Tribal Relations
The USDA Forest Service, Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests and Thunder Basin National Grassland are located on the ancestral lands of many Native American Tribes that have stewarded them for time immemorial.
These tribes include the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Chippewa-Cree Tribe, Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Crow Nation, Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Fort Belknap Indian Community, Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Northern Arapaho Tribe, Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Tribes, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Spirit Lake Tribe, Standing Rock River Sioux, Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation), Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Yankton Sioux, and Santee Sioux Nation.
The USDA Forest Tribal Connections Map is a tool to learn about the many tribes that have cared for our nation’s forests and grasslands for millennia and still maintain strong historical and spiritual connections to the land.
Cultural resources on the forests and grasslands represent a diversity of cultures and their uses of landscapes and represent at least 12,000 years of human history. Known prehistoric sites include hunting camps, settlements, trails, and resource gathering areas, to name just a few.
Prehistoric cultural resources tend to represent cultural and environmental interactions over time and closely reflect responses, in terms of location and site type, to changing environmental and climatic conditions. The natural forest conditions that are currently identified as undisturbed (usually found in the more remote portions of the national forests) are actually the result of the influence of past customs and practices of the previous populations of Native Americans.
As our society grows more urban and complex, people long for unique and authentic opportunities to experience the natural and cultural heritage of special places. Cultural resources enhance local communities and build bridges of understanding between the forest and its neighbors.
The Medicine Bow-National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland conducts all land management activities to respect and honor these cultural resources by complying with all applicable federal, state, and local regulations including:
- The National Historic Preservation Act
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
- American Indian Religious Freedom Act
The regulations aim to protect significant resources from damage by activities or vandalism through project design, specified protection measures, monitoring, and coordination.