the original territory that creator gave us.

Michael: Now Two Medicine where I went was an area primarily used by the Blackfeet, much like the rest of the east side of the park. But there are a lot of Tribes associated with the land that is today Glacier.

Andrew: Yeah. The Kootenai, for example, predominantly used to the area on the west side of the park. I've had the chance to learn some of their stories about Lake McDonald.

Michael: That's right. And a lot of these stories were shared with the public and the park by Tribal members like Vernon Finley.

Vernon: Uh, my name is Vernon Finley. I am a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that are on the Flathead Reservation, just, uh, south of, uh, Flathead Lake, which is south of Glacier Park. There are two Culture Committees on the Reservation and I'm the Department Head for the Kootenai Culture Committee.

Michael: I had the chance to sit down and talk with Vernon about the Kootenai. And as with the Blackfeet, they've been here for a long time—longer than you could really wrap your head around, which Vernon described using the Kootenai language as an example.

Vernon: However, the Kootenai language is a language isolate. Which means, according to linguists, they haven't been able to link it with any of the families of languages that are around. It's a family of its own. For as long as languages have been spoken, the Kootenais have only been here. The Selis, you can link them with other Tribes out to the coast and up the coast. You can link for Dene further South. You can link all the other languages everywhere else. The Kootenai has only always been right here.

Michael: And you needn't look far to see imprints of this ancient history. Features throughout the park bear the names that Tribes gave them thousands of years ago,

Darnell: Place names can give you, um, markers, land markers, but it also tells you what our people did at a certain time.

Michael: But not all of them.

Darnell: In the geographical documentation, they changed the names of a lot, a lot, especially the mountains got English names, but we already had had a name for them.

Michael: And as Darnell mentioned, many names in the Blackfeet and Kootenai languages were more than mere titles, but often served as instructions of sorts.

Darnell: You knew which one was the pass to go onto the other side of the mountain. You knew which one that was and how it was named in your language. If you didn't know where you were, you didn't know where you were going.

Michael: Knowing where you were going. There's a tremendous importance to the Tribes in this area because, they might've used the land in Glacier, but they would travel far beyond its boundaries.

Darnell: We were good at it. Very good at it. Because you had to know, we had a runners that would go out in this territory, which ranged all the way from way up on the North Saskatchewan River to the Yellowstone. That's a lot of territory.

Vernon: The Kootenais were aware, well aware of the existence of the world. There's coyote stories that describe going across the ocean, and the lands on the other side. An awareness of the entire world was there.

Michael: The Kootenai, Blackfeet, Selis and Qlispe, or Pend d'Oreille people all traveled far and wide throughout the course of the year.

Andrew: Their routes through Glacier in many cases became the routes that roads and trails follow in the park today.

Michael: But wherever they went, these Tribes had access to similar foods, foods like some of the plants on the signs at the Running Eagle Falls Nature Trail. But I didn't drive to Two Medicine just to read signs. I mean, as we're doing now, I could have just looked them up on the computer. I went to Two Medicine to meet with Mariah Gladstone.

Mariah: My name is Mariah Gladstone, and I am a descendant of the Blackfeet Nation. I am the founder and operator of Indigikitchen, which is an online teaching tool dedicated to re-sharing information about Indigenous diets.

Michael: Indigikitchen is essentially like an Indigenous food network, teaching people how to cook using Native foods.

Andrew: Oh, that's such a cool idea!

Michael: It is! I also sat down in the studio with Rose Bear Don't Walk.

Rose: I am Bitterroot Selis and Crow from the Flathead Indian Reservation. And I currently am a Selis ethnobotanist.

Andrew: And let's pretend for a minute that I've never heard the term ethnobotanist before. What does that mean?

Michael: Well, somebody who studies ethnobotany:

Rose: Uh, ethnobotany is the study of different cultures, groups of people, societies, even, and their interactions and relationships with plants, whether it's for tools, for food or religious purposes.

Michael: And I wanted to talk to them both, not just because they're knowledgeable (and they are brilliant), but because they have a background in teaching others about Native foods.

Mariah: Of course middle-schoolers are always interested in any skills that will help them survive zombie apocalypses—

Rose: Talking to people about science, and talking about plants, and—

Michael: So they can do it all. Outdoors or online, with adults and students alike. I figured they'd be able to help me learn a little bit about Native foods. But first, I wanted to know what drew them to working with and advocating for Native foods in the first place. And both of them cited the diet related health problems facing Native communities: diabetes, heart disease, obesity—

Mariah: And a lot of that stems from the decimation of the bison populations in order to control Plains people.

Michael: Meaning that in the 1860s, the U.S. Government sought to kill bison because Native Americans like the Blackfeet relied on them, with one Colonel in the army quoted as saying: "Kill every Buffalo you can, every Buffalo dead is an Indian gone."

Mariah: And from that, of course, we see this reliance on government rations like flour and sugar and lard and beef, and things that were not indigenous to our diets.

Andrew: So she's saying that after the new eradication of bison, Plains Tribes, like the Blackfeet, couldn't eat or live the way they used to and had to eat government rations, there weren't nearly as healthy?

Michael: Precisely. And this switch from traditional diets to rations was a foundational traumatic change with lasting ramifications.

Mariah: For the Blackfeet that's especially relevant because our reliance on government food systems led us to make really hard decisions.

Michael: Here's Joe McKay and Carol Murray from the video on display at the St. Mary Visitor Center—

Joe: In September of 1895, late September, the government sent new treaty commissioners to meet with the people and they called them all together. They said "we come to buy some of that land up there, those rocks, those mountains." And one of the leaders stood up and he said, "well, we don't want to show you any more land." And after four days, looked like no agreement was going to be reached. And finally something happened, that last night, and some kind of an agreement was made. And we ceded the land that you call Glacier Park to the federal government for $1.5 million.

Carol: I think one of the real big impacts of why they sold the land, if they so sold, it is we had a starvation winter in 1883, 84. I believe they thought that the money would provide resources for them to survive. Our people were literally starving to death.

Mariah: As a Blackfeet person now, that sees the land that I'm standing on in Glacier Park, and how our ancestors lost that land from our Reservation space so that I could exist today. That is something I consider to come with a huge amount of responsibility to take care of these lands.

Andrew: Wow.

Michael: Yeah.

Andrew: And I know stories like that are far from rare across Indigenous communities.

Michael: Which means that Mariah and Rose's efforts to share knowledge of Indigenous foods are resonating far and wide.

Andrew: Well, okay. You've set the stage or table so to speak, but what would a traditional Indigenous diet look like?

Michael: Well, that obviously varied a lot place to place and seasonally, but I asked Mariah and Rose about that.

Rose: A lot of it was shaped by the coming and goings of different game animals. Like when the Buffalo are ready to be hunted the winter kind of like the winter hunt and the summer hunt.

Mariah: Pemmican mixes. So dry meat mixed with different berries. Of course, in the summertime, we have lots and lots of plant foods that we have access to: root vegetables like prairie turnips to biscuit roots, all of which are root vegetables. Fresh greens, things like false Solomon’s seal, nettles, which I'm looking at right now.

Michael: A lot of these foods could just be harvested and eaten, but some required preparation like Indian ice cream.

Andrew: What's Indian ice cream?

Rose: Which is, uh, made from foam berries. They picked it, they put it in a bowl and they whipped it up with some water and it made just this beautiful foamy little concoction.

Michael: Whoa!

Michael: And you're familiar with our local plants, you know camas?

Andrew: Oh yeah. It's a beautiful blue flower.

Michael: Well, while it has a pretty flower, it was actually their bulbs that were an important food source.

Andrew: The bulb being the organ the flower stores food in under the soil.

Michael: Yeah. With onions, probably being the most famous example of a bulb.

Mariah: For really traditional food, we can see things like camas bakes, and the camas bulbs that were harvested and baked in a pit.

Michael: And the process of preparing the bulbs, a camas bake, might just be the most complicated recipe I've ever heard of.

Rose: One of my workshop ideas was to do a camas bake. And so a couple other young women and I got together and we, we did the thing.

Michael: How long did it take?

Rose: Traditionally, the camas bake is three to four days in an earth oven.

Michael: How do you, how do you make an earth oven?

Rose: Okay. So you dig a pit, you need enough space in the hole to lay a layer of rocks. And then you put all their branches and ferns and skunk cabbage in there—

Mariah: The proteins in there, which are generally not very digestible if you eat them raw, it takes a really long time to break those things down.

Rose: You kind of cover that with dirt. You get those rocks at the bottom, super hot in a fire and you kind of dump them in there and you have a stick in the middle and you build around that stick, pull the stick out and you pour water in there. So when the water hits the rocks,

Michael: Oh it steams.

Rose: —it starts to steam! Yeah. So it's a steam cook earth oven.

Michael: Whoa.

Rose: Yeah.

Michael: That's complicated.

Rose: It is!

Mariah: All those sugars and starches in the camas roots would caramelize, and you would get sweet almost potato-like starches. The trial and error process that must have happened in order to recognize how long you have to bake camus bulbs for those to caramelize into something that's really, really good.

Michael: Yeah. Trying to just analyze the little examples of trial and error in my own experience, trying to be a home chef. It blows my mind how many iterations that had to have gone through before arriving at that procedure.

Rose: Mm-hmm!

Michael: Wow. That's really neat.

Rose: And the procedure has, you know, existed for probably thousands of years now.

Michael: Yeah.

Rose: Which is incredible!

Michael: Wow. And this intricate process is the sole responsibility of women. I later learned that Kootenai men aren't even allowed near the roasting pit, unless it was to bring firewood.

Rose: Women's roles are just so incredibly important to our societies, but also their roles in our food systems were, were huge. They were the main, you know, foragers, processors, cookers, and keepers of all of this knowledge.

Michael: The role of and significance of women came up time and time again in our interviews.

Andrew: It's a topic really worthy of its own episode.

Michael: And it's no wonder they were so respected because even a camas bake could be life and death.

Mariah: Um, the problem with identifying camas for harvesting is that it was traditionally eaten after it bloomed. And we also have death camas. Death camas is incredibly toxic, And if you have one death camas bulb in a whole bunch of regular blue camas bulbs, you will get incredibly sick and possibly die.

Andrew: Wow. that's really scary.

Michael: Yeah. And it wasn't just camas. Poisonous foods came up quite a bit.

Rose: Uh, Rose hips are chock full of vitamin C,

Michael: But the seeds are poisonous, right?

Rose: The seeds—don't eat the seeds! Don't eat the seeds.

Michael: So on top of the knowledge required to prepare food. You also needed to know what things to avoid. And some of that knowledge was passed down through stories.

Rose: The Selis have a story about that too, you know, about the seeds. Coyote stories are based on this kind of trickster paradigm that's very prevalent in a lot of Indigenous cultures. There's usually a being in our history that, you know, do, as I say, not as I do type guy. Kind of does all the wrong things so we learn from him. And so we do have a story about him eating the berries. But the word for rose hips in Selis, it does tie to something along the lines of coyotes' berry. And they call it coyotes' berry because, you know, if, if you eat the seeds, you get an itchy digestive system or like, you know, an itchy, butt.

Michael: [Laughing]

Rose: Because it's not good for your system [laughing]! So that's how, that's, that's how we learned. Um, and that's why we call it that.

Michael: This is a good to slip. In some advice if you're looking to forage for food. A simple rule, no story required, is that if you don't know what something is, don't eat it.

Andrew: And even if you think you know what it is, but you're not a hundred percent sure just don't eat it.

Michael: And if you're hoping to forage in the park while you're not allowed to pick for commercial purposes, you are allowed to pick a few berries for a snack. And that's a good place to start.

Mariah: Looking at the amount of thimbleberries that are ripe in the immediate vicinity—

Michael: Now, when I arranged to meet with Mariah, I knew we wouldn't have the time or tools at our disposal to make anything complicated. But I wondered if there was a simple recipe we could make. And after talking for a bit, she asked me to start picking thimbleberries. So I set out to grab as many as I could.

Michael: [picking thimbleberries] Oh, that one was good.

Michael: Knowing now what we were going to use them for, we spent way longer than we needed to collecting them. But it's fun!

Andrew: I know I've found myself carried away, picking berries, time, just kind of slips away.

Michael: And as I was running around in thimbleberries bushes, I was thinking about what I know about plants. As a ranger, my focus was often on the scientific side, learning how they work, how to tell them apart... Talking to Mariah and Rose, I was learning about camas bakes, about Indian ice cream—practices that date back thousands of years. And these cultural components of plants are invisible, and often, far more difficult to learn about than Latin names.

Rose: A lot of people, when they're bringing up memories of how they started to interact with plants, how they know these plants—it was with their grandma. They, you know, went out into the woods and they learned how to properly make Indian ice cream.

Michael: And the connection between people and plants extends beyond fond childhood memories and into language itself.

Rose: So the, the word for foamberry in selis is Sx̣ʷo̓sm. And the x̣ʷos in that, in the middle, means foam. Means to like foam up. So in even just naming that particular plant, it's based on how it was used and how it was known.

Andrew: Yeah. Wow. So yeah, just like the place names you mentioned earlier, plant names on their own could even instruct you as to how to use them as food.

Michael: Exactly. It would be like naming potatoes, boiling-oil-root or something.

Andrew: Well, that actually might be helpful to some people.

Michael: Now, Rose and Mariah have a wealth of lived and learned experience and knowledge about native plants and have been using new and exciting ways to share that knowledge with others.

Mariah: ...different things. Obviously I do cooking videos online so that everyone has access to a lot of the work that I'm doing. But I also go in and I do demonstrations and classes, both for, uh, Native and non-Native communities.

Andrew: Is it easy to teach these recipes? How have people reacted to the ingredients she uses?

Michael: Well, she said students often surprise her.

Mariah: It's pleasantly surprising. Many students know things that are edible, but don't necessarily know how to prepare it,

Michael: Which I feel like that's the camp I'm in. I take the time to learn if a plant will kill you or not, but don't know much anything beyond that. What Mariah does that is pretty clever is incorporate these ingredients into dishes that you've likely had before. Like with nettles.

Mariah: I know that we did a catering gig one time where we used that almost like spinach and an omelet there's ways that you can incorporate traditional foods, obviously into foods you may be more familiar with.

Michael: And after picking, collecting, and greedily eating them for a bit, that turned out to be what we were doing with our thimbleberries.

Andrew: Oh yeah. So this is where the cookies come in.

Michael: Yep.

Mariah: I'm thinking that we can make some thimbleberry thumbprint cookies.

Michael: Everyone likes a good cookie, and we were going to make some with only indigenous ingredients. Now to be clear, we used ingredients indigenous to North and Central America, so not all of this grows in Montana, but can be found at your local grocery store. But what is the first thing you gotta do if you're making cookies?

Andrew: I guess make cookie dough?

Michael: Exactly.

Mariah: The first thing I'm going to do is, I actually have some chia seeds. And I'm going to let the chia seeds soak in water for a second, just a little bit of water, about double the amount of chia seeds that I have—

Michael: The first step to make our dough was to soak chia seeds in water, which causes them to get kind of gel-ly.

Mariah: Yeah. And that'll help everything stick together. It works just like an egg.

Michael: Next comes the flour.

Mariah: And while I do that, I'm actually going to take some of these raw sunflower seeds—so the shells are off of these sunflower seeds—I'm going to take these and I'm going to pound the crap out of them.

Michael: Once you grind the sunflower seeds into a flour, you add them to the gelled chia seeds,

Mariah: So we're going to add our sunflower seeds to our chia mix and stir them together.

Michael: And then you are almost done with your dough.

Mariah: And then to sweeten everything up for these cookies, because this is a dessert recipe—or a healthy snack? I don't know. Um, we're going to add a little bit of maple syrup into this mix. And obviously the amount of maple syrup you add is dependent on your preferences. It looked like there was going to be an awesome sound for that maple syrup being poured.

Michael: Mold it into a desk and press a thumbprint in the middle, and all that's left is to add your toppings.

Mariah: We went and picked thimbleberries and we're going to use them as the filling and our little thumbprint cookies.

Michael: And lo and behold, they were delicious.

Background: So good, I could eat those all day.

Andrew: And pretty simple!

Michael: Yeah.

Mariah: Considering I just did it sitting on the middle of a trail. Yes. This is pretty simple.

Michael: Super simple.

Mariah: Sunflower seeds and maple syrup are pretty easy ingredients to find. And it's cool to recognize their indigenous roots, even if they aren't necessarily from this area. And then it's fun because we used both huckleberries and thimbleberries, and you can use whatever type of edible berries you could find, even if you're using berries that only grow in your home community and not necessarily in Glacier Park.

Michael: So hopefully I did him justice today.

Andrew: I thought they were pretty good. And I looked up Mariah's website. She's got a ton of recipes to choose from.

Michael: Her website and YouTube channel are a great resource. You could also find Rose's whole ethnobotany paper online, we'll have links in the show notes to both—but while I've used my time so far to argue that food is the best gateway into another culture, luckily for us here at Glacier, that's just the beginning. Thanks to something called the Native America Speaks Program.

Background: With no further ado and bologna, I shall turn you over... to Vernon! [clapping]

Vernon: Okay. Is this on okay? Can you hear me okay?

Andrew: Glacier is home to the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service, which has been going for over 30 years!

Michael: Native America Speaks programs happen at visitor centers and camgrounds all around the park, giving Tribal members the opportunity to share their own stories.

Andrew: In 2019, that meant over 100 different events by nearly 20 different speakers.

Michael: Including everyone we’ve met so far in this episode!

Andrew: I met with Tony Incashola Sr., director of the Selis Kalispell Culture Committee on the Flathead Reservation, who has been involved since the beginning of the program.

NATIVE AMERICA SPEAKS - ELDERS

Tony Incashola Sr.: They were starting this new program and they were asking if I was interested, and I had seen that it was an opportunity to educate, to share and try to bring understanding.

Kelly Lynch: It's such an amazing opportunity. It's just so authentic. And it's from their heart.

Andrew: This is Kelly Lynch.

Kelly Lynch: I have been working with Native American Speaks for, I guess this will be the fourth year. I heard someone once say, you can't think about Glacier Park and not think about all the Tribes, cause they're part of it. It's part of them. And they're telling stories about this landscape. It's just really powerful. I'm a pretty emotional person. And I probably cry at most of the programs because they're just really powerful.

Andrew: Here's Darnell Rides at the Door—

Darnell Rides at the Door: I was one of the first ones that presented in... 30 years ago. And it was at Two Medicine campground.

Michael: Do you remember what that presentation covered?

Darnell Rides at the Door: Yes. It covered speaking above the wind next to a rock where people couldn't hear me.

Kelly Lynch: This is just a small little opportunity to learn about another culture that very few people know much about because it's not even written in history books. And it's, yeah, giving them the respect and honoring them for this knowledge that they hold.

Darnell Rides at the Door: I wanted people to know who we are, the real people, the real us, and where we come from, and dissolve some of those myths about Indian people. And that we're not just what you see in the movies. And even to this day, there's still those misconceived notions as to that we're still here. We do exist.

Andrew: Here's Vernon Finley—

Vernon Finley: When I tell the part of history after contact, it gets difficult for some to hear because there was, there was a lot of unpleasant things. And so I've had a few people get up and walk away because of the difficulty of it. But early on, when I started doing the presentations, the Elders Advisory Group for the Culture Committee requested me to come and present to us on what you're telling the white people out there. So I did, I went in and told them what it was all about. The eldest person there finally spoke and said, well, what you say is truthful, but truth is difficult to hear sometimes for some people. And so when you do this presentation, make sure, make sure, absolutely sure that they know how much we appreciate them coming here. And because Glacier Park and Ya'qawiswitxuki, and this whole area, it's kept this way for them not for us. And so, I said, okay, I'll make sure they understand that.

Darnell Rides at the Door: When we do presentations with the museums, some of the younger kids say, well, I thought Indians were only in the movies. Well, how did you get here? I thought Indians didn't drive cars. Do you live in a house? We thought you just lived in teepees. It's humorous in a way, but it's also very educational for us as well. And dissolving a lot of the myths, a lot of the prejudices that we don't need in this world because we're all people. We're all people, no matter our color, our religious beliefs, whatever.

Andrew: Here's Tony Incashola Sr. again—

Tony Incashola Sr.: To me, honesty and truth is the best foundation you can build. We can't change history. What happened in the past happened, but we use that history to make sure that it doesn't happen again, but also to make sure that that the truths come out on that. We don't want to change history because we can't, for any reason at all. It's always best to be honest and truthful because we're the ones responsible for our elders’ stories and information.

Darnell Rides at the Door: It's a joyous occasion. I mean, it's just to get close to the mountains is wonderful. And then to mingle with the people that's, that's one of my grandmother's terms mingling. But she'd say mangle. Just being able to see those people from all over the world and, and, associate with them.

Tony Incashola Sr.: And I think for anybody that comes to these, I think they will learn to understand a little bit more about themselves. That's when I try to let people know. That there is a difference and there's a reason why there's a difference. And each one of us in this country have a role to play and a role to carry and responsibility for the next generation. You know, time goes by so quickly, very quickly, and we don't have time to do anything, but prepare the next, for the next generation. And that's what I learned from my, my elders is that everything that we do today is not for ourselves. It's not for us. It's always for the next generations down the road, the next seven generations. Those are the generations that we live for. Those are the generations that we are doing things today for. So the next generation can learn and pass it on.

Andrew: We'll hear from that generation after this break.

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY AD

Michael: Each episode, we seem to cover at least one thing that—like this podcast—wouldn't be possible without the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Andrew: With the help of some friends over there, we got the number of executive director Doug Mitchell, and decided to call him up out of the blue and ask about some of these projects.

Michael: For this episode, every time we coordinated the interviews with Tribal members, we made sure to let the Conservancy know.

Andrew: So we called Doug to find out why.

Doug: Glacier National Park Conservancy, Doug Mitchell speaking, how may I help you?

Michael: Hey, Doug, it's Michael and Andrew, how are you doing?

Doug: Hey, it's my audio bloggers. I guess that was the old name before somebody came up with, uh, podcasters—but we don't have iPods anymore either, so I'm not even sure what that's about.

Michael: No we don't [laughs] Well, for the podcast this summer, and for this episode, we've had the chance to talk to a lot of Native America Speaks presenters. And every time we schedule an interview, we reach out to let you all know at the Conservancy when that interview is taking place. Why would we need to work with you to plan an interview with Tribal members?

Doug: Well, we are super privileged at the Conservancy to be the park's partner to help fund these Native America Speaks programs. And in 2019, we were able to have over 100 programs—there was one every night of the summer in the park. To be able to give park visitors access to these very, very important stories about people before the park, the land before the park. Montana's first people.

Andrew: It's great. It's a pretty unique opportunity to get to listen in and hear the stories of these people that are still keeping their traditions alive today.

Doug: Yeah. I mean, you used exactly the right word: "Listen." You know, these stories are there, but they're only accessible if we are willing to listen. And the superintendent has really set an expectation in his staff, and in our team, that we really want to listen and engage in the story of this place. And that story rings completely hollow without its very foundation, which is the Native people.

Michael: Yeah. And that we could provide that opportunity for visitors, not just every night of the summer, but uh, in virtually every corner of the park—these programs are offered at some point, whether it's Two Medicine or Lake McDonald or St. Mary—they're all over the place.

Doug: The stories are all over the place, and the telling of them is actually now even being able to be extended outside the park. I know there are Native America speaks programs going on right now in schools in Montana. They might not have been able to travel to the park, but now they're going to get that story. So this ability, as you guys are doing, to deliver things digitally is really going to be an interesting new expansion of this program.

Michael: And it's something we're really fortunate to be a part of as well. And thank you, as always for that. And for taking some time out of your day, we'll talk to you soon.

Doug: Well Andrew and Michael, you guys are a great thing to have to this podcast program is super exciting. We're just so thrilled to be a part of it.

Michael: Well, we'll talk soon.

Doug: Cheers.

Michael: Bye.

Andrew: Cheers.

NATIVE AMERICA SPEAKS – THE NEXT GENERATION

Andrew: Here's Rose Bear Don’t Walk—

Rose Bear Don’t Walk: There's parts in our US history that we tend to think were a really long time ago. But in actuality, I mean the boarding school era was a couple of decades ago, and that still has a lot of imprints on our communities. So for example, my, you know, my grandparents were in boarding schools and so their knowledge of different cultural things was not as robust because of the way that boarding schools were created and carried out. And I have so much respect for my grandparents and all that they've done and all that they've persevered through, but that kind of left a gap. It left a gap in that cultural continuity. And so I think that's kind of what we're seeing in why this younger generation is just so... They just want to learn so much and engage and research and help the community and just do all those things, because we know about those gaps in our history and those particular things that have happened.

Andrew: Tony Incashola Sr.—

Tony Incashola Sr.: You know, I, where I work at the Culture Committee, I have what I call an Elders Council. I had a question all I had to do, I had 30, 20, 30 elders I could turn to. And, you know, they'd have an answer. And about two years ago, I had a question I turned around. There was nobody there. You know those elders that I depended on, the elders that were knowledgeable, were gone. And then I realized that, Hey, wait a minute, I had to answer it myself. I was next in line.

Andrew: And Darnell Rides at the Door—

Darnell Rides at the Door: Grandma lived with me off and on, and as well as a couple of the other grandchildren throughout her life, towards the end of her life as well. And I always thought she'd always be here. When she passed it, left a void, a great void. And it made you think, well, who's going to tell us stories now? Who do we go to to ask who we're related to? She could go back 10 generations, and I'm not exaggerating because she could.

Tony Incashola Sr.: And now I'm kind of starting a new generation of elders that are younger, but I'm bringing them in and I'm sharing, trying to get up to speed so they can take over.

Darnell Rides at the Door: It's kind of a rude awakening. I started to realize that when my grandkids started to ask me questions, and then I began teaching the Blackfeet skies or the ethnobotany, or just how to make a lodge. And when I found out that I'm the one teaching that, that reality hit me. And not only that, I never did consider myself old. I am the oldest of my nine siblings, but I never thought of myself as being an Elder.

Andrew: Mariah Gladstone—

Mariah Gladstone: So my dad co-founded the Native America Speaks program. And at the time when I decided to reach out about joining the speaker series, the program participants and the speakers were still primarily elder men. Obviously there is a huge amount of wisdom in our elders, but I also think that as Native people, we have always made it a point to listen to our youth as well.

Darnell Rides at the Door: Age doesn't matter. They have a curiosity that's untold, but also diversity and uniqueness in that there's no prejudices in their vocabulary.

Rose Bear Don’t Walk: I think there's a big push for a lot of young people just to get really involved. And they're just so excited about it. They're so excited to learn about the culture and the traditions and things like that.

Mariah Gladstone: Being able to share those different stories I think makes the Native America Speaks program far more interesting than if we just had one demographic that was speaking. And I think if you've been to one Native American Speaks program, you should find another one and go to that one and find a different speaker and go to that one because you're going to get different knowledge, not just because you're getting knowledge from different Tribes, but because people are coming into it with different experiences and their specialties are in different areas.

Andrew: That’s our show for you today—If you’re interested in learning more about the Native America Speaks Program, or learning more about the cultures you met in this episode, you can find links in our show notes to our website.

Michael: Thanks for listening!

CREDITS

Renata: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The show was written and recorded on traditional Native lands. Andrew Smith and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music. Alex Stillson provided tech support, Quinn Feller designed our art, Renata Harrison researched the show, Lacy Kowalski was always there for us, and Daniel Lombardi and Bill Hayden were the executive directors. Support for the show comes from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The Conservancy works to preserve and protect the park for future generations. We couldn't do it without them, and they couldn't do it without support from thousands of generous donors. If you want to learn more about how to support this podcast, or other awesome Conservancy projects, please go to their website at glacier.org. Of course you can always help support the show by sharing it with everyone you know— your friends, your family, your dog... And also leave us a review online. Special thanks this episode to Mariah Gladstone, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, Vernon Finley, Tony Incashola Sr., Darnell Rides At The Door, and Kelly Lynch.

Glacier National Park, a place often celebrated for its natural scenery, offers an equally diverse and rich cultural landscape. In this episode of Headwaters, food offers an introduction to the area’s Indigenous communities. We also explore the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service.

Featuring: Darnell Rides At The Door, Vernon Finley, Mariah Gladstone, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, Tony Incashola Sr., and Kelly Lynch.

For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters