Our Story

To share knowledge of Indigenous peoples and others with historical ties to the cultural landscape by supporting place-based education and local learning

The core group of the Native Memory Project first collaborated in 2000. During the next 4 summers a series of videos were produced about the Sheep Eaters or Mountain Shoshone of the Greater Yellowstone region.  Thus began a decades-long effort to record stories of the Native inhabitants of the Rocky Mountain West and of the old-time ranchers and settlers who shared their histories and strong ties to the land.

From the beginning, private funding from the Stepp Family Fund of California and the Kessler Fund of Philadelphia have been the critical and generous mainstays which have allowed NMP to accomplish this important work. Since its inception, the Native Memory Project has focused on producing educational materials that have included Indigenous voices and perspectives in telling the stories and histories of the American West.

Through the years, additional funding and support has come from a number of different entities, notably the Wyoming Arts Council’s Folk and Traditional Arts Program, Utah State University’s Fife Folklore Archives, the Lucius Burch Center, the Greater Yellowstone Historical Society, Wyoming’s Diocese of the Episcopal Church and others.

As government and other grants have become harder to come by, it is imperative that NMP seek broader support from individuals and private donors. To help advance our work, the Native Memory Project organized as a 501(C) 3 nonprofit in 2019 with the guidance of both Native and non-Native board members.  All donations to NMP are tax- deductible.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Native Memory Project
c/o Spring Ranch UNIT B
6361 US Highway 26
Dubois, WY 82513
info@nativememoryproject.org

NMP’s initial project is to develop an engaging online platform for knowledge-sharing, open and available to all.

Central goals of the NMP website 

Revitalize historical and contemporary connections to wildlife, the land, and its people, by providing teaching and learning resources that include Indigenous voices and perspectives in a more inclusive and comprehensive manner than is generally found in today’s K-12 class rooms

• Strengthen pride in cultural identity that fosters responsible stewardship for cultural and land-based resources 
• Connect K-12 students and others with national and international natural and cultural conservation movements in ways that promotes cross-cultural understanding

Key objectives:

• Create an engaging, interactive website to develop K-12 and other educational resources for knowledge-sharing, open and available to all
• Continue the documentation and recording of stories 
• Produce documentaries about relevant topics
• Develop an endowment to insure the continuation of this important work

PATTI BALDES (NORTHERN ARAPAHO)

Born on the Big Pine Paiute Reservation in California and raised on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Patti is an enrolled Northern Arapaho with Northern Paiute descent. Baldes is the Executive Director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, a civic & social non-profit organization based in Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Wind River Native Advocacy Center serves the Wind River Reservation, its tribal members and its neighboring communities. The organization promotes self-determination in traditional knowledge, education, health, art, economic development and equality while empowering Native Americans to have a stronger voice, stronger community and equal representation. Building relationship with local communities, Tribal, State and Federal governments.

Patti enjoys sharing her story and conservation experiences through her photography line dubbed, Patti with an Eye. She has been sharing photos for close to 20 years, sharing images of her homelands and all that catches her eye. Her focus has and will continue to be the Buffalo, assisting in restoring them to increasing tribal lands and sharing her talents through art, photography and storytelling.

MARY L. KELLER, PhD – SECRETARY

Mary is an Associate Lecturer in Religious Studies and Adjunct for African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of Wyoming. A historian of religions, Mary’s research focuses on comparable cultural landscapes as seen from post-colonial and feminist perspectives. Starting in 2011, she has spearheaded an annual ceremony to celebrate the return of the Crow people to Wyoming’s Heart Mountain. Known to the Crow as “Foretop’s Father”, Heart Mountain is a sacred site not only to the Crow but also the Shoshone. The annual event collaborates with the Heart Mountain Nature Conservancy, Crow tribal historian Grant Bulltail, and other colleagues involved in the Native Memory Project. The “Return to Foretops Father”, celebrates the deep significance of indigenous peoples’ historical and spiritual ties to the natural world as revealed through oral traditions and ceremonial practices passed down through generations.

WESLEY MARTEL (SHOSHONE/ARAPAHO) – CO VICE PRESIDENT

Wes is a leader of the Eastern Shoshone for over 40 years; he served as the Executive Director of the Inter-Tribal Alliance, a member of the Shoshone Business Council (22 years), as Chairman of the Fish and Game Committee for the Shoshone and Arapaho Tribes and as a leader of the Wind River Environmental Quality Commission. As panel chairperson and reader for the Administration of Native Americans in Washington DC since 1990, Martel has been responsible for chairing panels of readers and formalizing comment and proposal evaluation forms in the areas of Social and Economic Development Strategies (SEDS), Enhancement of Tribal Environmental Regulatory Capabilities, Language Retention Programs, and Mitigation of Impacts on Indian Lands due to Department of Defense Activities.

From 1976-9 Wesley served as the editor of the Tribal newspaper for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. From 1990 -present he served as Vice-President and Senior Partner of Wind River Associates a consulting firm providing seminars and technical assistance to tribes and allottees in the areas of water resource management, taxation, mineral leasing and negotiations, environmental programs, and economic development. Wes has a deep respect and appreciation for the cultural and traditional beliefs and practices of Indian Tribes and Native Alaskans. This understanding is important when working with tribes and native villages. Cultural and traditional beliefs can have a vast positive influence on the surrounding communities and resources. He believes that tribes can adopt more stringent environmental standards and guidelines than the state and federal government and this can be an important component for the future protection of the Wind River Basin.

JEFFREY MELDRUM, PhD

Jeff is Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello, conducts research revolving around questions of vertebrate evolution morphology generally, and primate locomotor adaptations in particular. Meldrum’s doctoral research explored terrestrial adaptations in African primates and has since taken him from the dusty skeletal cabinets of far-flung museums to the remote badlands of Columbia and Argentina in search of fossils of New World primates. He has published extensively on the evolutionary history of South American primates and has described several new extinct species. He has documented varied primate locomotor specializations in laboratory and semi-natural settings.

As a principle investigator on the Native Memory Project, Jeff works with Kahin and Mionczynski interviewing Indigenous peoples to record traditional knowledge of edible and medicinal plants and about Sasquatch, ‘Lost Brother’, other relic hominoids and cryptids.

JOHN MIONCZYNSKI – CO VICE-PRESIDENT

John is an ethnobotanist and wildlife consultant who lives in the historic mining town of Atlantic City, Wyoming. John has led field trips and taught classes in ethnobotany and natural history for the Native Science Field Center at the Fort Washakie School in Fort Washakie, WY. He has taught for the Teton Science School in Kelly, Central Wyoming Community College in Riverton, National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Royal Teton Center for Holistic Study in Kelly, Family Medicine Residency Program (through the University of Wyoming) and for the Wyoming Outdoor Council in Lander – as well as other venues.

Mionczynski has worked on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study, Interagency Studies of Bighorn Sheep, and numerous other research projects. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Bighorn Restoration Group based in Lander. John also functions as ethnobotanist for the Shoshone Ancestral Food-Gathering Group on the Wind River Reservation.

L’DAWN OLSEN (SHOSHONE)

L’Dawn is currently a PhD. candidate in Social Constructionism at the Taos Institute, Chagrin Falls, Ohio. L’Dawn works as an equity and inclusion specialist for the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. As a lead member of the Shoshone tribe’s project entitled Reclamation of Shoshone Cultural Food Systems, L’Dawn also works closely with Shoshone elders, schools and community members, as well as Shoshone Heritage scientists (both Native and non-Native), the Indian Health Care Service, University of Wyoming Extension and the Shoshone Museum Committee, to address social issues on Wind River and to reclaim cultural heritage and traditions, especially food-ways related to health and wellbeing.

A researcher, advisor, and author of culturally specific curricula in adult, community and higher education, L’Dawn assists the Wind River Development Fund, Central Wyoming College and the Wind River Tribal College on issues pertaining to education. One of her central focuses is on student recruitment, success and retention, collaborating with faculty to develop Innovative, creative and transformational learning environments. L’Dawn holds certification in the White Bison Medicine Wheel Teaching and 12 Steps for Youth and a number of other nationally recognized programs designed to address critical health, legal and social issues in Indigenous communities. She has served on a number of boards and steering committees on Wind River including the People Restored Board, Shoshone Indian Historical Society and Shoshone Women’s Society.

JENS OWEN

Jens is a serial entrepreneur who has built successful startups from scratch with no external funding. Jens has managed a very diverse group of clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100 firms and large government agencies. He has recruited top talent and managed teams across international boundaries. Accomplishing all of this with a balanced lifestyle, Jens enjoys the “work hard, play hard” approach to creating new technology ventures.

Jens is tech enthusiast, married with one son, and enjoys the mountain lifestyle. Hobbies include ice hockey, skiing, snowboarding and cycling of all sorts.

MELANIE SMOKEY (WESTERN SHOSHONE/WASHOE)

LYNETTE ST CLAIR (SHOSHONE) – PRESIDENT

Lynette has taught Shoshone Language and Culture for the Fort Washakie School, Wyoming Indian High and the Wind River Tribal College for over fifteen years. St Clair serves on the Wyoming State Standards Board for the Wyoming Department of Education in Social Studies and as a member of the Wind River Reservations TRAI School Consortium. Currently she is on the board of the Fort Washakie School and continues to teach at Wyoming Indian High. St Clair was the Project Director for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s Shoshone Homelands Project funded by a National Park Service Tribal Heritage Preservation grant (2012-16). She has also worked on a number of Shoshone Native Memory projects with Sharon Kahin and other scholars.

GARY WORTMAN – TREASURER

Gary is a NYU MFA film maker with dozens of cable television productions to his credit. He was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle for the Discovery International Program ‘Spaced Out: The New Psychology of Space’. And his science adventure program ‘The Mir Chronicles: A Life in Space’ was named the best documentary at the 9^th annual Jules Verne Film Festival.

Gary has been documenting native stories in Wyoming and Montana with Kahin and Mionczynski since 2000. His most recent collaboration with NMP is the film, ‘This Land is Whose Land?’, examining the Western public land use debate surrounding the shrinking of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This film can be seen on select PBS stations beginning April 2020 and is posted under classroom resources on this website.

JASON BALDES (EASTERN SHOSHONE)

Jason received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Land Resources & Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, where he has focused on the restoration of Buffalo to Tribal lands. In 2016 he spearheaded the successful effort to relocate a herd to the Wind River Indian Reservation. He is an advocate, educator and speaker on Indigenous cultural revitalization and ecological restoration who has also served as director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, where he was instrumental in the passing of the Wyoming Indian Education for All Act. He currently serves as the Tribal Buffalo Coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Partnerships Program, Region I Director of the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council, and is the Buffalo Representative for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe.

TIM BERNARDIS

Tim has been serving as the founding Library Director at Little Big Horn College (LBHC) since 1985. He also founded the LBHC Archives in 1986. In addition, Professor Bernardis has been an Adjunct Faculty Instructor in Crow Studies and History. He received his M.Ed. in 1987 in Adult and Higher Education from Montana State University, Bozeman and two B.A.s in History and in Native American Studies in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an author of many articles, including “Battle of the Rosebud” and “Fetterman Fight” in the Encyclopedia of the American Indian (1996); and of Crow Social Studies Baleeisbaalichiwee History (a Crow reservation area teacher’s guide to Crow history (1986) for the Bilingual Materials Development Center in Crow Agency; The 1990s, part of Crow entry in Handbook of North American Indians, v. 13, Plains, Smithsonian Institution, (2001); and (with Frederick E. Hoxie) “Robert Yellowtail” in The New Warriors, Native American Leaders Since 1900 (2001). He is also an adopted member of the Plainfeather family in the Crow (Apsáalooke) Tribe.

LINDA BULLTAIL (APSAALOOKE – CROW)

Linda is the widow of Grant Bulltail, one of NMP’s founding board members. Grant was a 2019 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship – recognized for artistic excellence in storytelling and for his continued contribution to our nation’s traditional arts heritage.

Linda participated with her husband in ceremonies of the Sacred Tobacco Society and shared Grant’s keen interest in finding and restoring heritage seeds of the Crow’s original sacred tobacco plants. She and Grant were both avid dancers in their youth, winning competitions in contemporary dance forms such as the Hot Dance before and after his active duty in Vietnam. Recordings demonstrating their dance steps can be found at the Fife Folklore Archives at the University of Utah in Logan.

Linda belongs to the Big Lodge and Bad War Deed clans and serves as co-organizer of the annual Return to Foretop’s Father event at Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

WILLIAM C’HAIR (ARAPAHO)

William is the official Interpreter of Language and History for the Northern Arapaho Tribe on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. For over 40 years, he has taught at all the reservation schools, as well as for the Wind River Tribal College and University of Wyoming. As Chairman of the Arapaho Language and Culture Commission, Mr. C’Hair is also teaching the Arapaho language via the Internet to the Southern Arapaho in Oklahoma. He is the lead authority on the Arapaho Dictionary, working with ethnological linguist Dr. Benny Salzman (Amhurst College) and Prof. Andrew Cowell at the University of Colorado.

C’Hair was a lead consultant on St. Stephens Indian School’s Buffalo Hide Tipi Project (St. Stephen’s Excel Program 2004-7) and the award-winning videos We Are the Arapaho People and Listening for a New Day. In 2005, he was asked to lead students and teachers to Washington DC for the National Museum of the American Indian’s Museum Technology Workshop grant to review Arapaho material culture in the museum’s Suitland collection. William has also won honors for his participation in the PBS documentary, Natural History of Chicago.

ANDREA GRAHAM

Andrea is a folklorist in the American Studies Program at the University of Wyoming, where she conducts research and produces public programs on Wyoming traditions, and teaches a class on public sector cultural work. She has worked as a public folklorist for state art councils and regional nonprofit organizations, primarily in the West, since 1980. She serves on the boards of the Culture Conservation Corps, which works to assist communities and individuals in identifying, developing, sustaining, and presenting expressions of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, and the Alliance for Historic Wyoming, a statewide historic preservation nonprofit. Andrea holds a BA in cultural anthropology and an MA in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania.

ANNIE HATCH

Annie has over 30 years’ experience in arts administration and public sector folklore in the American West. She has worked as a folklorist in several western states’ arts and humanities councils, managing grants programs, cultural surveys and generating special projects to highlight the American West’s cultural heritage. As Wyoming’s Folk and Traditional Arts Specialist from 2005 to 2018 she was instrumental in advancing the state’s Folklife Coalition. In that capacity she worked with the Native Memory Project to facilitate recordings with Grant Bulltail (Crow), Shoshone elders Beatrice Haukaus and Reba Teran, and performances by Anne Abeyta’s hoop dancers from the Fort Washakie School. Currently she is manager of South Dakota Traditional Arts, a program of the South Dakota Arts Council, and serves as a Trustee for the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada.

BOW HACKER (LAKOTA)

MARK HEADLEY

Mark started a career in Asian asset management in 1989 after growing up in Berkeley, CA and attending UC Santa Cruz. He joined Matthews International Capital Management in 1995, working at various times as the portfolio manager of the Matthews Pacific Tiger Fund, President, CEO, CIO and Chair of the Board. Mark remains active in analyzing trends across Asia and particularly US/Chinese relations.

Mark grew up wandering the Grand Tetons of Wyoming as a child and started camping every summer in the high Sierra with a Berkeley scout troop that followed the paths of John Muir and Edward Abbey.

Mark is also the founder of the West Berkeley Fencing Club, continuing his involvement in a sport he was introduced to in college by his mentor of over 30 years, Fencing Maestro and Artist Charles Selberg. He established the Selberg Institute in Southern Oregon to protect and restore the border region of southern Oregon and northern California.

Mark is Chair of the Conservation Lands Foundation. www.conservationlands.org

SHARON KAHIN, PhD – FOUNDER and HEAD OF ADVISORY

Sharon has over 30 years’ experience working as an independent humanities consultant for schools, tribal business councils, and culture commissions with the Arapaho, Crow, Eastern Shoshone and Shoshone/Bannock. Kahin has written and directed numerous grants for the Wyoming arts and humanities councils as well National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts; she has also served several times as consultant and grants panelist. Most recently, she wrote and served as a primary consultant on 3 of the National Park Service’s Tribal Heritage Preservation Grants for the Arapaho, Crow, and Shoshone.

Kahin directed the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum for four and a half years, developing the museum’s exhibit on “Indians of the Greater Yellowstone” As the Wyoming Department of Education’s first Content Specialist in Social Studies and Minority Education Coordinator (2004-7), she worked with GrantMakers for Education to convene conferences on Latinos in the Diasporas at the University of Wyoming and Best Practices in American Indian Education at the Daniels Fund in Denver.

LAWRENCE LOENDORF, PhD

Larry is an international rock art specialist and archaeologist who, with Peter Nabokov, was the principle investigator for Yellowstone Park’s and the Bighorn Canyon Recreation Area’s Ethnographic Resource Overview. Recently retired from a long and distinguished teaching career, Larry is the founder and director of the Sacred Sites Research Foundation http://sacredsitesresearch.com/about.html .

Loendorf is co-author with Peter Nabokov of Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park (2004). Other publications include: (with Christopher Chippendale) Discovering North American Rock Art (2016); Thunder and Herds: Rock Art of the High Plains (2008); Mountain Spirit, The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone (2006): and (with Julie Francis) Ancient Visions Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Wind River and Bighorn Country, Wyoming and Montana (Salt Lake 2002)

TIMOTHY MCCLEARY

Timothy holds degrees in archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics and has been a professor at Little Big Horn College, the Crow tribal college, for over twenty-five years. His lifelong interest in how different cultures perceive the world lead him to the field of anthropology. Through his studies he has examined various aspects of the historic and contemporary culture of the Crow people. This research has covered such varied topics as the legal battles of the Native American Church in Montana, the rise of Pentecostalism on the Crow Indian Reservation, and the cultural, historical and religious significance of rock art produced by Plains Indians. Tim is the author of The Stars We Know: Crow Indian Astronomy and Lifeways.

PETER NABOKOV, PhD

Peter is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Culture at UCLA. He is co-author with Larry Loendorf of Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park (2004) and of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area’s Ethnographic Resource Overview, Every Morning of the World.

Other publications include: How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family (2015); A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (2002); Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000 (1990); (with Robert Easton) Native American Architecture (New York, 1989); Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior (1982); and Indian Running (Santa Fe, 1981).

LAURA L. SCHEIBER, PhD

Laura received her BA and MA in Anthropology from the University of Wyoming and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California-Berkeley. She has participated in and directed archaeological and ethnohistoric research projects in the western Plains and Rocky Mountains for the last thirty years, explicitly aimed at integrating heritage, sustainability, and stewardship in small communities in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Nebraska. Her current research focuses on exploring historical and social landscapes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Her recent publications include Engineering Mountain Landscapes: An Anthropology of Social Investment (co-edited with María Nieves Zedeño) and Across a Great Divide: Continuity and Change in Native North American Societies, 1400-1900 (co-edited with Mark D. Mitchell). Originally from Minnesota, her family moved to Wyoming when she was in high school, where she grew up on a ranch not far from where she continues to call home today.