For the fourth year, the Daylight Creek Gathering near Virginia City, Mont., welcomed the Shoshone-Bannock people back to their ancestral homelands. Coordinator Leo Ariwite said, “Being up here we can see everything. These are the same mountains that our ancestors saw.”

Orlan Svingen
Orlan Svingen

Ariwite has been collaborating with Washington State University Professor of History Orlan Svingen to gather historical evidence and documentation of areas inhabited by the tribal people before white settlement. Their research uncovered a land cession document signed in 1870 which allowed Chief Tendoy’s people a land claim that the U.S. government never honored. Since the finding, Svingen and Ariwite have been trying to bring the truth to light.

With cooperation from the townsfolk of Virginia City, last year Tendoy Park, an eight-acre area was dedicated to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. This year proposed plans for a future Interpretive Park were presented by WSU students Alicia Woodard and Allison Bremmeyer, who were a part of a group of nine students who brainstormed ideas from the John and Janet Creighton Public History Field School. The discussion was meant as a public consultation with the tribal people and to gather their input.

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