Long before Glacier National Park became a postcard of snowfields and serrated peaks, it was—and remains—the living homeland of Indigenous nations. Their languages name the mountains, their trails braid the valleys, and their knowledge still shapes how the land is understood. This post sketches a people’s history of Glacier Park, focusing on the Blackfeet Nation (Aamsskáápipikani) on the park’s eastern flank and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT)—Bitterroot Salish (Séliš), Upper Pend d’Oreille (Qlispe), and Kootenai (Ktunaxa)—whose homelands, lifeways, and stories are rooted in the park’s western watersheds.
Archaeology and oral history alike indicate an Indigenous presence stretching back at least 10,000 years—far older than railroads, borders, or the park itself. The National Park Service (NPS) notes that “there is physical evidence of people in and around Glacier for more than 10,000 years,” a reminder that the dramatic geologic timescales on display in Glacier Park are mirrored by deep human time. (Missoula Current)
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mfoubister/15987533967/
Author: Murray Foubister
Homelands and languages on both sides of the Divide
Glacier is cleaved by the Continental Divide, but the ridge never split Indigenous connections. To the east, the Blackfeet Nation calls this country Miistákistaki—“the Backbone of the World”—and regards prominent peaks like Chief Mountain (Nínaiistáko) and the Two Medicine region as places of ceremony, vision seeking, and instruction. West of the Divide, the Kootenai (Ktunaxa) and Salish (Séliš) and Upper Pend d’Oreille (Qlispe) peoples moved seasonally through what is now the North and Middle Fork country, fishing, hunting, digging roots, tending berry patches, and maintaining plant “gardens” including tobacco. The park acknowledges ongoing ties with both the Blackfeet and the CSKT and works with them on interpretation and stewardship. (National Park Service)
Many of the park’s names carry those ties. Chief Mountain—straddling the park boundary and Blackfeet Reservation—is a singular landmark and sacred site for the Blackfeet; NPS materials highlight the mountain’s prominence and significance. And on the west side, names like Kintla Lake (from a Kootenai word associated with “sack” or “trap”—a reference to fish traps) attest to Kootenai presence and knowledge woven into the geography.
A sophisticated land ethic: plants, foodways, and fire
For millennia, Indigenous families harvested roots (bitterroot, camas), berries (serviceberry, huckleberry), and medicinal plants; cut lodgepoles; and tended small tobacco gardens in valley bottoms. They also used low-intensity fire to maintain open meadows and encourage desired species. NPS histories describe this mosaic of plant use and cultivation, emphasizing tobacco gardens and seasonal plant camps as part of a broader land stewardship ethic—not the “untouched wilderness” imagined later by tourists and promoters.
That ecological knowledge is not a relic. It informs present-day restoration, huckleberry management, cultural permitting policies, and underpins the conversations the park holds with tribes about gathering and interpretation.
Treaties, the 1895 Agreement, and the making of a park
The 19th century brought treaty-making that rearranged (but didn’t erase) Indigenous sovereignty. In 1855, leaders of the Salish, Upper Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai entered the Hellgate Treaty, establishing the Jocko (Flathead) Reservation and guaranteeing rights that CSKT still assert today. (treaties.okstate.edu)
On the east, the 1895 Agreement—sometimes called the “Ceded Strip” agreement—saw the Blackfeet sell a mountainous belt along the Divide to the United States for $1.5 million during a time of intense hardship. Critically, Blackfeet leaders negotiated reserved rights to hunt, fish, and cut timber on the strip so long as the land remained public. Those terms would later become the focus of legal and political conflict when Congress created Glacier National Park in 1910 and hunting was prohibited within park boundaries. Legal scholarship and treaty archives outline those reserved-rights provisions and the disputes that followed. (National Park Service, digitalcommons.law.ou.edu)
Federal courts eventually narrowed the exercise of Blackfeet hunting and fishing rights inside the park, while acknowledging continuing access and the unique history of the 1895 Agreement. Even as case law evolved (for example, in United States v. Kipp and later cases), the core truth remained: the Blackfeet never ceded their cultural relationship to the Backbone of the World. (Reference)
Railroads, lodges, and an invented “frontier”
After Glacier Park was established, the Great Northern Railway made the new park a centerpiece of its “See America First” campaign. It built grand hotels—including Glacier Park Lodge on Blackfeet land at East Glacier—and chalet complexes to lure tourists west. In the process, the railroad turned Blackfeet culture into its advertising palette. It commissioned photographers and artists (notably Winold Reiss) and paid Blackfeet families to erect tipis near stations and lodges, greet arriving trains in regalia, and pose for promotional images—while the broader colonial economy limited who benefited from this boom. Museum collections, NPS education pages, and conservation histories document how “See America First” entwined Glacier’s scenery with a romanticized, consumable image of “Glacier’s vanishing Indians.” (Archives West, National Park Service, National Parks Conservation Association, iacbmuseums-viewingroom.exhibit-e.art, glacierparkfoundation.org)
This era left mixed legacies: wages and visibility for some Blackfeet families; entrenched stereotypes for the wider public. It also cemented Glacier’s place in national memory—as a landscape of spectacle—often eclipsing the stories of people who called it home.
Cross-border country and an International Peace Park
Glacier doesn’t stop at the 49th parallel. In 1932, it was joined with Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park to create the Waterton–Glacier International Peace Park. For the Blackfoot Confederacy—Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani in Canada, and Aamsskáápipikani (Blackfeet) in the U.S.—the international line split a single cultural geography. Ceremonial, kinship, and trade connections continue to braid both sides of the border in ways older than, and often indifferent to, modern political maps. (Distinctly Montana)
Sacred places at the edge of Glacier: Badger–Two Medicine
Just south of the park, the Badger–Two Medicine area sits in the Lewis and Clark National Forest, on lands included in the 1895 Blackfeet Agreement. This country—badgered with ridges and two river headwaters—is integral to Blackfeet origin stories, plant collecting, and ceremony. For decades, the Blackfeet Nation and allies fought proposed oil and gas drilling there. In 2023, the last contested lease was relinquished, closing a long legal battle and affirming protections that had grown over time (including recognition of a Traditional Cultural District under the National Historic Preservation Act). The outcome is a landmark in the region’s story: sacred lands—adjacent to Glacier—shielded after years of Blackfeet leadership and persistence. (AP News, Native American Rights Fund, National Parks Conservation Association)
What Indigenous stewardship looks like today
If early-20th-century policies tended to push Native people out of parks, 21st‑century practice is slowly, imperfectly, bending the other way. In Glacier, that shift is visible in at least three places:
1) Co-stewardship and guardianship. In 2022, the Blackfeet Nation and park partners launched a first-of-its-kind Chief Mountain Guardian role to care for Nínaiistáko and surrounding lands—an Indigenous-led conservation model that blends wildlife science with cultural responsibilities. It’s an example of federal-tribal co‑stewardship emerging nationwide and a reminder that sacred sites demand living relationships, not just rules on paper. (Native News)
2) Speaking for themselves. Since 1982, Glacier’s Native America Speaks program has brought Blackfeet and CSKT presenters into campgrounds, lodges, and visitor centers to share songs, language, and history in their own voices—the longest-running Indigenous speaker series in the entire National Park Service. For many visitors, this is their first encounter with the idea that Glacier is a cultural landscape, not just a scenic one. (National Park Service)
3) Place names and stories. The park’s own research and interpretation now point visitors toward Indigenous place names and biographies (e.g., Sinopah, Pitamakan/Running Eagle). NPS appendices and histories detail how names from Blackfeet or Kootenai languages entered maps—or were overwritten—and how today’s interpretation can restore that context.
Walking in a living homeland: respectful visiting
If you explore Glacier with this history in mind, the landscape looks different:
- Chief Mountain / Nínaiistáko is not just a photogenic monolith; it’s a ceremonial place. Treat prayer cloths and offerings with respect, give them space, and never touch or photograph them.
- Two Medicine isn’t only a quieter corner of the park—it’s a cradle of Blackfeet tradition. Listen for that context in ranger talks and Indigenous-led programs. (National Park Service)
- Kintla and Bowman Lakes are more than remote destinations; they sit in Kootenai homelands where fishing, root-digging, and travel shaped family life for centuries.
- If you’re lucky enough to attend Native America Speaks, understand that you’re a guest in a living classroom. These are not “performances” of a bygone people—they’re contemporary conversations on ancestral ground. (National Park Service)
A brief timeline to orient your reading
- Time immemorial–10,000+ years ago: Indigenous peoples inhabit and traverse the region that will become Glacier. (Missoula Current)
- 1855: The Hellgate Treaty with Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai establishes the Jocko (Flathead) Reservation; rights are reserved that CSKT continue to exercise. (treaties.okstate.edu)
- 1895: The Blackfeet Agreement conveys the mountainous “ceded strip” to the U.S., with Blackfeet reserving certain use rights so long as the land remains public. (National Park Service)
- 1910: Congress creates Glacier National Park; ensuing decades see disputes over Blackfeet rights within park boundaries. (digitalcommons.law.ou.edu)
- 1910s–1930s: The Great Northern Railway builds lodges and markets Glacier with staged Blackfeet imagery as part of “See America First.” (National Park Service, Archives West)
- 1932: Glacier and Waterton become the International Peace Park, bisecting Blackfoot homelands with an international line. (Distinctly Montana)
- 1982–present: Native America Speaks connects visitors with Blackfeet and CSKT presenters every summer. (National Park Service)
- 2000s–2023: Blackfeet leaders and partners secure lasting protection for the Badger–Two Medicine from oil and gas development; the last lease is relinquished in 2023. (AP News)
Why this history matters now
Glacier is often framed as wilderness—majestic, empty, eternal. But the park you see today was shaped by Indigenous stewardship, altered by dispossession, and is slowly being reshaped by Indigenous leadership again. Knowing that story doesn’t subtract from the park’s wonder; it adds depth, responsibility, and the possibility of better futures.
It invites visitors to ask different questions on the trail: Who named this place, and why that name? Whose stories sit beneath this overlook? What plants here are food or medicine to the people whose homeland I’m walking through? And how can I show up—by listening at a Native America Speaks talk, by supporting tribal cultural centers, by following Indigenous guidance at sacred places—in a way that honors that living relationship?
The Blackfeet and the CSKT never disappeared from Glacier; the modern park is finally catching up to that truth. As you move through the Backbone of the World, let the land’s oldest teachers—its peoples—guide what you notice, what you admire, and how gently you tread.
Sources and further reading
- National Park Service, “People” and “Tribes of Glacier” pages (overview of 10,000+ years of presence; tribal connections and partnerships). (Missoula Current, National Park Service)
- NPS, Native Plant Use & Tobacco Gardens (Indigenous plant use and stewardship in Glacier).
- Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes, Who We Are / Tribal History (Hellgate Treaty context). (treaties.okstate.edu)
- Historical note on the 1895 Blackfeet Agreement and reserved rights (treaty archive and legal scholarship). (National Park Service, digitalcommons.law.ou.edu)
- NPS & conservation histories on Great Northern Railway, “See America First,” and Blackfeet in early Glacier tourism. (National Park Service, Archives West, National Parks Conservation Association)
- AP report and legal summaries on the Badger–Two Medicine settlement (2023) and Traditional Cultural District status. (AP News, Native American Rights Fund)
- NPS, Native America Speaks (program began in 1982, longest-running Indigenous speaker series in NPS). (National Park Service)