"My dear brother Chief Stan Grier I stand in strong solidarity with you and my indigenous brothers and sisters in your demands to change the names from war criminals to humane and freedom-loving people!!" Dr Cornell West
The site of the Baker-Doane Massacre
What's in a Name?
“The manner in which this process has so far been conducted without the consultation and input of the affected Tribal Nations is representative of the recent history of Yellowstone (post-1872). It must be remembered that Yellowstone was a homeland, a sacred cultural landscape to twenty-six tribes, before it was a National Park. However, a visitor to Yellowstone today would not know that, due to the lack of cultural interpretation. A change in that respect is long overdue. America’s first national park should no longer have features named after the proponents and exponents of genocide, as is the case with Hayden Valley and Mount Doane.
Seven months before Lieutenant Gustavus Cheyney Doane, 2nd Cavalry, guided the 1870 Yellowstone Expedition, he had led the massacre of Chief Heavy Runner’s Piegan Blackfeet village on the Marias River. On his subsequent application to become Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, he boasted, “Greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. Troops.” Of the 173 victims killed on January 23, 1870, only 15 were men of fighting age.
Where Doane participated in genocide, Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden advocated it. “Unless they are localized and made to enter upon agricultural and pastoral pursuits they must ultimately be exterminated,” Hayden said of our ancestors who were about to be dispossessed by the establishment of Yellowstone National Park. “If extermination is the result of non-compliance, then compulsion is an act of mercy,” he concluded.
These names must be changed with the input of the affected Tribal Nations, just as any move to delist the sacred grizzly bear on this ancestral landscape must involve consultation with the affected Tribal Nations.”
From the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council Resolution (December 2014) opposing the delisting and trophy hunting of the grizzly bear in Greater Yellowstone.
The Piikani Nation has an ancient connection to Greater Yellowstone.
And our ancestors gave their lives to protect the sanctity of that land
On October 3 in Jackson Hole, Interior’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee – Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee is expected to approve the post-delisting regulatory document, the Conservation Strategy.
Why a Congressional Investigation
has been called for
Chief Vincent Yellow Old Woman, Chief of the Siksika Nation, and others, have categorized the proposed delisting of the grizzly bear as an act of cultural genocide against our people."
"Through information obtained via FOIA requests it is now apparent that the motivational factors behind both the delisting of the grizzly bear and the construction of the DAPL are closely aligned.”
America’s first national park should no longer have features named after the proponents and exponents of genocide, as is the case with Hayden Valley and Mount Doane.
