This land is my land…This land is your land.Quest, Quandary and Conflict: NPS and the American Indian

In February 1929, Stephen Mather received a letter from Charles L. Ellis, District Superin-tendent, Department of the Interior, Office of the Five Civilized Tribes. The term "Five Civilized Tribes" came into use during the mid-nineteenth century to refer to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations.  The term indicated the adoption of horticulture and other European cultural patterns and institutions…and was also used to distinguish these five nations from other so-called "wild" Indians who continued to rely on hunting for survival.

Among those “wild” Indians would have been the Blackfeet.  Between 1915-1917, Ellis was the Superintendent of the Blackfeet Indian Agency at Glacier National Park.  Despite the famous photograph of Stephen Mather meeting Blackfeet chiefs, NPS interests came into conflict with the Blackfeet’s granted rights to hunt within Glacier and to preserve reservation lands.

 In The American Wilderness Ideal and Blackfeet Exclusion from Glacier National Park, we learn “Under the secretary's [Franklin Lane] orders, the commissioner of Indian affairs then directed the Blackfeet agent to post notices throughout the reservation with the threat that "any Indians who persist in killing [Glacier National Park] animals will be prosecuted.”

And in his book, Steve Mather of the National Parks, Robert Shankland acknowledges Stephen Mather’s “hopes for Glacier, where he wanted to take over enough land from the Blackfoot Indian Reservation to make the east-side road system part of the park.” 

The National Parks Conservation Association, of which Stephen Mather’s grandson was a former chairman, points out, “All national parks exist on traditional Indigenous lands.” But hopefully further adds, “In 2021, Chuck Sams became the National Park Service’s first Indigenous leader in the agency’s 105-year history, and Deb Haaland became the first Native American Cabinet Secretary in U.S. history when she began leading the Department of the Interior. As of 2024, 250+ co-stewardship agreements exist between the National Park Service and Tribal Nations.”