Photo © PJ DelHomme
At the base of the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, street signs are an anomaly. As I drove around the reservation, looking for a trailhead, it was obvious the tribes don’t get many visitors. Most travelers bypass the reservation, not even veering off Highway 93 for gas as they head north to Glacier National Park or south to Missoula. But I did veer, and after an hour of dead ends I found the potholed road to the trailhead. I thought everything was golden, but as I started toward the trail a sign informed me that, since I’m not a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes who manage this chunk of land, I was going to have to pay if I wanted to hike in their wilderness. I made a U–turn back to the main road and found a souvenir store along the highway, where I forked over my fifteen dollars.
I returned to the trail and finally began my hike. The trail tapered into a single track, and then into a deer trail. Soon I was walking close to the inside of the trail, trying not to let vertigo take over as I shot glances over the cliff to my right. I crossed a waterfall that forced me to hug the rocks buried under its stream; it was either that or slip fifty feet out of sight. As I emptied the water from my boots, I got the feeling that the first and only tribal wilderness area in the United States isn’t managed for the ease—or the safety—of the Vibram–soled crowd. I soon came to find out I was right.
The western slope of the Mission Mountains does provide recreational opportunities, but the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness wasn’t created as a playground for outfitters, hikers or backpackers. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in western Montana created the country’s first tribally designated wilderness to sustain their values and help preserve the tribes’ culture. For thousands of years, the Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai tribes used the Missions as a place to harvest medicinal plants, hunt, fish and pray. To them, this land was a sacred place, and still is. Tribal members continue to collect plants, and many turn to the wilderness for hunting and fishing. Even tribal members who don’t go into the wilderness appreciate the value of the land; it is the origin of the water they use for drinking and agriculture. They know that a part of their culture and themselves is being preserved simply because the tribal wilderness exists.
“Our songs come from those mountains. Our dreams, our hopes are taken there in the hope that we will get guidance and support from wilderness,” says Tony Incashola, a cultural leader of the tribes.
On a map, a thick black line splits the Mission Mountains into two wilderness areas. Just over the Mission Divide to the east, directly adjacent to the tribal wilderness, is the Mission Mountains Wilderness, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. At 73,877 acres, the federal wilderness is comparable in size to the tribal wilderness, and together they run laterally for roughly forty miles.
The boundary line designates more than a geographic divide. It represents different management goals, objectives and ideologies. The creation of the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness in 1982 marked the first time that an Indian tribe protected a sizable portion of its lands as wilderness. The tribes determine the policy for their wilderness area, and it often differs strikingly from the neighboring federal lands to the east. Closures exist on the tribal side to protect grizzly bears as they feed on cutworm moths and ladybugs, but on the federal side bears must migrate along roads and through logging units. As a result, grizzlies on the east side have a higher mortality rate from poaching, traffic or hunters who think they’re shooting a black bear. The tribes have created buffer zones between human development and the wilderness area by placing restrictions on logging and development on their side of the mountain. But to the east, logging operations and roads march right up to the wilderness boundary, allowing snowmobiles easy, but illegal, access.
For nearly twenty–five years, this unique management situation has had the potential to be a political and logistical nightmare, yet both sides have found ways to make it work. The Forest Service educates recreational users about the differences between federal and tribal wilderness, and works with the tribes to coordinate federal logging activity to help bears reach feeding grounds in the alpine basins of the tribal wilderness.
But as surrounding communities (such as Missoula and Seeley Lake) continue to grow, heavier recreational use will create pressure on both areas. Managers on each side will have to continue working together to make sure the current partnership remains successful.
TRIBAL WILDERNESS
Current and future generations can thank Thurman Trosper, a member of the Salish Tribe, for his substantial efforts in the creation of what is known today as the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness. Trosper was born at the foot of the Mission Mountains in 1918. When he was a boy, he hunted deer and elk in the area for weeks at a time. The mountains, he says, taught him to appreciate the outdoors.
Trosper earned a degree in forestry at the University of Montana, then left his home state in 1941 to serve in the Marine Corps, fighting at the battle of Guadalcanal. After five years with the Marines, he became a timber cruiser for the Forest Service. After a long career, he retired from his post as assistant to the director of the National Park Service in 1973. He then served a three–year stint as president of the Wilderness Society. Trosper eventually came back to his home on the Flathead Indian Reservation, where he took up another fight—the battle to save the mountains in his own backyard.
In 1937, John Collier, then commissioner of Indian Affairs, classified the Indian lands of the Missions as a roadless area. The tribes protested that this was done without their consent, and the area was declassified in 1959. In the early 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs proposed to log roadless areas at the base of the Missions. The lands had the potential to generate income, yet development would also compromise the mountains the tribes deem sacred. As a possible solution, Tros–per pasted together all of the area’s quadrangle maps and presented them to the Tribal Council, proposing a tribal wilderness area. It was a hard sell. Earlier attempts to set aside the area as a national park had met with resistance, and some members wanted to set aside only areas with little or no timber value. In 1974, the decision to log or not to log in the Missions came down to a vote at a council meeting.
But before the council voted, three Indian women paid a visit, and charted a new course of management for the Mission Mountains that still remains in place today.
The three YaYas, or grandmothers, were part of a committee that was organized by community leaders to stop tribal timber sales proposed for the Missions. As respected elders of the tribes, when the YaYas speak, everyone listens. They spoke out against a lucrative logging proposal in Ashley Creek, in the very heart of the Missions. They explained to the council that “the land was not theirs to squander,” according to Germaine White, an information and education specialist with the Natural Resources Department of the tribes. The chairman thanked the YaYas when they were finished speaking, but instead of leaving, the women sat and waited to see which council members would vote against their wishes. “It was a powerful force,” says White, and an effective one. The council decided unanimously against the timber sale. It would be the last proposed timber sale for what would become the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness.
Trosper’s job, though, was far from over. It would take eight years and a lot of work before the council made its historic decision to create the tribal wilderness. Students at the newly formed Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana helped the tribes draw boundaries and devise a draft management proposal, and they stuck with the project through several years of revisions and compromises. In 1979, the council approved the draft boundary, and on June 15, 1982, the council established the first tribal wilderness area in the United States.
No legal definition for tribal wilderness existed then, but much of the language for the tribes’ definition of wilderness matches the language found in the 1964 Wilderness Act, with one significant difference: the primary purpose of the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness is the preservation of tribal culture. In contrast, in the federal wilderness on the other side of the Mission Divide, visitor use and private interests play leading roles in management objectives.
BRIDGING THE DIVIDE
For twenty–seven years, Kari Gunderson, a contractor who serves as a wilderness ranger in federal wilderness, has patrolled the trails of the Mission Mountains Wilderness. Her long tenure and love for the Mission Mountains have made her an integral player when it comes to communication between managers of the two wilderness areas. “The tribes don’t manage for recreation, and that’s completely different from the Forest Service,” says Gunderson. “They have a different management strategy and it’s one that I admire. When people start bitching about closures or permits, it lets me explain to them about the first tribal wilderness.”
For backpackers and hikers in the federal wilderness, some of that “bitching” stems from special restrictions and permits required to access the tribal wilderness from the federal side. If people choose to hike up over the divide and into tribal wilderness, they must purchase a hiking and camping permit from the tribes beforehand. The tribes don’t allow firearms or commercial outfitting on their wilderness.
Limiting visitor use is a high priority for tribal managers, says Tom MacDonald, Division Manager for the tribes’ Fish, Wildlife, Conservation and Recreation Division. One way the tribe does that is a policy of minimal or no trail maintenance, and many trails in the wilderness have faded away over time. Hikers in the tribal wilderness must possess a good topographic map, a compass and the skills to use them. An initial trails survey conducted by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1941 counted twenty–six trailheads and forty trails. In 1999, there were only nine trailheads and twelve major trails that received regular use and some maintenance. Switchbacks are uncommon on maintained trails, but climbing on all fours isn’t.
That’s just fine for Missoula–based hiker and photographer Charlie Eubank. “The trails are pretty sketchy, but it’s kind of cool that it keeps the crowds down,” he says. “The less– determined don’t go there.”
Perhaps the biggest difference in management can be seen in the foothills outside the boundaries of each wilderness area. In 1987, the Tribal Council began toying with the idea of a 22,833–acre buffer zone in the foothills of the Missions outside of the wilderness area. After working out the details, the council adopted a buffer zone management plan in 1993. The goal of the buffer zone is to control activities that may adversely affect the tribal wilderness and erode its goal of preserving tribal culture. Livestock grazing, timber harvesting and even private development are monitored closely in the buffer zone.
Some, like Peter Landres, a research ecologist with the Aldo Leopold Research Institute in Missoula, see the buffer zone as progressive thinking when it comes to protecting wilderness.
“Buffer zones make a lot of sense,” Landres says. “Old science said that simply drawing a boundary around an area would protect it. Now, ecological science strongly supports a buffer zone.”
The foothills of the federal wilderness on the eastern side of the Missions are a checkerboard of public and private land, much of which is logged by timber giant Plum Creek. Endangered species such as grizzly bear migrate through this mix to reach the safety of the tribal wilderness, where roughly 10,000 acres have been set aside as a Grizzly Bear Conservation Zone. The tribes have closed the area to human use in the summer months so the bears can live undisturbed. To its credit, Gunderson says, the Forest Service has identified the bears’ travel corridors. “Any timber–based activity, be it the Forest Service or Plum Creek, takes those corridors into consideration,” she says. “I think Plum Creek has been fairly compliant. The Forest Service works very, very hard with them on issues like this.”
While both sides do what they can to allow bears access into the wilderness, another breed of user is also forcing the two to work together. Each winter, the lure of open bowls and fresh powder draws a few rogue snowmobile riders into both wilderness areas.
“I’m absolutely shocked where I see tracks,” says Gunderson. “They’ll go straight up avalanche chutes.”
In the far northern stretch of the Missions, some snowmobile riders access the federal wilderness from the tribal side. If riders illegally cross a boundary, both sides work together to locate access points and nab the illegal users, Gunderson says. Andrew Johnson, a recreation planner with the Flathead National Forest, is working with motorized user groups to spread the word about the regulations surrounding both the federal and tribal wilderness areas. “The groups will then police themselves,” he says. “Peer pressure is much more effective than a $100 ticket.”
Like most visitors to the Mission Mountains, I’ve spent the majority of my time in the federal wilderness, where signs are more prevalent and trails tend to have more switchbacks. It’s easier on that side, more user–friendly. But there is something mystical about being in the tribal wilderness. It’s a remnant of what this country may have felt like more than a century ago, before there was a Forest Service, before the West was chunked up into sections and given away to homesteaders or converted into national parks or forests. It carries the beat of the tribes’ heart, and in that beat, the sense that somehow, in the future, this land will still be here to remind us of what once was.