Can tourism and conservation coexist on Shoshone land?

The members of the Eastern Shoshone have lived upon and stewarded the land encompassing Wyoming’s Teton and Wind River ranges for millennia. They, along with more than two dozen other tribes whose voices are also—for the most part—not heard, have long-standing historic ties to the landscape we now call the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, or GYE. And they, better than anyone else, know what this place needs. 

“Our elders always talk of the law of natural reciprocity—we take care of the earth, it takes care of us,” says Wes Martel, a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe and leader of the non-profit Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s office on the Wind River Reservation. “And Yellowstone, and this area, has made a lot of people very rich. But what are they doing to take care of Yellowstone?”

Before colonization, the Eastern Shoshone were one of four Shoshone cultural groups (Eastern Western, Northern and Goshute) spread across present-day Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Montana—first inhabiting the area more than 12,000 years ago. They speak similar dialects of Shoshone, part of the Uto-Aztecan language family native to the Americas.

The Eastern Shoshone were a hunting and warrior culture allied with other Shoshone tribes, as well as Bannock, Crow, Paiute, Pawnee and Ute people, and were traditional mutual enemies with the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Like many Indigenous groups, Shoshone believed animals and people are connected, and the land and everything in, on and above it is sacred. Thus, they lived lightly in and around the Greater Yellowstone, including the Green River and Wind River Valleys, what would later become the modern-day Jackson Hole Valley, and the Wind River and Teton Ranges for millennia.

This booming economy stems from the kind of land management that is closest to the traditional tribal view of the landscape that exists outside of reservation lands today.

But that changed after the arrival of Europeans in the 1800s. Indigenous ways of life and practices were threatened, and tribes were forced off of their home lands. The chief of the Eastern Shoshone, Washakie, was known as a skilled diplomat. He negotiated a treaty with the US in 1863 for much of the traditional Shoshone lands—about 44 million acres covering parts of Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and western Wyoming, including today’s Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks and Jackson. But the treaty was not honored, and in 1868, Washakie was forced to accept only 3.2 million acres for the Eastern Shoshone in Western Central Wyoming, where the Wind River Reservation is today. In 1878, the US Army brought nearly a thousand Arapaho tribe members (historic Shoshone enemies)—to share Shoshone land.

“They hoped we—Shoshone and Arapaho—would just kill each other,” says Jason Baldes, a Shoshone Tribal Buffalo Representative. And although the Shoshone and Arapaho found a way to live together on the reservation peacefully, “we are lucky to even be here today.”

Injustices flooded reservations across North America. The Dawes Act was passed in 1887, allowing the federal government to break up tribal lands further by selling land to homesteaders that, in the government’s view, the native people weren’t farming, ranching or irrigating. Essentially, tribal people had to assimilate and abandon their own cultures and way of life or they would lose what little land they had left. Per the Dawes Act, the Shoshone lost another million acres to white settlers, whittling the reservation to just over two million acres.

“The land is our living relative. It is not something to be negotiated with,” says Al Hubbard, the cultural arts director of Wyoming Indian Schools, and a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe on the Wind River Indian Reservation. “And of course, we think about what is happening to the land [on and off the reservation] every day. But what can we do about it?”

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Cultural ways, language and traditions were continually attacked during the 20th century when Native American children were kidnapped and forced to live in government-funded boarding schools. On and off reservations, the balance of nature split at the seams as towns, highways, farms and homes drained the rivers and removed wildlife.

“Development [on former Shoshone lands like Jackson Hole] is very hard to see and the basis for all decisions is the dollar, not ecological health. But that is what we see happening, man messing up everything,” says Baldes. “For us, that’s been happening since Lewis and Clark arrived. But unless they give our land back to the tribes, we have no say in development, and we’ve never been asked to the table.” 

It’s been a long struggle, but alliances with conservation non-profits could be a turning point.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park, the first national park designated in the United States. Because of the park’s early designation as protected land, and the isolation of much of the surrounding areas, the entirety of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the last remaining large, nearly intact ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of the planet, encompassing approximately 22 million acres. 

According to the Wyoming Office of Tourism, wildlife viewing is at the top of most visitors’ goals. Over eight million tourists (which is 16 times the population of Wyoming) traveled from all across the globe to see this benchmark landscape in 2021. Those visitors generated $258 million in tax receipts for the state of Wyoming alone, spent over $4 billion, and supported over 30,000 jobs. Additionally, hunters, anglers, along with wildlife watchers together contribute over $1 billion to the state’s economy every year, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.  

Even with those numbers and dollar amounts, an important, yet overlooked part of this puzzle is that the oft-beleaguered conservation movement and protection of land from extractive industry, development and privatization is precisely what has created this economic engine. In other words, this booming economy stems from the kind of land management that is closest to the traditional tribal view of the landscape that exists outside of reservation lands today. 

Conservation non-profits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the region today, such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation, have overarching common goals that fall in line with the values of the Eastern Shoshone. Both groups prioritize ecological health and diversity, healthy and natural waterways, and have fought to keep privatization of lands, destruction of habitat and short-sighted development from turning much of the GYE into exurban housing sprawl.

“Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on conservation have largely been overlooked and disregarded in this country, even within the conservation community.”

- Charles Wolf Drimal

Partnerships and support from the GYC and the NWF have led to positive movement and opportunities for the region, including the reintroduction of bison. Jason Baldes has worked with the National Wildlife Federation to successfully return the native American bison (referred to as buffalo by tribes) back to Shoshone tribal land after the North American population was reduced by white settlers from an estimated 40-60 million bison to 100 animals in the 19th century. Today, NWF is working with Tribal partners and national parks to establish a total of five herds of bison at least 1,000 bison each by 2025. 

Bison are a keystone species in the GYE. This means that other species in the ecosystem largely depend on bison, and the removal of bison from the GYE changed the ecosystem drastically. According to NWF, bison create favorable nesting environments for native birds, help establish networks of water, naturally fertilize the soil, disperse the seeds of native plants that regenerate grasslands, and create environments critical for other species—like prairie dogs and pronghorn—to shelter and navigate. Baldes says that the reintroduced bison will heal both the people and landscape they belong to, and bring back the richness of living in balance with the land and animals, as is celebrated by Shoshone heritage.

For Baldes, the arduous battle to return a native animal so important to the tribes and the ecosystem is a turning point. It adds to tribal work in regaining identity, strength and connection with the past—and strengthening tribal perspectives on and off the reservation into the future.

That will require eventual co-management and partnerships with municipal and state governments, as well as the National Park Service. New park superintendents at Grand Teton, and Yellowstone national parks (Chip Jenkins and Cameron ‘Cam’ Sholly, respectively) recently stated they are going to include tribal input in future decisions as well, which has been a long time coming. 

“Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on conservation have largely been overlooked and disregarded in this country, even within the conservation community,” says Charles Wolf Drimal, deputy director of conservation at the GYC. “Our goal is to use our NGO capacity to work with the federal government, and elevate Indigenous interests when it comes to conservation and natural resource management. There is so much ecological knowledge in the tribes we should integrate into the bigger conservation picture. We’re interested in facilitating that.”

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho’s partnership with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) has created campaigns to work to improve Tribal consultation with federal agencies and effectively incorporate Indigenous perspectives and priorities. This, in turn, elevates the expression of treaty rights related to land, water and wildlife management that Indigenous people have been unduly denied for over a century. According to the GYC, the coalition is supporting the Tribes of the Wind River Reservation in hosting two events this year to help build “more Tribal input and participation as it relates to the conservation and management of Yellowstone National Park and America’s public lands.”

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Additionally, the GYC is working with tribal leaders to protect Indigenous water rights and improve riparian habitats that support tribal food security and climate adaptation through reconnected floodplains and natural water storage on the Big Wind River. Past coalition successes include reestablishing over 400,000 acres of grassland for wildlife grazing (instead of cattle grazing) and establishing mining and oil drilling bans in wilderness areas. 

“NGOs haven’t even realized the power that tribes have, but if we partner with them, we can use their resources and work to uphold conservation, by breathing life back into our treaty rights,” says Martel, who, in addition to his position with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, has two tribal staff members in his office on the reservation also employed by the GYC.

Yet, to change the current model of land as a commodity to a source of ecological and community health would require a full paradigm shift—one that Baldes calls for, but few government organizations are working towards. “Everything today is out of whack, out of balance, and we are seeing the ramifications of that, with climate change and everything else,” Baldes says. “We have to get the idea of the dollar out of the way as the basis for decisions; it’s all about a paradigm shift.” That shift requires individuals from all sectors of the economy to welcome Indigenous practices and management within non-tribal towns that are struggling with an influx of newcomers, wealth and power on former Shoshone lands.

Those individuals exist, but more are needed. 

“We only consider costs; our way disregards community and the land, and we are seeing the consequences,” says Christine Walker, a housing consultant in Jackson. “I would be interested in seeing the Indigenous land views integrated into what we do.”

After speaking on the phone, Jason Baldes invites me to the Wind River Reservation to see the bison out on Shoshone land. I drive up on a sunny day in May, when school children from the reservation are visiting the buffalo as well and learning about their own history and cultures. As I arrive, Baldes is busy coordinating class-by-class visits to a bluff overlooking the bison’s location at the moment. He speaks to the children like any school group presenter, but with a slightly different exhortation: “When you guys are leaders, you will have to take care of our relatives—the animals and fish, the birds, land and waters!” The children listen silently, and in the distance, the bison graze. 

One of the children’s teachers, a non-tribal member, asks Baldes how they will handle predators on the buffalo. Baldes absorbs the question for a minute, then addresses the children emphatically. “I would welcome the return of predators! Wolves and grizzlies belong here, they are part of the landscape. There are too many cattlemen now between the mountains and us, but I will welcome them.” 

This is the acceptance that everything that belongs on the land, not just what one can profit from. Such examples are few and far between in the modern world. 

Later, driving back towards Jackson and all its self-inflicted problems, I can’t help but feel slightly despondent. I try to imagine what once was here, but I only see the despoliation of land and displacement of wildlife and people. But I look at the bison again. The example, I realize, is already being set for those who wish to see it.

But I take comfort in Baldes’ parting words to me: “I’m just going to focus on what I can change, how we manage our tribal lands on behalf of the Shoshone and Arapaho people,” he says. “I hope we can set an example. Man doesn’t have to mess up everything.”