Many national parks and monuments tell unique stories of the struggle between the rights of native peoples and the wants of the dominant society. These stories involve our greatest parks—Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, Olympic, Everglades—as well as less celebrated parks elsewhere. In American Indians and National Parks, authors Robert Keller and Michael Turek relate these untold tales of conflict and collaboration. American Indians and National Parks details specific relationships between native peoples and national parks, including land claims, hunting rights, craft sales, cultural interpretation, sacred sites, disposition of cultural artifacts, entrance fees, dams, tourism promotion, water rights, and assistance to tribal parks. Beginning with a historical account of Yosemite and Yellowstone, American Indians and National Parks reveals how the creation of the two oldest parks affected native peoples and set a pattern for the century to follow. Keller and Turek examine the evolution of federal policies toward land preservation and explore provocative issues surrounding park/Indian relations. When has the National Park Service changed its policies and attitudes toward Indian tribes, and why? How have environmental organizations reacted when native demands, such as those of the Havasupai over land claims in the Grand Canyon, seem to threaten a national park? How has the Park Service dealt with native claims to hunting and fishing rights in Glacier, Olympic, and the Everglades? While investigating such questions, the authors traveled extensively in national parks and conducted over 200 interviews with Native Americans, environmentalists, park rangers, and politicians. They meticulously researched materials in archives and libraries, assembling a rich collection of case studies ranging from the 19th century to the present. In American Indians and National Parks, Keller and Turek tackle a significant and complicated subject for the first time, presenting a balanced and detailed account of the Native-American/national-park drama. This book will prove to be an invaluable resource for policymakers, conservationists, historians, park visitors, and others who are concerned about preserving both cultural and natural resources.

Placing American Indians in the center of the story, Restoring a Presence relates an entirely new history of Yellowstone National Park. Although new laws have been enacted giving American Indians access to resources on public lands, Yellowstone historically has excluded Indians and their needs from its mission. Each of the other flagship national parks—Glacier, Yosemite, Mesa Verde, and Grand Canyon—has had successful long-term relationships with American Indian groups even as it has sought to emulate Yellowstone in other dimensions of national park administration. In the first comprehensive account of Indians in and around Yellowstone, Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf seek to correct this administrative disparity. Drawing from archaeological records, Indian testimony, tribal archives, and collections of early artifacts from the Park, the authors trace the interactions of nearly a dozen Indian groups with each of Yellowstone’s four geographic regions. Restoring a Presence is illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and maps and features narratives on subjects ranging from traditional Indian uses of plant, mineral, and animal resources to conflicts involving the Nez Perce, Bannock, and Sheep Eater peoples. By considering the many roles Indians have played in the complex history of the Yellowstone region, authors Nabokov and Loendorf provide a basis on which the National Park Service and other federal agencies can develop more effective relationships with Indian groups in the Yellowstone region.

National parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier preserve some of this country's most cherished wilderness landscapes. While visions of pristine, uninhabited nature led to the creation of these parks, they also inspired policies of Indian removal. By contrasting the native histories of these places with the links between Indian policy developments and preservationist efforts, this work examines the complex origins of the national parks and the troubling consequences of the American wilderness ideal. The first study to place national park history within the context of the early reservation era, it details the ways that national parks developed into one of the most important arenas of contention between native peoples and non-Indians in the twentieth century.

Since 1872, visitors have flocked to Yellowstone National Park to gaze in awe at its dramatic geysers, stunning mountains, and impressive wildlife. Yet more than a century of archaeological research shows that the wild landscape has a long history of human presence. In fact, Native American people have hunted bison and bighorn sheep, fished for cutthroat trout, and gathered bitterroot and camas bulbs here for at least 11,000 years, and twenty-six tribes claim cultural association with Yellowstone today. In Before Yellowstone, Douglas MacDonald tells the story of these early people as revealed by archaeological research into nearly 2,000 sites—many of which he helped survey and excavate. He describes and explains the significance of archaeological areas such as the easy-to-visit Obsidian Cliff, where hunters obtained volcanic rock to make tools and for trade, and Yellowstone Lake, a traditional place for gathering edible plants. MacDonald helps readers understand the archaeological methods used and the limits of archaeological knowledge. From Clovis points associated with mammoth hunting to stone circles marking the sites of tipi lodges, Before Yellowstone brings to life a fascinating story of human engagement with this stunning landscape.

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The vast, pine-covered plateau now known as Yellowstone National Park has been lived in, traveled through, and exploited by humans for thousands of years. It is still possible to see the remnants of old camps and deep-rutted trails over which ancient peoples crossed the Park to reach the bison-rich plains. When did humans first visit the area we now call Yellowstone? Who lived there when the first Europeans entered the region? What happened to the last of the early inhabitants? How did the Nez Perce, fleeing across the northen of the newly established Park in 1877, escape U.S. troops? How did Indians perceive the Park's geysers and hot springs? These and other questions are answered in this popular history of the Park written by a professional archaeologist who is also a seasonal resident of West Yellowstone. Joel Janetski reconstructs past human events from archaeological evidence and historical sources to provide an engrossing story of the people who knew the area hundreds, even thousands, of years ago and who left their traces amidst the grandeur that is today's Yellowstone National Park.