American Prairie's mission is to create the largest nature reserve in the contiguous United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.
I’d like to be the first to introduce you to the newly minted American Prairie Journal. At their best, print magazines draw you in and provide a unique connection. It’s this idea of connection that we are celebrating in this publication. Magazines are tangible, tactile, full of discovery, and engage the reader on a personal level. In this digital world, to print something suggests importance and permanence. We believe the stories told behind this cover are valuable, worthy of putting in print, and this edition will sit on coffee tables and bookshelves till worn and dusty.
In this dramatic redesign, we shifted the creative direction to a more photo-driven editorial model while breathing new life into the magazine format. The intended result: sophistication that matches the beauty of the landscape. We shifted editorial direction by engaging with creative professionals, friends of American Prairie, and newcomers to share their experiences and the connections they have made with the place. It is challenging to bring faraway people to the prairie, our goal with the American Prairie Journal is to bring the prairie to the people.
Our internal team feels innately connected through our shared vision, hard work, and collective efforts in rewilding. You, our supporters, are connected through your generosity, visitation, interest in conservation, and faith in our mission.
In the following pages, our contributors offer their own perspectives on this idea of connection. Through their words and images, we will explore the sense of intimate connection forged from loss, rediscovery, and first-time experiences. We will see connection expressed through poetry, the written word, and art. We will foster connection with family and community. And more than one story will discuss the historic and necessary connection to buffalo, to landscape, to sustenance.
Our hope is that you find your own sense of connection to the prairie within these pages, and that you feel inspired to share these stories with those around you.
We appreciate the time you spend with us, and we hope you enjoy this new American Prairie Journal. Let us know how you feel about the new publication by emailing journal@americanprairie.org •
Alison Fox, CEO
By Will Newell
There’s something about the sight of a few million contiguous acres of shortgrass prairie that has caused my brain to short circuit. I know what I’m looking at, I see flora and fauna on the landscape that I recognize, and yet I’m somehow unable to process the information. I’m snapped back into the present moment when I see the setters in the draw below me get birdy. The father/son team do an incredible job of working around the point to get the shot they want, the bird rises, the shotguns bark, and the bird tumbles into the sagebrush. A flawlessly executed moment.
In short order I’m back to contemplating the vast, undulating landscape laid out before me. A literal ocean of grass. The scale of this place is hard to comprehend. It is a monument to all things held dear by those of us who carry the affliction of needing to have wild country at our disposal. It is also incredibly rare. So rare that there are only four locations in the world where prairie grassland ecosystems of this scale exist to be rewilded. Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Patagonia, and right here on the Northern Great Plains. To quote Tom Olliff, NPS Intermountain Region Manager for Climate Change and Landscape Conservation: “It reminds us of our sanity.
TO BE ENVELOPED IN A LANDSCAPE THAT EXISTS AS IT HAS FOR ALL TIME IS A SPECIAL THING, AND IT MAKES ME HOPEFUL FOR THE FUTURE.
We need geographies of hope.” That’s probably the emotion I feel most when I’m in the woods or on the water. To be enveloped in a landscape that exists as it has for all time is a special thing, and it makes me hopeful for the future.
I’m in Montana on a property owned by American Prairie, a nonprofit whose mission is to create one of the largest reserves in the United States. This will serve as a refuge for people and wildlife, forever. With me are friends, including Andy Anderson, Scott Cassity, Chris Canale and Chris’ son, Milo. Between us there are probably 70+ cumulative years of upland hunting experience, and the experiences were diverse. Spending time in camp and in the field with these guys was an absolute pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed watching, and was impressed with, their setters’ work—but I think I most enjoyed seeing Chris and his son hunt together. There was something special about getting to observe a father passing down knowledge to his son on the prairie, and I found myself wondering how many hundreds of times a scene much like this one had played out in this place through the millennia.
Started in 2001 as The Prairie Foundation, American Prairie is a nonprofit organization that began assembling land in 2004. In their words, their main focus is “to purchase and permanently hold title to private lands that glue together a vast mosaic of existing public lands so that the region is managed thoughtfully and collaboratively with state and federal agencies for wildlife conservation and public access.” On the wildlife conservation side, their work is fascinating.
Among the things I learned in talking with Daniel Kinka, senior wildlife restoration manager for American Prairie, the one that stood out to me the most is how much of a role certain species play in shaping the landscape for all prairie residents—not just the upland species we were there to pursue. Shorebirds need the bare ground, or “putting greens” Kinka called them, created by prairie dog towns to nest and feed. Burrowing owls make use of abandoned prairie dog towns for nesting as well. When we took a deep dive into how the presence of bison changes the landscape, my mind was blown. Basically, the cyclical nature of structural diversity controls an ecosystem’s biodiversity—and bison cover the whole spectrum in terms of affecting structural diversity. Kinka’s belief is that in the past, before bison populations on the prairie began to dwindle due to human influence, their grazing patterns influenced how the whole ecosystem moved and shifted with the seasons. Their stochastic grazing, at a scale of millions of acres, created a constantly shifting mosaic of grassland age and diversity. The prairie fauna would respond in kind, from the apex predators down to the smallest grasshoppers, adapting their movements and ranges to find what they needed to survive based on where the bison had been in seasons past.
All day long we move through this sea of grasslands, and the number of places available for us to drop dogs and hunt birds is truly staggering. Virtually everywhere you look there’s suitable sharptail habitat, and although sage grouse cannot be hunted on American Prairie lands, it appears they are also responding well to rewilding efforts. The rewilding work that American Prairie has done is readily apparent on the landscape, and the ripple effect of their work into the greater region is obvious. The mere presence of animals that were historically here, specifically bison and prairie dogs, has allowed them to resume their roles as landscape engineers. The benefits of their presence on the prairie are increasingly apparent. Beyond that, American Prairie’s strategy of purchasing and rewilding land that sits in close proximity to Wildlife Refuges, FWP, and BLM land has begun reconnecting what was for many decades a patchwork of public land open for hunting. In short, their work is helping to solve the access issues that have plagued so many hunters in the American West for so long.
Mike Kautz, Vice President of Access and Infrastructure for American Prairie, says that their goal is to take the patchwork that exists on the map and have it be fairly seamless on the ground in terms of hunter access. What this meant for us was that we could focus on the dogs and the task at hand rather than the map. While we were constantly crossing from private land to public land during our hunting days, we never once encountered an area that was off-limits to us thanks to the work that American Prairie has been doing for the past 20 years. 67% of the lands owned by American Prairie (roughly 140,000 acres at the time of writing this article) are enrolled in their various hunter access programs. These lands, in most cases, share property lines with land that is already available to the public through state or federal agencies— thus creating a contiguous area of millions of acres that are available for public access. American Prairie sees about 4,000 hunter days per year on their land, which may sound like a lot, but the sheer scale of this place means that crowding is almost never an issue.
On my last afternoon in camp, standing next to the Native American medicine rock and looking out over the expanse, it finally hit me. That feeling that I’d felt on our first day hunting, that feeling that I thought was my brain going offline due to sensory overload—that was hope. That was me realizing that maybe, in the fight for wildlife conservation and public access in America, we’re not as far behind as I thought. •
excerpt
By Chris La Tray
by Chris Chapman
The Judith Basin region of Central Montana is a gorgeous representation of Montana pretty. The basin—a bowl-shaped dip in the landscape, with sides higher than the bottom— is surrounded by the Judith, Little Belt, and Big Snowy Mountains. The Judith River… originates in the Little Belts roughly 60 miles southwest of the city of Lewistown and flows 130 miles north to the Missouri, draining the entire basin along the way. Its natural abundance has attracted people for centuries, both as shared and conflicted territory. Here, at the mouth of the Judith River at the Missouri, is where Isaac Stevens negotiated the Lame Bull / Judith River Treaty with the Blackfeet (and the Nez Perce, Salish, and Pend d’Oreille / Flathead tribes) on October 17, 1855, to make way for the railroad. This land was identified as “shared” hunting ground to be guaranteed accessible to all the tribes for a period of ninety-nine years. But of course an influx of settlers and homesteaders put the kibosh on efforts to uphold the treaty for even a fraction of that time, if that was ever the intention.
My ancestors looked for a home here too. In the spring of 1879 a group of Métis families, twenty-five of them, made their way into the Judith Basin country in pursuit of a new way of life…
These families all had deep ties to the Red River Valley Métis communities to the east on both sides of the still-new international border. They moved in small bands and family groups related in tangled ways that connected more through mothers and sisters than fathers and brothers. They were buffalo hunters too. As the herds dwindled in the Dakotas, the entire Métis economy, born in the fur trade and refocused on buffalo since the 1840s, moved westward. There were still buffalo for a while around the Milk River, but the herds dwindled there too. The Métis would hunt during the summer for meat that could be dried and turned into pemmican and jerky for trade, and again in fall when buffalo hides were more robust in preparation for another formidable winter. During that season, the hunt served to replenish meat stores and provide hides that could be turned into luxurious robes that fetched a high price. Notably, the Medicine Line meant nothing to them. It was all just home.
These families settled on Big Spring Creek at what is now the city of Lewistown. The migration to and establishment of this community was led by Pierre and Judith Wilkie Berger, both middle-aged at the time. They were accompanied by a number of their adult children and extended family and friends. Of those adult children, Jean Baptiste Berger and his wife, Betsy Keplin, had a daughter named Mary Margaret Berger, who became Mary Margaret La Tray. My dad’s grandmother. My great-grandmother…
families moved into Spring Creek. This was no bucolic cart train to greener pastures. This was an uncertain scramble into a questionable future.
While the Spring Creek families were the first to establish a true settlement in the Judith Basin, there were plenty others already active there. Métis hunters and traders had been in and around the area for at least a decade or two; certainly that’s how the Bergers knew about it in the first place…
Most important, the last remaining buffalo herds on much of the continent were concentrated in Central Montana, which also concentrated the remaining Indigenous people whose lives hinged on their access to these animals: the Lakota, the Blackfeet, and their various allies and rivals. There were those among the Métis people who wanted to maintain their share of that action as long as they could too…
THIS WAS NO BUCOLIC CART TRAIN TO GREENER PASTURES. THIS WAS AN UNCERTAIN SCRAMBLE INTO A QUESTIONABLE FUTURE.
On a hot, sunny day in late August 2019, I’m coasting down the long hill into Lewistown as the highway turns into West Main Street. I pass vibrant green trees and then, on the right, the Lewistown Lodge motel, the McDonald’s, and the beautiful Carnegie Library, then on past the old brick buildings at the heart of town. I’m astonished that this is the first time I’ve ever been here, because so much of my family history springs from the area.
It was inevitable that I would come here; it’s a kind of homecoming…
It’s uncommon enough knowledge to most people how Lewistown was settled, but even among those who know some, the deeper details have been obfuscated by history. Though still almost two decades away from the final scorched-earth policy of “Canadian Indian” removal on the northern plains, the attitude toward Métis Indians was far from friendly as these
The Métis settled in quickly, clustering in loose, family-based enclaves spread out around the basin. Those who still leaned more toward hunting found game plentiful and settled close to those areas that allowed them easiest access to the animals. Meanwhile families like the Bergers and their closest relatives set to building houses and homesteads in the vein of a more traditional settlement community. A man named Francois Janeaux and his wife, Virginie Laverdure Janeaux, arrived shortly after the first wave and established a trading post. It was a bustling time. Everything was made with wood, and tools were hardly more advanced than a simple axe. But they got the job done…
My driving around Lewistown leads me to the Central Montana Museum. This enterprise is administered by the nonprofit Central Montana Historical Association… I’m eager to check the museum out because more than once I’ve had friends who visited text me photos of various displays that depict the La Tray family; specifically, an old-timer named Mose La Tray, my great-great-grandfather. He, with his Assiniboine wife, Susie, participated in the initial settlement of the town as well. It’s their son, Frank, who marries Mary Margaret Berger to begin my immediate, specific branch of the family tree.
I love small-town museums, and this is a particularly good one. There are collections focused on every era this part of the state has weathered, including the skull of a triceratops. The best part though, and the
section I spend the most time in, is devoted to Lewistown’s earliest settlers. Display cases show off arrowheads collected in the region, beaded moccasins and other accoutrements, weird student-made dioramas, and all the usual stuff one might expect in such a place. But the attention devoted to the original Métis settlers is better than I had hoped for.
There’s a life-size replica of a Red River cart with a mannequin for a driver, complete with a broadbrimmed hat and a snappy Métis sash, and a detailed description of how the carts were made. A couple beautiful paintings depict life in the early days of the settlement, and plenty of old photographs and historical details printed out and pinned to the walls provide a decent idea of what went down here. There are photographs of Pierre and Judith Berger—stern of visage and dress, rendered in what looks like tintype—with short biographies identifying them as the founders of Lewistown before it became Lewistown.
Finally, in a photograph next to a display that depicts what the trading post (and first post office) called Reed’s Fort looked like, is a photograph of Great-Great-Grandpa Mose, who was hired to build the structure. Here he is old, beardy, and smiling. Then there’s a photograph of Mose with his wife, GreatGreat-Grandma Susie, both looking grim and stiff like the subjects of any photograph from the era, as well as a photo album full of other images from the period, including more references to the sizable La Tray family.
Visiting the museum is wonderful, and I come away with a warm feeling for having been there. Yet the picture it paints is still incomplete. There are references to the hardships faced in establishing such a community, sure, but they don’t really extend beyond
what we’ve been conditioned to think of frontier life. These people faced hardships not mentioned. It wasn’t an easy time to be Métis, chased here and there by the US Army and surrounded on all sides by people who want you gone so they can take what you have…
Events as early as 1880 began to whittle away at the control the families exerted over their own community. Granville Stuart established his DHS ranch nearby. He proved to be no friend of the Métis, whether he respected their settlement or not. Gold was discovered in the Judith Mountains, and the town of Maiden was established, drawing many prospectors. More and more settlers moved in and established sawmills up and down the waterways, claiming homesteads and gobbling up land. And finally, the last of the bison disappeared from the landscape.
The community had a good run. One hundred and fifty families lived there before the influx of settlers overwhelmed them. Then these factors—the disappearance of bison and the press of arriving homesteaders—overwhelmed the settlement game, and “precluded Métis economic, social, and political dominance in their new community.”
The descendants of the original Métis families still live there… Many today are Little Shell members, or could be if they chose to be. But there was so much hardship and negative public opinion directed at Métis people just because they were Métis that the trauma of those associations was too much to overcome for entire generations of people. It’s only now, with those of us removed from those times yearning to be part of a wider community again, that these truths are being revealed, and we are ready to reclaim what was lost and be proud of what our people accomplished. •
By Matt Mikkelsen
Photo by Morgan Cardiff
As a nature sound recordist and acoustic ecologist, I’ve been beyond fortunate that my work has taken me to many incredible places around the world. Finding places that are mostly free from noise pollution (and therefore other humans) is increasingly difficult with the surge of transportation noise from cars and airplanes, the prevalence of extractive industries, and the increase of people seeking outdoor recreation opportunities. I can say with some certainty that there are fewer than ten places in the lower 48 that could qualify as a Wilderness Quiet Park according to criteria developed by Quiet Parks International, and American Prairie is certainly one of those places.
It was mid-May of 2021 the first time I visited American Prairie. Upon driving south from Malta on Sun Prairie Road and stepping out of my car at Buffalo Camp, I was floored. Within seconds, my ears were filled with the incredibly rich
and diverse sounds of the prairie; it was unlike anything I had heard before. I stood there for probably 15 minutes just listening to the birds and coyotes, and watching buffalo graze on a distant hill.
I spent about 10 days exploring the vast landscape around the Prairie, driving for hours down single track roads, finding an incredible amount of beauty, but also, quiet. Quiet, or a lack of noise pollution, is a resource for our ecosystems like clean air and water, but it’s so difficult to find in abundance the way that it exists in American Prairie. When I say a place is “quiet,” most people imagine it’s silent; but when I speak of quiet in this way, I’m referring to a lack of noise pollution, not a lack of overall sound. I make this distinction because the prairie that time of year is overflowing with lush and vibrant natural sound. I remember talking to a friend while I was there and I told them it was like “a music festival for birds,
coyotes, and bison.” There were multiple days in a row where I didn’t see another human; it wasn’t uncommon to have 4-8 hour noise-free intervals, which is extremely rare. My first experience in the prairie was so phenomenal and transformative, but I knew that even though I had explored for 10 days, drove over 500 miles, and hiked well over 20 miles, I had only seen a fraction of what this landscape had to offer.
During a subsequent trip to American Prairie a few months later, I set up my sound equipment on the side of a wash, next to a large cottonwood whose leaves were barely holding on in the stiff fall breeze. I too was feeling the stiffness of that breeze, so I took shelter on the leeward side of a large rock to help block some of the wind while I collected data and listened. I sat behind that rock for hours, and upon standing to stretch my legs and walk around a bit, I circled to the other side of that rock and saw a historical
marker plaque that read:
“Tribute to Jens and Cathrine Mikkelsen Family, 1913 Emigrants from Aarhus, Denmark to Lewistown, Montana and their spouses.”
Alone in the prairie, probably 50 miles from the nearest town on a random dirt road, I found a historical marker for what are potentially distant relatives of mine from Denmark. (I still have close family who live there). I thought I was hallucinating!
When people ask me my favorite place to explore and record, I almost always mention American Prairie. It’s unlike anyplace else I’ve ever been, and I can’t wait to return one day, hopefully soon. •
By Nate Schweber
by Amy Toensing
Why American Prairie? It’s a proper question to explore in this, the art-filled re-launch of the organization’s magazine, Journal. One boldface reason is: grasslands are the least protected biome on earth. Northeastern Montana is one of a few places left where a grassland nature reserve of immense scale can happen.
That’s compelling, but it isn’t everything. A phenomenon about American Prairie is that every detail about it raises questions. How did Montana wind up a place where three million acres of grassland could be protected? Why is American Prairie attempting it? Has anyone tried this before?
I am learning the answers by reading the landscape. Let me restate that. I am learning the answers by reading about the landscape.
Think of American Prairie as a “greater” ecosystem. Like how Yellowstone National Park binds together the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Greater American Prairie Ecosystem appears in a veritable library of books that add depth, context, and history to the question: why?
Its first description in English comes from the journals of Lewis and Clark. This scene, written by Meriwether Lewis on September 17, 1804, inside what in a few decades would become known as Dakota Territory on the Northern Great Plains, gives one answer to the question. “this senery already rich pleasing and beautiful,” Lewis writes, undaunted by
proper spelling and grammar, “was still farther highlighted by immence herds of Buffalo deer Elk and Antelopes which we saw in every direction.”
To see that again. That’s a reason. If I were made king of my home state for a day I would make the 1943 book Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome required reading. Written by Joseph Kinsey Howard—a journalism hero of mine—it tells fascinating, fantastic, and enraging historical stories about Greater American Prairie. One is of railroad baron James Hill building the Great Northern across Montana’s hi-line, planting the towns of Glasgow, Malta, Havre. It was this railroad, finished in the late 1800s, that in the early 1900s helped make Montana the state with the most land given out as homesteads. Whether out of greedy delusion or honest conviction—Howard can’t suss which—Hill promoted destructive prairie plowing. “Wrong side up,” a Sioux elder solemnly said when he saw what plows wrought. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, dramatized by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, cooked Montana in the 1920s. Depopulated Montana led the nation in farm bankruptcies and became the first state to show the human cost of prairie destruction.
Howard also tells the tale of purported cattle thieves who embedded in the rugged Missouri River Breaks in American Prairie country. These “rustlers” died violently in the 1880s at the hands of a vigilante mob called Stuart’s
Stranglers, in honor of pioneer Montana cattlemen Granville Stuart. (A young, intemperate Theodore Roosevelt wanted to join the Stranglers and was rejected—it probably saved his political career.) Cowboy vigilantism achieved its most storied bloodletting in the 1890s with Wyoming’s Johnson County War. It inspired novelist Owen Wister in 1902 to write The Virginian and thus place range war at the center of a bang-bang popular new American genre—the Western. Critical eyes would observe however: not all accused rustlers were cattle thieves. Some were merely smaller operators who dreamed of a region with a more diversified economy.
The boldest dreamer’s story was told in Howard’s next book, Strange Empire, published in 1952. It tells of Métis leader Louis Riel’s fights in the late 1800s to forge an egalitarian empire called Assiniboia in the prairie landscape spanning the international border. Assiniboia’s purpose, fundamentally, was to protect the native prairie and the people who depended on it. They included the often-overlooked Métis, people who traced their heritage to Native hunters and European trappers. In Riel, Howard saw a visionary whose indigenous wisdom aligned with the cutting-edge science of Grand Canyon explorer John Wesley Powell, who simultaneously urged grassland protection. It is incredible that the last breakaway republic in North America was not Texas. It was Assiniboia. Assiniboia’s mission was
prairie preservation. For his efforts, Canada hung Riel.
The most illuminating single book about Greater American Prairie is Wallace Stegner’s creative, exquisite, and emotive Wolf Willow , published in 1962. In this interwoven memoir, history, and novel, Stegner’s prairie prose is as melodious as a meadowlark. “The beauty I am struck by, both as present fact and revived memory,” he writes, “is a fusion: this sky would not be so spectacular without this earth to change and glow and darken under it.” Stegner put such passion into Wolf Willow because through delving into the landscape, he discovered himself. “I do not know who I am,” he famously wrote, “but I know where I am from.” This deep searching for personal identity in the prairie made University of Montana literature professor William Kittridge write special praise in his essay collection Owning It All, published in 1987. Wolf Willow, Kittridge wrote, like Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, marked a major achievement in “proving that the West had more compelling stories than those of simpleminded gunplay.”
Wolf Willow wasn’t the whole story. In 1996, three years after Stegner died, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a member of South Dakota’s Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, published a critical coda. It’s title: Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner . “Stegner simply claims indigenousness,” she writes. That Stegner—like many of even the most sensitive thinkers of his era—wrote in Wolf Willow about Native Americans only in past tense made CookLynn state an essential corrective. “The Plains Indians are not ‘done,’ as assumed in Stegner’s fiction,” she writes, “rather, they continue to multiply and prosper.”
It is a detail fit for a novelist that in 2004, exactly 200 years after Meriwether Lewis first described the “Buffalo deer Elk and Antelopes” that abounded on the Northern Great Plains, American Prairie was born. The genetically-pure bison reintroduced to American Prairie’s inaugural property marked the first time that
landscape felt such hooves in more than a century. Bison resurrection happened in the same landscape where the last great wild herd was exterminated in the 1880s. That is poetic. Staying on the right side of Montana’s schizophrenic bison laws, American Prairie allows its animals to roam widely. But not so far as to threaten agriculture as Montana’s top industry. The wisdom American Prairie abides is poet Robert Frost’s. “Good fences make good neighbors.”
BISON RESURRECTION HAPPENED IN THE SAME LANDSCAPE WHERE THE LAST GREAT WILD HERD WAS EXTERMINATED IN THE 1880S.
THAT IS POETIC.
American Prairie’s efforts parallel tribally-led eco-cultural bison restoration. In 2012 the Fort Peck Tribes founded a conservation herd with Yellowstone genetics, and now distribute bison to other tribes. The Fort Belknap Indian Community, building on their reintroduction of bison in the 1970's, started a dedicated conservation herd in 2013. The Blackfeet Nation founded its conservation herd in 2016. The Chippewa Cree at Rocky Boy did likewise in 2021, with animals from American Prairie and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes—who took over management of the National Bison Range in 2022. That is another good answer to, why American Prairie?
As is its National Discovery Center in the gateway community of Lewistown. In summer 2024 the Center hosted a talk by state poet laureate Chris La Tray (an old pal from the University of Montana) about his new memoir, Becoming
Little Shell. The event was monumental. Métis people settled the town in 1879. But it was named Lewistown in 1883 for U.S. Army Major William H. Lewis— who never visited. That’s the type of disrespect that made Elizabeth CookLynn unable to read Wallace Stegner. La Tray’s book weaves the story of his discovery of his Métis heritage with that of his Métis people winning overdue federal recognition in 2020 as the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “We haven’t gone anywhere,” La Tray writes, echoing Cook-Lynn, “and we’re still here, stronger than ever.”
La Tray telling his story to a big, rapt audience at the National Discovery Center was like Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner confronting Wolf Willow. What was antagonism in the 1900s is now dialogue in the 2000s. That’s another reason for American Prairie.
American Prairie has opponents. They drive me crazy with hypocrisies. History shows that American Prairie’s general idea—bison conservation, prairie preservation, Indigenous empowerment, economic diversification, historical examination—has had opponents since 1869 when it was called Assiniboia. Stuart’s Stranglers would count as opponents.
Ropes and bullets couldn’t kill it. “The ideas from which the dream evolved,” Howard wrote in Strange Empire, “live on.” The indomitable goodness of the idea is attested to by nature, which signals approval with fecundity and abundance. It means something that a grizzly bear showed up on an American Prairie wildlife camera in 2023, marking the species’ first appearance in the Missouri River Breaks in at least a century. It is a phenomenon that there are more bison in Montana today than any time since the 1800s. It’s just as hopeful that young families—American Prairie employees—are moving to places that have not seen such emigration in a century.
Explore for yourself. You’ll be amazed at what you find. •
By Cameron Nicoll
Ihad never seen the Milky Way before. In fact, there were many firsts for me during my short few days on the Prairie. It was back in July, and we were there for Planet Wild to make a film about the mission to restore this remarkable habitat. There were many moments that I won’t forget, but the entirety of our last day is burned in my memory.
It began with myself, our cameraman Paul, and Danny Kinka sitting in the middle of a prairie dog town that is gradually taking over the Enrico Centre. The p-dogs weren’t cooperating and didn’t want to be filmed with us sitting right there. We tried another tactic, they thankfully performed, and we rewarded them with some delicious insecticide-laced grain bait. Who doesn’t love plague-free prairie dogs!
The sun roasted us on the exposed rolling grassland, and it had been over 100°F for days. We took a couple of hours break from shooting to save our energy for a crucial evening ahead. During the break, I went out to look for a fossil to take home with me—and I could not believe my eyes when, after maybe five minutes of digging in the dirt, there it was. Maybe not the most beautiful fossil ever, just a small portion of some mysterious sea creature, but it will always be the first fossil I ever found.
After our break, it was time for action. It was the moment the whole shoot had been building towards, and it being our last evening, the stakes were high. This was our moment to film a herd of bison. We knew they were located in a corner of American Prairie that is notoriously difficult to access, but Danny remained optimistic that we would somehow find a way.
The sun was still high in the sky, meaning we had time on our side, so we took a detour that filled the evening with an extra layer of meaning. We had stopped to witness a remarkable medicine stone lying on an unassuming hillside. As we approached the stone, a rattlesnake emerged in our path. The snake rattled, then relaxed and let us pass. The stone was covered in carvings that evoke the natural environment and wildlife that the Indigenous Plains people coexisted with for thousands of years. Learning about their spiritual connection to the bison made me even more determined to do justice to the species and this place.
With the sun getting lower, we returned to our pursuit of the bison herd. I didn’t think this was possible, but we ended up driving a road that Danny had never explored, so we didn’t really know where we were headed. But suddenly—a bunch of black dots on a
WE SLOWED TO A CRAWL, BUT STILL A SMALL GROUP OF THE LARGER HERD BROKE AWAY AND STARTED TO RUN.
far-away hillside. There was the herd, maybe 300 bison in total. Now, the challenge was to get as close as possible without spooking them. We slowed to a crawl, but a small group of the larger herd broke away and started to run. We feared the shoot was over before it started, but thankfully the herd stayed put. Still, we didn’t want to take any chances—so now we were on foot, and whispering.
The sun was now low in the sky, definitely golden hour. We came upon a small valley, through which we could walk towards the herd and stay out of sight, and our target was a ridge on the other side of the valley. As we walked, the tension was building between Danny, Paul and I—the scene had to go well for our film to work, and this was our only shot. In hushed voices, we came up with our action plan.
Danny and I crept up the ridge, crouched, Paul following behind filming. Adrenaline surging, our heads peaked over the top, and we dropped to the ground. I put my hand on a cactus but tried not to show it, because there they were. 300 huge animals spread across the entire hillside before us, bathed in the orange-red light of the sunset. The first time I’d seen anything like this with my own eyes.
The intensity of the moment was only heightened when we realised that they were rutting—signifying the start of the season. This competitive mating behaviour shows their level of comfort on this land—their land. Here, they behave as bison behave.
This spectacular moment is captured in the video of our mission to Montana, which is available to watch on the Planet Wild YouTube channel.
Planet Wild has gathered a growing community of members who care deeply about the planet, and each month we crowdfund for a different nature protection project. American Prairie is a perfect example of the kind of project that our community loves—a simple idea with a huge impact, affecting landscape-scale change for generations to come. It’s been our pleasure to partner with American Prairie.
On the ridge, the light gradually faded and we stopped filming. The three of us just stood there, awe-struck as the evening turned blue and the herd slowly moved into the distance.
It became night and we eventually made our way back home, but I made sure to step outside one last time before bed. When I looked up, there was the Milky Way. •
National Discovery Center hosts Jason Baldes
Jason Baldes, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and tireless advocate for bison restoration, stood before a large crowd on a snowy April evening inside American Prairie’s National Discovery Center in Lewistown. A late spring storm had dumped heavy, wet snow across Central Montana, a sight not uncommon in this area or new for Baldes, who drove up from his home in Wind River, Wyoming.
“Our stories go hand in hand,” Baldes told the packed room. “What happened to the buffalo and what happened to our people, who depended on the buffalo for survival.”
Baldes is the founder and director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, which works to bring buffalo back to the homelands of Indigenous nations like his own, as a way to reconnect and restore cultural belief systems, as well as heal from the atrocities of the past and present. He also serves as vice president of the InterTribal Buffalo Council (ITBC), a coalition of dozens of tribes whose lives once revolved around the bison, united to restore the all-but-extinct animals.
“The InterTribal Buffalo Council has [83] tribes now, and we’ve worked to restore 20,000-plus animals to 65 herds in 20 states in the last 30 years. We’re working to ensure that we have a good, feasible way to feed our people again. By restoring buffalo to school lunch programs, to our elders, to various programs within our tribes, we are ensuring that we are helping to heal our people,” he said. “That buffalo meat is the highest in protein, minerals and vitamins, and lowest in fat and cholesterol than almost any other meat. There’s a lot of programs in Indian Country now working to reintegrate our connection to our ancestral foods.”
In addition to his work in Wind River and the ITBC, Baldes is also the Tribal Buffalo Senior Program Manager for the Tribal Partnerships Program at the National Wildlife Federation, and serves on the board of trustees for the Conservation Lands Foundation, and the Environmental Commission of the Congress of Nations and States. He’s also an adjunct professor at Central Wyoming College and Wind River Tribal College. Jason received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in land resources and environmental sciences from Montana State University.
A well-respected leader in bison restoration, Baldes has devoted his life and career to bringing back the animal he calls life’s commissary for Indigenous Peoples.
“It provided our food, our clothing, our shelter, our tools. So the ceremonies and things that we were able to hold onto, despite them being outlawed by the federal government, is part of that history and why we’re trying to restore this connection with buffalo. We see these animals as our relatives,” said Baldes. “It’s in our songs, it’s in our stories, it’s in our creation stories, it’s in our ceremonies. And so, this connection, we just want to ensure that our young people are very knowledgeable about that.”
" WE SEE THESE ANIMALS AS OUR RELATIVES. IT’S IN OUR SONGS, IT’S IN OUR STORIES, IT’S IN OUR CREATION STORIES, IT’S IN OUR CEREMONIES."
Upwards of 30 million bison once roamed the North American prairie freely. But beginning in the 1850s, westward expansion and a United States government-backed campaign to remove the primary food source of Indigenous Peoples led to the worst wholesale animal slaughter in history. By the 1890s, only a few hundred bison remained. Today the plains bison is considered ecologically extinct in North America. Yet Baldes remains undeterred, his passion palpable as he spoke, and the sense of urgency evident behind this need to reconnect Indigenous People, culturally, ecologically, and nutritionally to the buffalo.
“Something special happens again when these kids get to see a buffalo and make a connection. So we see this happen over and over and over, where our young people find something within themselves that they didn’t even know was missing. Their connection to their relative,” said Baldes. “It is a vital part of our future.” •
Iset the camera down and walked away, almost casually, like it didn’t matter—because really, it didn’t. I had to force myself to stop obsessing over capturing everything, stop hiding behind the lens, reducing reality to a series of perfectly curated frames. Just raw experience. I was in Montana, where I grew up, supposedly familiar, but this landscape—this particular stretch of it—felt like something new, like I’d missed it before, or maybe it just didn’t reveal itself until now.
Bozeman, the place I grew up, had become something I barely recognized—a polished version of Montana that didn’t quite feel like home anymore. Sure, the mountains that raised me still loomed in the distance, but the town had shifted, grown slick with new money and boutique everything, a place that felt more like a curated scene than a lived-in one. But out here, on the prairie, in towns like Winifred, Lewistown, and Harlowton, I was reminded of the Montana I knew. A quieter place, one that hadn’t changed as much—where the wind still moves through the grass, people’s character means more than the money in their bank, and the land feels real under your feet.
As much as I love standing in those moments, taking it all in, there’s another pull that’s always been there—something rooted in the way I travel. It’s what gets me there. It’s never been about hopping on a plane and flying over the details. No, I’ve always found my way overland, tracing the shape of the terrain, feeling the texture of the country shift mile by mile beneath the tires, and watching it unfold in real-time.
I started piecing together an overland route—what locals call an auto tour—through this region. It’s a path that connects American Prairie’s vast, evolving property with Bureau of Land Management areas, National Monuments, and those forgotten veins of public roads that still cut through these empty spaces. It’s a way to stitch together the land in a way that honors it—following routes that run deep with history, where cattle drives and wagon trails once passed, now reclaimed by solitude and broken dreams.
Starting in Winifred, the last spot for fuel, you head north toward the Missouri Breaks, threading through ranchland and BLM tracts, the rough road sometimes barely more than a track. The landscape pulls you in with its quiet, seemingly endless stretch. Then, you reach American Prairie’s land—a place that feels like it’s been left behind by time, preserved for a different kind of future. On this western edge, you’ll find huts you can stay in for a nominal fee. The Lewis and Clark hut—the only one not a yurt—sits right on the southern bank of the Missouri. From there, the route winds east through open-range country, threading between private parcels and BLM land, locally known as the DY, where the road rises and falls like the slow breathing land itself.
PN and DY trace their names back to historic cattle ranch brands that have come to define the landscape. The PN Ranch—once one of the most significant in Montana—and the DY Ranch followed the pattern of so many places in the West—brands become more than just cattle symbols; they morph into place names, carving their identity into the land. Over time, these ranches shaped the local economy and left an indelible mark on the geography itself.
Indigenous cultures called this region home long before the ranchers left their brands on the land. Tribes like the Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Blackfeet, and Crow roamed these vast grasslands and river valleys, following the migration of bison. For them, the Missouri Breaks was not just a hunting ground—it was sacred, woven into their way of life, their stories, and their connection to the land. Even before these tribes, the Clovis hunters, one of the earliest known human groups in North America, tracked mammoths and bison across these plains over 13,000 years ago. Their finely crafted spear points have been found scattered across the region, remnants of a world where survival hinged on understanding the land. The river carved a path through their history, a lifeline for centuries of survival, trade, and cultural exchange. These people didn’t settle in permanent villages, but their presence is still felt here, in the bones of the land, in the stories etched into the cliffs, and in the spirit of the prairie that resists taming. This was their home long before anyone else set eyes on it, and their legacy remains.
YOU CAN’T LOOK AT THE LANDSCAPE WITHOUT FEELING THE WEIGHT OF DEEP TIME PRESSING DOWN ON YOU.
The route weaves through the narrow canyons of the Upper Missouri River, stopping at ancient homesteads that echo with the stories of a different America. In this place, if you see anyone, they wave as they pass, whether they know you or not. A short detour brings you to the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, a stretch of land so wild it feels like you’ve dropped off the map entirely.
The Upper Missouri Breaks is a place where the earth has worn itself raw, its history exposed in layers like pages from a forgotten book. You can’t look at the landscape without feeling the weight of deep time pressing down on you. The ground falls away in sharp-edged cliffs and sunken coulees, carved by millennia of river water slicing through soft sedimentary rock. This isn’t gentle erosion—it’s nature taking a knife to the land, scarring it in ways both brutal and beautiful.
Millions of years ago, this area was underwater—part of a shallow inland sea that stretched across the heart of Montana. The rocks here tell that story in ancient languages, Cretaceous sandstone, shale, and siltstone layered on top of one another like the remnants of a forgotten empire. The Bearpaw Shale and Claggett Shale are full of ghosts—fossils of ammonites and marine creatures from waters long gone. You can hold a piece of rock in your hand and feel the sea that used to exist here. That tension between past and present is palpable, like the land remembers everything.
The Missouri River is the artist behind the Breaks, sculpting the landscape like a mad genius with a chisel. Over thousands of years, it’s clawed through the earth, creating badlands, sheer cliffs, and jagged ridges that make you question if this place was ever meant to be tamed. But that’s the appeal. The Breaks resist. They’re not here for us; they’re here for themselves.
This land was on the very southern end of the Late Wisconsin Ice, and like everything else in the West, the glaciers left their mark. As the ice sheets expanded and retreated, they pushed the Missouri River around like a pawn in some ancient game. Every shift deepened the river’s cut, reshaping the topography into the fractured, chaotic wilderness we see today.
For all the geological violence, there’s a subtle beauty in the detail. In some places, harder layers of sandstone cap the softer rock below, forming flat-topped mesas and buttes that stand like lonely sentinels against the sky. The fine-grained soil is fragile, and a hard rain or gust of wind can erase it in an instant. These badlands—harsh, barren—give the Breaks their haunted, otherworldly feel. You stand among them and the world you know slips away.
Dispersed camping is available in this zone and makes for a good first-night stop. Depending on the weather and the mosquitos, you can either camp along the river or on a high
ridge with a breeze. It’s critical to check regulations and use an app like OnX to be sure you aren’t on private land.
Farther east, the route crosses the Missouri on Highway 191 before hitting dirt again, snaking through badlands dotted with juniper trees, sometimes going west just to head east again. The roads aren’t perfect, often rutted and sometimes disappearing into the sagebrush altogether. But that’s part of the experience—the route follows the land, not the other way around. A journey like this forces you to slow down, to pay attention, to let the land guide you. The remote camping is great in this zone, with private sites and big views.
We had driven through Yellowstone on our way north from Colorado, hoping to spot some wildlife. In late September, we thought there wouldn’t be too many people. We were wrong. Every animal near the road caused a traffic jam—it was all disheartening for our first national park visit. Out here, though, away from the crowds, we saw wildlife in a way that felt almost forgotten. Bison, pronghorn, elk, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, golden eagles, doves, prairie dogs, and coyotes—no clamoring crowds, just the land and its inhabitants.
Buffalo Camp, on the east end of the Sun Prairie section of American Prairie, offers designated camping with limited facilities. After a long walk to see the bison across the grasslands, we opted to push just outside the reserve’s boundaries for some old-fashioned boondocking. There weren’t crowds at Buffalo Camp, but with a good rig and the means, why not go further? The fewer people, the better.
This isn’t just a route—it’s a reconnection. To the past, to the land, and to yourself. Out here, on these roads, the modern world fades, and all that’s left is the rhythm of wheels on gravel, the endless sky, and the feeling that you’re finally seeing a Montana that time forgot. •
By Terry Brockie
When I initially heard of American Prairie, my curiosity arose about an entity purchasing land to restore a “prairie reserve” in our Tribe’s traditional homelands. I recall thinking, “What are they up to?” “Who are these people?” “How are we and the land going to be exploited again?” As an Indigenous, First Nation person, whose ancestry is native to the entire area of American Prairie’s holdings, we as ’Ɔɔ’ɔɔɔnííínénnɔh (White Clay People, also called Gros Ventre) from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in North-Central Montana are no stranger to unknown people encroaching into our homelands, starting with first contact. Unfortunately, our Tribe has a long history of negative interactions with outsiders since the inception of the United States and Montana. Often, this has conditioned Indigenous Nations to always be on their guard; the constant, historical encroachment created systematic change to our ancient system, and we continue to endure and adapt to this day. Some aspects of this new system we adopted, other aspects we will continue to resist in perpetuity. The policies from these entities and subsequent systems created great change to the traditional way of life of my ancestors, as well as our children today, who are trying to navigate a constantly changing technological world. Through various eras, our Tribe has experienced great change due to human, environmental, or economic factors. Change can be perceived in many ways based on various situations. In my heritage language, ’Ɔɔ’ɔɔɔnáakíít’ɔ (White Clay Language) we have synonyms for the word “change:” ‘ɔkɔɔcíííh and ‘anaasíííh. The first implies a change as in one is changing their clothes or to change one’s mind; the latter implies to change, become different. I think the latter word applies to what we are witnessing today to our environment as it pertains to American Prairie’s holdings and their mission. In many aspects, change creates optimism; it also creates fear or uncertainty.
we will continue to exist. Many Indigenous Tribes live by a spiritual law, a natural law, and a human law, and these laws move us as a Tribe of people to try and live a lifestyle that does not disrupt balance and harmony within a particular environment. As an Indigenous person who makes every attempt to adhere to this traditional value of my Tribe, American Prairie’s mission resonates with me on a personal level, as it seeks to restore balance and harmony from a natural perspective. I love my traditional homelands, I love the outdoors, I love to observe and interact in all aspects of our natural world, I love to hunt as my ancestors have always done, and most of all I love to see our relatives—the winged-ones, the fourlegged, the creepy and crawlies, our plant relatives, our water relatives—thrive. I look at this change to the environment in a positive manner as a return to a natural state, a more harmonious balance in the grand scale of the Great Plains of North America. In reality, it is a mere sliver of what once was an immense prairie ecosystem.
I DO NOT KNOW THEM ALL, BUT I SEE THE BISON, THE BEAR, THE WOLF, THE EAGLE, AND INDIGENOUS NATIONS NATIVE TO THE GREAT PLAINS AS KEYSTONE SPECIES WITHIN A PRAIRIE ECOSYSTEM.
I began to inform myself of the change. As I examined American Prairie, I found an organization working diligently to carve out “a refuge for people and wildlife.” My guard came down somewhat when I read their mission. Our ancestors for eons have lived harmoniously within our environment, and we try to adhere to this harmonious traditional value our ancestors have passed on that makes us a distinct nation of Indigenous people. By living in harmony, it is our belief that
As I became more informed about American Prairie, I found that the American Bison, the “buffalo” as it is often known by Indigenous people, was a species they found to be an important relative to reintroduce into the landscape. As an Indigenous person, I cannot agree more. From a scientific level, I thought of the American Bison as one of the keystone species on the Great Plains. What were/are the keystone species of the Great Plains? I do not know them all, but I see the bison, the bear, the wolf, the eagle, and Indigenous Nations native to the Great Plains as keystone species within a prairie ecosystem. But many reside in the mountains and are only now beginning to venture out onto their traditional homelands of the prairie. If you look at our shared history, there have been policies over time in place to eradicate these species. I do not say this lightly, but these included my great-grand-
fathers or great-grandmothers: my ancestors were a part of those policies. But somehow, some way, we all as species still exist. Maybe in somewhat different environments, different ecosystems, but nevertheless, we are here, we are existing and change is occurring. Change is always occurring. If the bison, wolf, bear, or eagle thrives, we as a Tribe thrive. But there is much more to American Prairie’s mission; the flora of an unknown lichen, a type of grass, or perhaps a more robust stand of sagebrush to provide cover to what seems to be the ever-dwindling sage hen. With the fauna, perhaps insects such as a bee that pollenates a rare prairie wildflower or a swift fox that has ventured into American Prairie’s holdings from Fort Belknap, where they have been reintroduced, finds a new home. I find this an exciting time for relatives in my Tribe’s traditional homelands.
When I began to explore the holdings of American Prairie, I found various terrain from a traditional prairie ecosystem to a cottonwood-dominated riparian area. On one trip, I was fortunate to travel with American Prairie’s Community Outreach Director, Corrie Williamson, north of Winifred, and we descended down into the Missouri River from the south, to a lush, beautiful cottonwood bottom, a well-known area that our people utilized for hundreds of years. I felt so connected to this area, where my tribal clan, the Fast Travelers, were known to frequent. There are stories of how my clan favored the general area of the White River to its headwaters in the Belt Mountains. My imagination ran wild. I envisioned a large encampment of my ancestors, a large horse herd grazing freely
amongst belly-high grass, smoke rising from lodges, racks full of drying meat, and the bustling of people throughout the camp. This place at the confluence of two rivers is known by our Tribe and many of the Tribes of the area as Nɔɔciniicaah (The White River) and Baasiniicaah (The Big River), but is now commonly known as the Judith and Missouri Rivers. The specific area is now referred as Judith Landing.
At the valley floor, there is a historical sign erected by the State of Montana. The sign references 1805, Lewis and Clark, and their “Corps of Discovery,” including how the river was named after Clark’s sweetheart. It speaks to the Western expansionist view of this area, how in the mid-to-late 1800’s this was a busy intersection of trade. My emotions immediately went from enthusiasm for the imagination of my ancestors to a deep sadness to see very little representation of the first peoples of this great state. It was as if we didn’t exist. The only reference to Indigenous people was that there was “recent evidence of Indian encampments there.” I viewed this as suggesting that my ancestors were “recent” in 1805, but after that point in time we no longer existed nor were considered relevant. The sign makes no reference to the traditional place names of the rivers, nothing of even the names of original inhabitants of the area, nor the historic treaty signed in 1855. It made my heart heavy.
In my opinion, when we think of the creation of Montana, this area was the beginning of true interactions with Indigenous Nations and the United States, which served as the impetus for Montana Statehood. On October 17th, 1855,
Tribes met with a United States delegation led by Issac I. Stevens at Judith Landing. The Blackfoot Confederacy (Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, & Siksika Nations), my tribe the White Clay and various representatives of other Tribes that used much of central and eastern Montana as common hunting grounds were present to meet with governmental officials of the United States. I encourage all to read the treaty to understand the era, to understand the motivations of the United States and their interactions with Tribes of the area and, ultimately, to understand how the government used a treaty as a tool to insert themselves into the country. Examine article 7, 8, and especially the language (in English, which no Tribal representative spoke) of article 10 to envision how difficult it must have been for my ancestors to understand. Being able to speak my heritage language, many words, phrases, and concepts do not have direct translations nor meanings. Imagine trying to understand this passage and the intent of the government to transform the Tribes into something they are not:
“…for ten years, in establishing and instructing them in agricultural and mechanical pursuits, and in educating their children, and in any other respect promoting their civilization and Christianization: Provided, however, That to accomplish the objects of this article, the President may, at his discretion, apply any or all the annuities provided for in this treaty.”
Often, Tribes refer to this type of colonial and paternalistic language as the beginnings of an attempt to exterminate the Indigenous way of life. Our people continue to fight the effects of these types of governmental policies today. But we still have robust systems of traditional government, a tie to the land, spirituality that is embedded in our languages, and we remain distinct, sovereign nations.
A coin has two sides, so does history. I write this article not to say one perspective is “right” or the other is “wrong,” merely to provide a different, robust perspective of one historical place within American Prairie’s holdings. I write to provide a historical perspective that may not often be told, but is considered the truth to our Indigenous Nations. The Earth is constantly changing. Our ancestors recognized that. They embraced change, adapted to change, had empathy for change, and merely understood change as the way it is. Perhaps we can come together as relatives as we move about the Earth.
So, as you travel about the American Prairie, imagine a tipi as a metaphor as you sit somewhere and take in the beauty of the Great Plains; it is a rare event. Take this quote from renowned Lakota (Sioux) orator Luther Standing Bear, who encapsulates the experience one can feel in such a beautiful, ever-changing environment of the Great Plains:
“The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.” •
In the fall of 2023, visual artists Delia Touché and Brandon Reintjes, along with writer Melissa Kwasny, embarked on a two-week residency at American Prairie, through a partnership with Missoula-based Open AIR, a nonprofit organization that fosters creative collaboration in Montana and which holds that artists are a keystone species of a healthy human ecology. For the first half of their stay, the artists lived in a yurt nestled within a cottonwood grove on the PN property. Later, they moved to the Enrico Science and Education Center at Sun Prairie, where they observed the bison and explored the scientific research conducted at American Prairie. This exhibition presents new works inspired by their time immersed in the prairie landscape.
Land_Scape
2023
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Sun_Light 2024
acrylic on canvas
35 x 35 inches
Brandon Reintjes
Brandon was born in Bozeman, Montana and grew up in Northern Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in curatorial and critical studies from the University of Louisville. He works as senior curator at the Missoula Art Museum and spends the majority of his time thinking about, looking at, and making art. He has exhibited at the Zootown Arts Community Center and the Brink Gallery in Missoula, MT; Luminary Arts Center in St. Louis, MO; the 930 in Louisville, KY, Turman Larison Contemporary in Helena, MT; Aunt Dofe's Hall of Recent Memory in Willow Creek, MT.
Running on Indian Time 2023
Quilt,
60 x 64 inches
Delia Touché
Delia Touché was born in Devils Lake, ND and is part of the Spirit Lake Nation. They are Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Assiniboine artist based in the Midwest. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing from Minnesota State University Moorhead and a Master of Fine Arts in print media from Cranbrook Academy of Art where they received the Gilbert Fellowship. They have exhibited across the United States and abroad at venues such as Travemeise (Lübeck, Germany), M Contemporary Art (Ferndale, MI), Die Graphische (Vienna, Austria), among others. Delia has their work in permanent art collections at the University of North Dakota, St. Olaf College's Special Collections Department, Walker Art Center, Minnesota Historical Society, Northwestern University, and Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.
The buffalo herd turns its back to us like a quiet stream and drifts away.
Danger can register across a landscape simultaneously.
What the American prairie knows: every horizon, however occluded.
Season of cold dew. Season of gumbo, when one needs hooves.
How grief is a shadow, how the shadow has a shape, cast from those who were alive.
The people lift their full plates, an offering to those who no longer taste.
What the people know: do not feast half-heartedly.
Wild grasses lift into a fragrance, even if close up they have no smell.
Grasses so soft, like wading bare-legged, through velvet.
It is hard to admit, my friend, that you have left this earth we walked together.
The earth that is larger than any of us, no matter, a half-learned place.
Which cannot be translated once the old languages are lost.
The wind can be described as a wave or as a surge, but never as both at once.
No one visits the prairie to be entertained.
When the mud swallowed the dinosaur whole, it preserved its strangeness for us.
Such astonishments in the display case: meteorites, ammonites, and gems.
Earth really does hold onto its lives.
The obsidian points were knapped narrow so they could pass between the ribs.
Poignant, not scenic. Like lark song, clouds always arrive from afar.
Melissa Kwasny
Melissa is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cloud Path (Milkweed Editions 2024), as well as Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision and Putting on the Dog: The Animal Origins of What We Wear. She was Montana Poet Laureate from 2019-2021, a position she shared with M.L. Smoker.
Sinuhe Xavier
He’s charged through the perilous Mexican 1000 and spent nights in the echoing emptiness of a Colombian jail cell. He's navigated old Land Rovers over treacherous terrains from Panama to Guatemala, patching up their battlewounds with his own hands and the dog-eared manual inside his head. For American Prairie he traversed the region with style and grace on two track and trail to test an overland route for future visitors.
Andy Anderson
Sophisticated, raw, and rugged. There’s nothing he hasn’t shot. Able to capture the unposed, the unrehearsed, the vulnerable moments that connect us all. Whether a torero in Pamplona or an Idaho cowboy, he’s dedicated to honestly recording their voices in a sincere way. His work has appeared in countless publications. For Journal he documented an Upland Bird hunt between two old friends as they share their knowledge with one’s twelve-year-old son.
Will Newell
Will is a husband, father, failed food truck owner, and avid outdoorsman. He is a writer for Project Upland magazine, dedicated to capturing the love of the uplands in an artistic and meaningful way. Will is from South Carolina and his first time on the prairie was filled with awe and lots of questions. His piece on an upland bird hunt also shares his curiosities and conclusions on the unique landscape and American Prairie’s conservation mission.
Chris La Tray
A Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His third book, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, was published by Milkweed Editions on August 20, 2024. He graciously shares an excerpt from his book with Journal. Chris is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025.
Jason Baldes
As Tribal Buffalo Program Manager for the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Partnerships Program, Jason has established resolution-based agreements and helped restore more than 100 conservation buffalo to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes in Wind River since 2016. Jason spoke to a packed house at the American Prairie National Discover Center and this piece is a transcription of his story.
Matt Mikkelsen
A sound recordist, audio engineer, and documentary filmmaker, he has worked as an engineer, sound designer, director, and producer on several award-winning documentaries, but has devoted most of his professional career to observing, recording, researching, and preserving natural soundscapes. His work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Matt also serves as the Executive Director of Wilderness Quiet Parks for Quiet Parks International.
Nate Schweber
Nate is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Anthony Bourdain: Explore Parts Unknown, and others. His conservation articles won awards from the Outdoor Writers Association of America in 2015 and 2018. In 2020, a ProPublica series he contributed to won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. A Montana native, he lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Cameron Nicoll
Cameron is an energetic producer and on-air talent for Planet Wild: a global community of individuals that want to give back to nature by funding frontline ecosystem restoration missions where it really matters. Their missions are based on community votes, vetted for high impact, and video-documented for anyone to see firsthand. Cameron and his one-man crew created an amazing mini-documentary on American Prairie this summer.
Terry Brockie
Terry Brockie, who carries the name Red Belt, is from the Fast Travelers clan of the Aaniiih (White Clay) Nation on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north central Montana. A lifelong advocate for his Tribal culture, Terry is deeply involved in language revitalization, Tribal history, and actively participates in his Tribe’s ceremonies. Terry shares with Journal the cultural significance of the Judith’s (White River) confluence with the Missouri River.
Chris Chapman
Employing tintype techniques dating from the 1850s, Chris photographed Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray for his book cover. With tintype you can expect a little dust, some strange unexpected results in the form of streaks, and marks due to time, temperature, and chemical shenanigans. Chris is an exceptional photographer from Missoula, Montana with a range of image capture from architecture to adventure lifestyle.
Amy Toensing
Amy is a visual journalist committed to telling stories with sensitivity and depth. A regular contributor to National Geographic Magazine for over twenty years, Toensing has photographed and reported on cultures and topics around the world.
Morgan Cardiff
Morgan is an environmentalist, outdoorsman, and photographer focused on bringing awareness to conservation efforts around the globe. He spent time on American Prairie with the intent of shooting moody landscapes and even moodier buffalo.
Reid Morth
Reid is an exploration focused camera operator with over a decade of off the grid experience in both film and photo. Accustomed to lengthy days in the field, selfless travel itineraries and extreme environmental conditions ranging from the Amazon jungle to the mountains of Alaska.
American Prairie would like to sincerely thank all of our contributors for sharing their experiences in this publication.
Thank you to all of our partners who helped bring this magazine to life: Milkweed Editions for allowing us to reprint an excerpt from Chris La Tray’s memoir Becoming Little Shell; Open AIR Arts for collaborating on an artist-in-residence program at American Prairie; Project Upland for providing support for the Seas of Shortgrass article and Duck Camp for providing apparel; Huckberry, Beringia, OnX Maps, Go Fast Campers, and Hatch Adventures for supporting the overland expedition.
Thank you to all of our supporters and donors who make this mission possible. And thank you to our readers for you continued interest and excitement around American Prairie.
American Prairie's mission is to create the largest nature reserve in the contiguous United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.