Polson man honored as Montana Forestry Pioneer

Retired forester Ken Dupuis saw a lot of change during his 36-year career.

A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Dupuis recently became the first tribal member to be honored by the state forester as part of its Forestry Pioneers Program.

Initiated in 2009, the program recognizes individuals who, through their commitment, have furthered the cause of forestry, forest management, or natural resource management in Montana and have made significant contributions to the advancement of the forestry profession in Montana.

Dupius, who knew he had been nominated for the award by friend and forestry technician Tony Harwood, said he was quite surprised when he learned he had been selected to be among the 2019 honorees.

“I was very surprised, but honored, to be honest. I felt I was in company with individuals who are highly respected in the field of forestry. There is no question this is a great honor,” he said. “Sometimes you feel that your accomplishments don’t stack up. That’s how I felt, but I guess they felt differently.”

Dupuis was born in St. Ignatius and spent his youth in Dixon, where his parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. While forestry was something Dupuis had been interested in while in grade school, he enrolled at the University of Montana in 1953 looking to fulfill his mother’s wishes by earning a pharmacy degree.

All it took was one week to change his mind, and his major.

“After one week in that freshman chemistry class, I knew that becoming a pharmacist was not in my future. So, I decided to make a switch.”

While he didn’t tell his mother right away, Dupuis changed the focus of his studies to the forestry field, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Montana School of Forestry in 1957.

When it came time to find a job, Dupuis wound up right back home on the Flathead Reservation, working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a forester there.

“It just so happened that they had an opening, which was great because I was broke,” he joked. “I was married at that point and I didn’t even have 10 dollars to my name.”

While working at the Hot Springs station in the early 1960s, Dupuis was selected to attend a five-month leadership program in Portland Oregon where he met and became friends with the man who would change his life, Portland area forester Earle Wilcox.

“At that time, he was probably the most influential person in my life, if not in my entire career,” Dupuis said. “He was a great mentor and an amazing friend.”

Dupuis returned to the Flathead Reservation to find that he did not agree with the practices of the new forest manager there, so he called Wilcox looking for advice. Wilcox’s solution was to help Dupuis get a job working on the Yakima Reservation in Washington. Two years later, in 1963, Dupuis took a promotion and made another move, this time to the Apache Reservation in Arizona.

While Dupuis said the forestry situation on the Apache Reservation was comparable to where he had been previously, but added the overall position of the forestry management program needed considerable upgrading.

“They had a forest manager at Fort Apache who was retiring. His belief was that fires were to be put out with shovels — you didn’t use slurry or airplanes, even though these techniques were available, he just didn’t like using them,” Dupuis recalled. “After seeing this, I saw it as an opportunity, so I took the job down there in 1965. It was a chance for me to assist in developing an organization from scratch.”

Dupuis spent 10 years on the Apache Reservation, but said his most eye-opening experience during that time was the opportunity to be detailed at and spend a few weeks at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.

“It was a chance to really see how the Bureau functioned at the Washington level. It was very discouraging. There were many people there that were very smart, but lacked capacity required to perform the job at a professional level,” he said.

Dupuis got the chance to help change things in 1977 when he was named the forest manager for the Flathead Indian Agency.

In the early 1980s, changes at the Bureau of Indian Affairs brought additional funding to the forestry department, allowing Dupuis to hire more people and “change the organization to make it fit what the tribe wanted.

“We were able to bring in some outstanding people,” he said. “We were very lucky. That’s really what made the program so successful. We developed new programs we had never had before and these guys just took the reigns and ran with it,” he said. “When you have good people, sometimes all you have to do is stand back and let them do their thing. I had enough sense to get out of their way.”

According to the state forester, it was during this time that Dupuis “provided leadership for environmental protection, forest planning, application of silviculture practices, training and education, forest research, wildland fire suppression and prescribed fire use, as well as instilled a keen sense of interagency cooperation with interagency fire suppression training, multi-jurisdictional large-fire management, and full personnel participation on Northern Rockies Incident Management Teams.”

In 1991, Dupuis was honored with the Intertribal Timber Council’s Earl Wilcox Award. Named after Dupuis’ longtime friend, the award was established in 1986 to honor tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs employees who have made a significant nationwide contribution to the Indian forestry program.

Dupuis remained the forest manager on the Flathead Reservation until his retirement in 1993. These days, he lives in Polson.

Dupuis was officially selected to receive the Montana Forestry Pioneer Award in October 2019, but was unable to attend the ceremony. He was presented with his award among family and friends at the CSKT Tribal Council meeting Jan. 16.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.