Yellowstone Revealed

Yellowstone Revealed

June 2022 - May 2023

Yellowstone National Park

SUMMARY

Mountain Time Arts is producing a project for the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone Park in 2022 and 2023. MTA has convened a cadre of experts on Indigenous culture and history from Montana and Wyoming's Tribal Colleges and universities along with National Park Service staff to incubate five public art installations in Yellowstone National Park. The installations will be temporary, non-invasive projects designed to demonstrate the continued presence of Indigenous people in the Yellowstone region. The projects will seek to put forward Indigenous truths and perspectives.

DESCRIPTION

MTA is collaborating with Yellowstone National Park to produce a series of public art projects sited within Yellowstone between June 2022 and May 2023, coinciding with and responding to Yellowstone Park’s 150th anniversary. In preparation for these public artworks, from June 2021-May 2022, MTA is convening a series of retreats with Indigenous scholars, artists and Yellowstone Park administrators to articulate research threads and methods and to develop a series of temporary public artworks. Joining MTA in this effort are seventeen inter-tribal Indigenous scholars, artists and designers including archeologists, anthropologists, historians, environmentalists, educators, architects, engineers, photographers and artists. Yellowstone Park’s Superintendent, Cam Sholly, along with other Yellowstone senior administrators are participating in and welcome this collaboration. Superintendent Sholly is whole heartedly eager to work with our research groups to revise the historic narrative of Yellowstone with the assistance of this series of public artworks. The Yellowstone National Park leadership team would like the first of the series of the public artworks to be a part of the 150th anniversary celebrations in August 2022.

Yellowstone Park locates itself in the U.S. imaginary as a pristine wilderness, an ahistorical landscape that was “founded” in 1872. With its geothermal features and bountiful wildlife, Yellowstone has a pre-historic, untouched quality that is revered. Yet, archeological research shows that for 11,000 years Indigenous people were present in the Yellowstone region, hunting, fishing, gathering food, mining stone for tools and making spiritual quests. Twenty-seven tribes claim cultural association with Yellowstone, although there is no evidence of this in the Park’s official historic record or information disseminated to tourists. Yellowstone, the first U.S. national park is gravely behind other parks in this effort.

MTA's public art works, conceived in intense collaboration with representatives of the twenty-seven affected tribes as well as the park staff, will help the Yellowstone National Park team find meaningful ways to reflect on and recognize the powerful Indigenous history of this landscape that preceded the "founding" of the park. The five collaborative art projects will also provide a platform where Indigenous voices co-create the future of the park.