Episode 5: Heirs to the Most Glorious Heritage
Episode Length: 30:03
Focus
This episode explores an idea to transfer ownership of the National Bison Range back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and the opposition to this transfer.
Keywords
National Bison Range, Native Americans, conservation movement, bison management, land transfer, wildlife refuges, Theodore Roosevelt, environmental justice, racism
Episode Outline
These outlines are intended to help you locate ideas and topics more easily, but these are narrative episodes with many interlocking themes and ideas, so you may want to share segments that cross multiple points in the outline.
MINUTES: 00:00 - 3:14
First look at the National Bison Range, a preserve founded in the early 20th century by conservationists to protect bison.
03:15 - 06:00
National Bison Range carved out of reservation land but tribes left out of the management plans.
06:01 - 09:44
Birth of the conservation movement and efforts to protect bison without the involvement of native people.
09:45 - 12:10
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes want the range returned to them to manage, an idea that the Fish and Wildlife Service seems open to pursuing.
BREAK
13:15 -17:57
Opposition to the transfer of the refuge back to the tribes.
17:58 -24:59
Role of race in opposition to the transfer as well as a feeling that there’s no need to change something that seems to be working.
25:00- 30:03
Many people on both sides of the issue in Montana:
The bison range is a microcosm of issues facing the whole country
Video Excerpt
The history of the National Bison Range, and the people who were excluded when it was founded in 1908. Featuring Rich Janssen, head of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Natural Resources and Conservation Department.
Since this episode, the management of the National Bison Range has been returned to the CSKT
Visuals in order
A map of the National Bison Range in relation to other parks and the Flathead Reservation
A sign at the National Bison Range
Aerial footage of the National Bison Range
