Summer 2004
Sovereignty

Flathead Reservation

Whose Home on the Range?

story by Joe Friedrichs
photos by Chandler Melton

A swirling March wind howls as it sweeps across the gullies and grasslands of the National Bison Range on the Flathead Reservation in northwest Montana. Dirt swims through the cold sky, settling in clumps that mat the hides of the mighty buffalo that roam the range.


Doug Allard, a descendant of Charles Allard, who was one of several people responsible for preserving the American bison, sits outside of his Flathead Indian Museum and Trading Post in St. Ignatius.

Since the reserve’s creation in 1908, the federal government has managed the 18,800-acre range, which holds as many as 500 bison and all manner of birds, elk, deer, bear and other mammals. It sits on land that is a small part of the 1.2 million acres that comprise the Flathead Reservation. But control of the range has become a large issue for the reservation’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and for some vocal opponents of tribal control and Indian sovereignty.

About 20 miles away in the town of St. Ignatius, tribal member Doug Allard sits comfortably in a rustic desk chair in the basement of his Indian museum and trading post. Allard owns several businesses on the Flathead Reservation and is widely regarded as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the area.

Straightening his posture in the chair, Allard begins to talk forcefully about the trouble the tribes face getting the federal government to agree to tribal management of the National Bison Range.

“Anyone who opposes anything doesn’t have to tell the truth,” Allard says, referring to the opponents of tribal management. “They don’t have to prove anything. All they have to do is stand up and say, ‘The tribes will ruin the Bison Range.’”

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes want to manage the National Bison Range. They believe the history, location and cultural links provide the needed justification. And they argue that the Indian Self-Determination Act provides them the right and the motivation.

For 10 years the tribes have expressed interest in operating and managing the range, which sits on the southern end of the reservation. But in part from stiff opposition to the request by organizations such as All Citizens Equal (ACE), the tribes have failed thus far.

Del Palmer, a resident of Charlo and an ACE member, is an outspoken opponent of nearly every element of tribal jurisdiction. For years he challenged the tribes’ rights to regulate hunting on the reservation by doing so on his land without a permit. For the most part, the tribes ignored him.


Onlookers watch a bison cross the road at the National Bison Range. A 2,000-pound bison may seem tame, but they are unpredictable animals that can run as fast as a horse.

In challenging the tribes’ wish to operate the bison range, he says the tribes would do a poor job of management. And he uses the if-it-ain’t broke analogy.

“The National Bison Range is one of the best-run refuges in the Department of the Interior,” Palmer says. “The tribes said they want to manage and the government said, ‘OK, we’ll negotiate.’ It is wrong, absolutely wrong. The tribes have been trying to take control of the Bison Range for the past five years. But all they will do is set it up to benefit the tribe.”

The tribes note that a tribal member’s bison herd was the source of the present herd that populates the range.

But Palmer dismisses that claim as weak. He says the buffalo on the range do not come from Indian buffalo, but from the Charles Conrad herd in Kalispell.

Allard scoffs at that argument.

“It would be impossible to start the bison range without Indian buffalo because all of the buffalo belonged to Indian people at one time,” Allard says. “The Indian people are the saviors of the buffalo.”

Sixty million buffalo inhabited the country when the Europeans first came to North America. By 1883 they were nearly extinct on the land they once roamed in numbers so dense that as a herd began to move the earth would shake.

In the spring of 1873, Walking Coyote, a Pend d’Oreille — from a third tribe that also shared the Flathead Reservation — captured four buffalo calves while hunting near the Milk River in northern Montana. He took the calves and returned to the Mission Valley the following spring. By 1884 his herd had grown to 13 head. But the often-troubled Walking Coyote found them more a burden than a blessing and decided to rid them from his life.

He sold the herd to Doug Allard’s great-grandfather, Charles A. Allard. With a sharp businessman’s eye, Allard, along with longtime friend Michael Pablo, bought at least 10 of the herd from Walking Coyote. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of the end for Walking Coyote. After his sale of the bison he headed to Missoula, where he was found dead under the north end of the Higgins Avenue Bridge.

Things worked out much better for Allard and Pablo.

“You have to recall what the reservation was like at that time,” Allard says. “At the time it hadn’t been opened up to homesteading, at that time it was wide-open spaces. They ran the buffalo here in peace. At the time the Allard-Pablo herd was established it was the last naturally wild herd of buffalo in the world.”

After purchasing more buffalo from a man in the Midwest, the Pablo-Allard herd grew to more than 300 head by 1896, the year of Charles Allard’s death.

The herd was then divided evenly between Pablo and Allard’s heirs and friends. Doug Allard’s grandfather, Joe, sold his share to the Conrad family of Kalispell. Pablo sold most of his 600 buffalo to the Canadian government, after being turned down several times by the U.S. government.

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt arranged the purchase of 18,500 acres from the tribes of the Flathead Reservation for $1.56 an acre. The land was to be set aside for the preservation and protection of the American bison, which had dwindled to a total population of about 2,000, of which only 325 survived in the wild. The American Bison Society raised $10,000 and used the money to buy 34 animals from Conrad in Kalispell. These animals, along with seven others, are the foundation of the National Bison Range. But not by Palmer’s thinking.

“These buffalo have no relation to the tribe because they weren’t tribally owned to begin with,” Palmer says. “If you buy a cow from me and sell it to someone else, that doesn’t make it still my cow.”

Even if you don’t agree that the range is populated with bison that were owned by tribal members, that doesn’t diminish the argument that tribal sovereignty should play into the decision whether the tribes should operate the range, Allard says.

“Indian people could run the Bison Range,” he says. “Indian people could run anything they set their minds to. We’re making progress in leaps and bounds, but our progress in the buffalo area has yet to come. All of these historical events have been ignored for some reason in this country.”

Historically Indians and buffalo go together, Allard says.


In the 60 years that Del Palmer has lived in Charlo, he has raised a family, built his own pond and planted numerous willow trees on the property he used to call a wasteland. Over the years, Palmer says, some people have called him prejudiced for his stance against the tribes’ policies on hunting, fishing and the National Bison Range.

“There shouldn’t be any opposition to it at all, but there is, and it got out of hand,” he says. “It’s on our reservation. It’s in the middle of our reservation.”

One impediment to public support for tribal control has been the rumors that sweep across the reservation, which is populated by a majority of non-Indians.

Opponents say the tribes want ownership of the range, not just management responsibilities.

Anna Sorrell, director of support services for the tribe, says that’s not the case.

“If you get to the bottom of the arguments, you can see how racist they really are,” Sorrell says. “Most of our opponents have deep roots within anti-Indian organizations.”

Palmer is well known for his challenges of Indian control of reservation resources. For years he refused to buy a tribal hunting permit to shoot birds on his own land. He staged highly publicized hunts, hoping to get a citation and challenge in court the tribes’ control of hunting and fishing on the reservation. After some legal wrangling, the tribes decided to just ignore him and issue no citations, preempting a challenge.

Palmer’s son, Skip, who has been a maintenance worker on the range for the past 13 years, believes the tribes plan to create a new entrance at the top of Ravalli Hill just off Highway 93. To get to the range now, travelers must turn off the busy Highway 93 and drive for 10 miles.

Skip Palmer claims the tribes plan a new entrance in the hope of bringing in more of the tourists who travel the highway from Missoula to Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park.

“They are trying to create a more Disneyland-type atmosphere on the range,” Palmer claims. “Our kids, my kids, can never work there if the tribes take over. There should be an opportunity for everyone, but they want it for no one else.”

If the tribes take over range management, qualified tribal members would get a hiring preference. The tribal council has also stated current range employees — like Skip Palmer — will have continued employment opportunities. At present the National Bison Range employs only one tribal member, Darren Thomas.

“I believe all the hold-up has been from the anti-Indian people, the anti-anything people,” Allard said. “They use emotions, and half-facts. They don’t say, ‘Are they going to hire Indians?’ They say we are going to.”

Del Palmer doesn’t understand why the government would even talk about negotiating hiring practices for the range maintenance crew.


Designer Terry Compton’s original concept for the National Bison Range gates, above, had Indians chasing the bison. After that was rejected, he crafted this design.

“Suppose the tribes take over, they could make work so miserable for that maintenance crew they would never want to stay on,” he says. “Oh yeah, they’re going to give them a choice to accept a job at another refuge, but how long until a tribe down there makes a run on that one?”

Palmer believes it is the long-term goal of the tribes to obtain every bit of land on the reservation. The reservation was set aside for the tribe by treaty in 1855, but the government then allotted tracts of land to individual tribal members and put the remainder up for white settlement.

Palmer also says the government is mishandling Indian affairs.

“I blame Congress, which in a weak moment passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act,” Palmer says. “Congress is the root of the problem we have today.”

The Indian Self-Determination Act allows any Indian tribe to seek to assume management of federal programs on their resrvations, including those operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the and National Park Service.

“The government has set it up as dividing people based on race,” Palmer says. “It’s time to get rid of the reservation and start treating them like full citizens.

“The tribes say they have been granted sovereignty by the treaties of the government. But they weren’t, they just twisted it around… To turn over the management of the bison range to a government in which the public has no representation, no voice or vote is simply wrong.”

And Palmer doesn’t take to the idea of a friendship between tribal government and non-Indian residents of the reservation. ”While they’re wanting to make love, they got their hand in your pocket, reaching for your wallet,” he says. “You can’t have friendship when that is the situation.”

Former tribal vice chairman Thomas “Bearhead” Swaney, believes the root of much of the opposition to tribal management is racism.

“Being black is easy,” he says. “You can tell when someone is black, but can’t always when someone is Indian. We bring in $180 million to this reservation. We have white people that serve on every one of our boards. This whole debate is not a damn thing but racism.”

Palmer readily admits he’s been called racist by tribal members.

“I have been called one because I stand in the way,” he says. “But if the tribe would get their hand out of my pocket and quit trying to steal my horse at night, they wouldn’t have a problem with me.”

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes are one of the largest employers in northwest Montana and manage an annual budget of $180 million. The tribes employ more than 1,100 people, operate their own housing authority, contract their own health care and operate several successful businesses.

Palmer warns that what the Flathead tribes want is just a beginning. He cites efforts by Alaska natives to extend their control at Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refugee.

“If they take over the Yukon flat in Alaska the floodgate has been opened,” says Palmer. “Tribes all across the country will make a run on all our federally funded parks.”

As Doug Allard sits in his museum office, his emotions get the best of him.

“I would just like to see it done for my family,” he says, gazing toward the Montana skies. “I would be very proud to have the tribe manage the bison range, manage the buffalo that my family left here. After all, we saved the buffalo.”


Skip Palmer, below, is the son of Del Palmer and has worked at the National Bison Range for 13 years. He loads a horse into a trailer in preparation for corralling the bison in their summer pasture.

 

Back to top

Last updated
9/18/04 1:42 PM


©Copyright 2004 The University of Montana School of Journalism | Contact Us
Table of Contents | About Us | Feedback | Links