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Creating Their Own Paths

A young Blackfeet trail crew in the Badger-Two Medicine forges their connection to a sacred ground
Category: Community | | 2 min read

I like to imagine our lives go something like this: We are born into a wilderness and it stretches around us in every direction. We have no idea where we should go or what we might see, but we must go somewhere. At this point it might seem that there are an infinite number of paths we could choose from, but we can only choose one, and once we take it, we are subject to wherever it might take us.

Earlier this summer my own path intersected with that of a group of five young Blackfeet adults, all around my own age. There were two recent high school graduates Shawn and Erica with their puppy Remi, brothers Cal and Austin, and the youngest of the group, David. Having grown up on the Flathead Indian Reservation myself, I supposed that these five had been subjected to some “rough trails,” to say the least. Life on reservations is often fraught with poverty, alcoholism, drug-abuse, and depression, all of which stem from a painful recent history. But these five were doing something special. They were a trail crew, and they were learning to set their own paths. 

The Blackfeet trail crew is an initiative of Montana Wilderness Association. This summer it brought two five-person crews into the Badger-Two Medicine, each for two weeks. The purpose was two-fold. On the one hand it sought to ensure that the Badger-Two Medicine is accessible and on the other it strived to foster the cultural connection between these young Blackfeet land and this land that is sacred to them. All of this happened as the fate of the Badger was being decided in Washington, D.C.

I had come to the Badger-Two Medicine hoping to gain some insight into the land. I knew that the Blackfeet held a cultural connection so the question for my crew came easily enough. What does this land mean to you? The answers to that question were not so easily articulated. My peers had been told they had a connection to the land, but they were only just beginning to discover what that connection meant to them. For some that connection became real as they restored a trail their grandparents had used long ago. For others, the memories they made with this crew on this trail were powerful enough. But what I found most amazing is that they weren't just out there searching for forgotten cultural paths. They were also fixing them, literally and figuratively.

Tyler Courville, MWA intern and student at Stanford University

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