Restoring a Presence

American Indians and Yellowstone National Park

by Peter Nabokov

Placing American Indians in the center of the story, Restoring a Presencerelates 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.

“Nabokov and Loendorf correct more than a century of ignorance and mythmaking by showing in fascinating detail Yellowstone’s Native peoples and telling the story of their long engagement with this remarkable landscape.”--Frederick E. Hoxie is the author of Parading through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935

Peter Nabokov is Professor of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and author of A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History. Lawrence Loendorf is Professor of Anthropology at New Mexico State University and coauthor of Ancient Visions.

400 pp ~ illustrated — ©2004