Blackfeet Nation resumes enforcement of Chief Mountain closure

Tribal leaders are again enforcing a decades-old closure of Chief Mountain after recent tourist activity disturbed cultural and spiritual practices there.  

The Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office is enforcing Tribal Resolution 251-92, passed in the early 1980s and amended in 1992, according to Deputy Compliance Officer Gheri Hall. She said the original resolution was passed by Chief Earl Old Person and put in place after tourists interested in climbing the mountain disturbed traditional Blackfeet spiritual practices at the site.  

Hall said the restrictions have been loosened in the years since.  

Chief Mountain holds great significance for the Blackfeet people. In oral traditions it is a sacred site where the great Thunderbird lives, and it is also one of the areas where their ancestors held buffalo runs. Hall said the mountain is still the site of a four-day fasting ritual that the Blackfeet have taken part in for thousands of years.  

Disruptions to these rituals sparked the closure decades ago. Hall said a recent increase of tourism to the mountain has prompted the tribe to remind the public of the resolution, including with a proposed amendment that would increase fines on violators. 

The closure affects the one-mile radius from the base of Chief Mountain and is in effect for everyone except Blackfeet people who use the area for cultural and spiritual practices. 

Hall said the tribe started looking into the issue again after receiving concerns about increased disturbances in the area, particularly about an outfitter company allegedly giving tours of the Chief Mountain area for $300 per person.  

“We just pulled up the old resolutions and let the public know that it existed for well over 40 years basically, and there were no cultural tours or anything to be going on — especially in the summertime, when our fasting is the most prevalent,” Hall said.  

She said they also had reports of people desecrating and taking apart some of the offerings left on the mountain. 

"We also reached out to Glacier National Park, because the east side of Chief Mountain is accessible from the park, and they assured us that there were no permits granted to anybody to be touring that area,” Hall said. 

Hall said there are only three people right now that patrol the Chief Mountain area in some way, mostly to maintain the recently released bison population. She said they are called the Blackfeet Shield Keepers with members coming from the Historic Tribal Preservation Office, Blackfeet Fish and Game and nonprofit Blackfeet EcoKnowledge. She said her office has reached out to tribal leadership to request funds for more positions to look after the area.  

Bison returning to the landscape, both on Blackfeet land and in Glacier National Park, is another reason staff at the Historic Tribal Preservation Office want to remind the public to keep their distance. Hall said they don’t want to see people getting too close to the animals, resulting in injury, especially in an area as rural as Chief Mountain. 

“We don't want the Chief Mountain unit to become another Yellowstone, mainly because of the distance between Browning and there, which is a good one hour drive at the very least for any kind of hospital or EMT work,” Hall said. “There is no cell phone service at all on the mountain, you know, so mainly for safety reasons we don't want to have a lot of people up in the unit after we release our buffalo.”  

One herd of bison was released into the wild last year near Babb for the first time in 150 years.  Hall said this summer they are planning to do another “soft launch” of the buffalo closer to Chief Mountain.  

As the tribe attempts to protect its important cultural resources, Hall said it can be tough to restrict access. She said because the order hinges on tribal members being allowed to visit the mountain for spiritual or cultural reasons, it relies on western ideas of what qualifies someone to be an enrolled member. 

“We don't want to use blood quantum as a way of quantifying who can and can't go up to the area, because we have people who are not enrolled that actively carry on our traditions and our cultural use, or language and things of that nature. And in our eyes, they're considered members of our tribe,” Hall said. 

She said in addition to increased surveillance, personnel will also be putting up additional signage in the area to let people know of the closure. 

 Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com.