Putting Indigenous Stories Back in the Picture

“Chief Little Shell would not sign that ‘Ten-Cent Treaty.’ In lieu of that, when he went on a hunting party with his warriors, they came in and just took the land away,” says Wendy Hopkins, a member of the Little Shell Tribe who lives near Dodson, in northern Montana. “They stripped our people of any kind of recognition, so we didn’t exist on any government rolls or any tribal rolls.” 

After Congress granted recognition, a celebration at the Holiday Inn in Great Falls, Montana, marked the historical achievement. Hopkins says she expected 100 to 200 people, but instead around 1,000 showed up. Tribal members had long waited and fought hard for this moment. 

“We were all just overjoyed,” says Hopkins. “Now, I feel like I want to tell everyone our story and get it out there.” 

A new initiative at the University of Montana is doing just that. The three-year project, supported by the Mellon Foundation, is working to provide a new model to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, histories, and perspectives into higher education and the university’s humanities efforts, and to help preserve that knowledge. Grant activities include producing new educational materials, an Indigenous scholar-in-residence program, hiring faculty, and research support.  

“We really want to be able to scale up this accumulation of knowledge and the collaborations and resources that we have at the university to support indigenizing higher education,” says Fernando Sanchez, a project lead and assistant professor and the director of the Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute at the University of Montana.  

Native American history is sorely lacking from the US education system. Twenty-seven states make no mention of Native Americans in their K-12 curriculum, according to the National Congress of American Indians, and 87 percent of state history standards don’t cite Native American history after 1900.  

Things are a little different in Montana. The state’s constitution mandates Indigenous Education for All (IEFA), requiring public schools to teach about the heritage and culture of Native Americans in the region. But Sanchez says IEFA is more present at elementary, middle, and high school levels. Many IEFA resources aren’t suitable for post-secondary education, and they don’t include all the state’s tribes.  

“That doesn’t mean we don’t honor the constitutional mandate at the university—it’s just that it takes longer,” Sanchez says. “Why does it take more time? Because university curricular programs need to cover more ground.”  

To fill this gap, the project is producing culturally responsive and IEFA-compatible content for the university’s humanities curriculum—and possibly beyond. These materials are being created partly through the initiative’s Indigenous scholar-in-residence program, where tribal elders and knowledge keepers visit the university and work with faculty and students to share and capture their stories and expertise. They plan to work with all 12 of the state’s federally recognized tribes over the course of the initiative.  

“It’s not a matter of universities creating those programs, that content, on their own,” says Sanchez. “It is a process that involves co-production and co-development in collaboration with the tribes, in collaboration with the knowledge keepers, in collaboration with elders, and in collaboration with tribal institutions that have the responsibility of protecting that knowledge.” 

The University of Montana is well positioned to carry this out because of its decades of experience working with tribes in the state and throughout the US and Canada as well as its support of Native American studies across its departments. The university also has a large community of Native American and Alaska Native students, who make up over 7 percent of students. 

During Hopkins’s time as a scholar in residence, she worked with Sanchez and others to explore making a timeline of the Little Shell Tribe, following them from more than 100 years ago to where they are living today, spread out across the US and Canada. Another idea is to document her tribe’s astronomical knowledge and beliefs through recording one of their star stories, which describe the significance of certain star constellations.  

Hopkins, who also teaches science and is dean of students at Dodson High School in Montana, says it’s critical to preserve these Indigenous stories and share them not only with their communities, but with everyone.  

“We learn so many different aspects of history, but the Native people have never been a part of history. I don’t even know why. I’m glad this is getting out there because it’s a history that needs to be told,” she says. “With telling the history, I also feel that it’s going to help Native people have more pride.” 

To further preserve, sustain, and create this Indigenous knowledge, the initiative will also hire new faculty in Native American humanities, enlist student ambassadors to engage with the project, and provide support for faculty who are focused on Indigenous research or teaching approaches. 

“Big picture, what I envision is a curriculum at the University of Montana where Indigenous ways of knowing are more strongly present. I also envision a system to collaborate and partner with tribes to help preserve the knowledge and the cultural richness of the Native American communities. I also envision an infrastructure that can grow to support our current partners, but also support new tribes,” says Sanchez. 

For Hopkins, the project’s teachings and learnings won’t end once she leaves the campus. She plans to bring her experiences to her students, over 90 percent of whom are Native American. She says this time has been therapeutic, a type of reclaiming process. 

“Just talking about it and even going to the university’s archives, reading the letters, and understanding the plight that my people went through to try and get their identity back—it’s been extremely emotional. It helped me learn that, dang, I owe it to my ancestors to tell this story,” Hopkins says. “I really want my story to be told as far as the Little Shell people because I’m very proud of my heritage and very proud of where we’re at now. I think it should be told. I think it deserves to be told.”