Big Medicine is Back Home | News
Char-Koosta News
A spiritual longing has been sated. Big Medicine is back. Last Thursday, the Montana Historical Society (MTHS) Board of Trustees unanimously voted to untether Big Medicine from his 61 years caged display at the MTHS Museum in Helena.
For the time being Big Medicine will physically remain with the MTHS but make no doubts he is back home from whence he came. There are no fences, boundaries or buildings to cage him anymore. His is now a free-ranging spirit back in the heart of the Flathead Reservation where his spirit has long been anchored in the longing hearts of the Séliš, Ql̓ispé and Ksanka people.
More than 89 years ago, on Wednesday May 3, 1933, National Bison Range (NBR) range-rider John McDonald came across a newborn bison. It was not unusual for range riders to find newly born bison but that day an unusual sight was beheld by McDonald — a white bull bison.
It was before the inundation of telephones but the word of the birth of a white bison spread quickly through the moccasin telegraph. Within days the Séliš and Ql̓ispé people conducted a ceremony to behold the spiritual gift from the Creator and welcome the white bison onto the landscape and into their hearts. They named the Creator’s gift Big Medicine.
Many American Indian tribes have time-immemorial spiritual, cultural and sustenance relationships with bison that provided food, shelter and clothing, but rare white bison had extra spiritual significance as they represent a direct provision of the Creator’s power.
Big Medicine back in the day when he was roaming the National Bison Range.
The Creator’s power was evident again in 1937 when Big Medicine, not a true albino due to his blue eyes and a thick black crown of hair between his horns sired another gift from the Creator: an albino bull calf with pink eyes and white hooves. Sadly, the albino calf was blind and deaf. When he was six months old, he was transported to the National Zoological Gardens in Washington, DC where he was on display at the National Zoo until his death at 12 years old.
“I remember, as a child, going to see the white buffalo, Big Medicine,” said 81-year-old Ql̓ispé Elder Stephen SmallSalmon. “I was very young; the white buffalo was old and lying down. After he died, he was just gone; they took him to Helena.”
Big Medicine died on August 25, 1959 at the age of 26. Big Medicine weighed more than 1,900 pounds in his prime years. He stood six feet tall at his hump, and was nearly 12 feet long from his nose to the tip of his tail.
Following his death, then Flathead Nation Tribal Council Chairman Walter McDonald, younger brother of John McDonald, advocated for the tribal people’s desire that Big Medicine be preserved and remain on the Flathead Reservation but to no avail. The NBR powers that were gave Big Medicine’s tanned hide to the MTHS that in turn had renowned Browning-based artist, sculpture and taxidermist Bob Schriver to mount Big Medicine’s hide on supporting infrastructure for display at the MTHS Museum where Big Medicine has been since 1961.
However, all that changed last Thursday when SmallSalmon was among a group of Flathead Nation government and administration officials, and Séliš-Ql̓ispéCulture Committee Elders Council representatives that journeyed to Helena to meet with the Montana Historical Society Board of Trustees.
Flathead Nation Tribal Council Chairman Tom McDonald, grand-nephew of John and Walter McDonald, was among the Flathead Nation representatives that day.
“Nearly my whole life I’ve heard people wonder why Big Medicine was not home. Why can’t we get him back home,” McDonald said. “Even the [US] Fish and Wildlife Service posed that question during the talks related to the AFA (Annual Funding Agreement) negotiations.”
The Flathead Nation negotiated two AFAs with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004 and 2008. The 2004 AFA ended in December 2006 when tribal employees at the NBR were unceremoniously escorted off the National Bison Range. The USFWS claimed it was due to poor performance by tribal employees.
The Flathead Nation delegation at the Big Medicine display at the Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena. From left are: Rick Eneas, Stephen SmallSalmon, Tom McDonald, Len TwoTeeth, Michael Dolson, Rita Adams. Vernon Finley, Carole Lankford, Shirley Trahan, Martin Charlo, Shane Morigeau, James “Bing” Matt and Terry Pitts.
“We finally accomplished a goal we (Legal Department) had been working on for 10 years to get to,” CSKT Legal Department attorney Brian Upton said in May of the 2004 AFA. “We finally got our boots on the ground there but in reality, we weren’t welcome there. Eventually the Fish and Wildlife Service cancelled the AFA.”
The second negotiated AFA of 2008 was implemented in 2009 but it was challenged in court by PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) and the Blue Goose Society citing the lack of compliance to the National Environmental Protection Act. The second agreement was rescinded by a U.S. District Court September 2010.
A third AFA negotiation process began 2010. “The negotiations hung in the air for three years because the Fish and Wildlife Service was dragging its feet,” Upton said. “We needed to pause the negotiations at that point because we just couldn’t trust them. Right after that we got the call from Fish and Wildlife Service director Don Ash asking (then Tribal Council Chairman) Vernon (Finley) to come to Washington to talk about restoring the Bison Range to the Tribes.”
That pendulum-change swing eventually resulted in the restoration of the former National Bison Range to the Flathead Nation via its insertion into the omnibus spending bill signed into law by the president in December 2020. The Flathead Nation took full control of the former NBR, now Bison Range, on January 1, 2022.
The pendulum swing continued with the return of Big Medicine.
“Back in the day, they (MTHS) wanted Big Medicine at its museum because he was a big [tourist] draw,” McDonald said, adding that through the years unofficial requests to have Big Medicine were rebuffed for various reasons including MTHS’s maintaining that Big Medicine was in too poor of a condition to move.
But conditions changed and minds have changed.
Earlier this year the Tribal Council sent a letter to the MTHS Board of Trustees with an amiable formal request to return Big Medicine to his home on the Flathead Reservation Bison Range.
“Big Medicine represents the past that has carried forward to the present and the work yet to be done to protect our identity, culture, and well-being into the future,” Tom McDonald stated in the letter request.
The MTHS Board of Trustees eventually responded to the letter and requested to meet with Tribal Council and administration representatives at its board meeting.
McDonald said the Flathead group was somewhat unaware of the purpose of the meeting with the MTHS trustees but figured it could be related to Big Medicine and the letter request and if so, it probably was a denial of transfer. It was related to the transfer of Big Medicine.
“We had no indication they (MTHS) were ever going to vote on returning Big Medicine,” McDonald said.
Following a luncheon former Montana Attorney General Tim Fox of Hardin who is on the MTHS Board of Trustees asked folks at the meeting to stand. When they did, he made the motion to return Big Medicine to his Bison Range home. The trustees in a unanimous vote agreed that it was time for Big Medicine to go home.
“His motion gave me faith in humanity, that good people will do the right thing,” McDonald said. “It was very emotional and it really made all of us feel good. It was a great moment because I felt that they (MTHS Board of Trustees) felt good also. It was pretty overwhelming and it was hard for me to even speak, it was all so dignified.”
But speak he did, although his composure waivered a bit in his response.
“We are deeply appreciative. You can see it is emotional,” McDonald said about vote. “We will treat this animal with the respect it deserves. We thank you and look forward to partnerships with the [Montana Historical Society] and museum in the future. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.”
“When they said ‘We’re going to send him home.’ It was pretty nice; a big thing you know. It makes us Elders happy,” SmallSalmon said. “He was gone a long time but now he is back home”
Ql̓ispé Elder Stephen SmallSalmon smudges after the Montana Historical Society Board of Trustees voted unanimously to return Big Medicine return home to the Flathead Reservation. From left are: Tribal Councilman Len TwoTeeeth, Chairman Tom McDonald and Séliš Elder Shirley Trahan.
SmallSalmon said a prayer, smudged and sang a Buffalo Song at the ceremonial return of Big Medicine.
“It isn’t just about the history. As a people, the Salish and Kootenai are reclaiming our language and culture. One aspect of what Big Medicine symbolizes is what it looks like to hold on to the past and look to the future,” said Flathead Nation Executive Officer Rick Eneas. “We as a people are at a crossroads and have gone through some significant challenges and lost a lot, but are creating a lot in the valley for the young tribal members who don’t have a connection. A symbol like this allows us to feel proud of who we are and will help us understand who we can be in the future.”
MTHS Director Molly Kruckenberg said the MTHS was pleased to see Big Medicine’s ownership transferred to the CSKT. The MTHS will retain physical possession of Big Medicine until the Tribes have a safe environment in which he can be displayed, which is expected to take about two years.
“This is not a repatriation request under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; instead, this decision comes from discussions made on a government-to-government basis,” Kruckenberg said. “The Montana Historical Society regularly seeks advice and information from Montana’s Tribes, and this transfer of ownership reflects that positive relationship.”
McDonald said it will be a bit of time, maybe two years, before Big Medicine will be physically returned home.
“Our desire is to only move Big Medicine once. The obvious location would be to move him to the Bison Range visitor center but it’s small and an old and poorly designed facility,” he said. “A new Three Chiefs Cultural Center on Ravalli Hill would be ideal to better display our culture and Big Medicine. We would put him in an air-controlled space there. We have budgeted funds to do the planning. I am certain it will happen, it’s just a matter of time.”
McDonald said the CSKT administration has been trying to get an architectural firm to take on the planning but it has been difficult due to the lingering effects of the COVID pandemic the work over-load such firms are dealing with.
He said the Tribes just submitted a grant proposal to build a new Three Chiefs Cultural Center on Ravalli Hill.
“It would draw traffic off US 93, and save about 25 minutes off vehicle drive to and from the Moiese entrance,” McDonald said, adding that the Tribes are seriously looking at various ways to expand the footprint or hoofprint of the Bison Range. The CSKT own the land atop Ravalli Hill east of Highway 93 is being considered to expand that footprint and stock bison there.
“Like the bison our persistence has prevailed,” McDonald said. “Big Medicine is an animal that signifies what bison means to the landscape and culture of our people. Bison were our food, our clothing, our shelter. The bison and Indians walked the same trail side by side. We lived side by side, and side by side we were removed from our traditional landscape, now we are walking side by side again. They saved us and now we are saving them.”
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