Snake Butte: A Study of Cultural Landscapes and Indigenous Archaeology

Abstract

Snake Butte is a sacred landscape located on the Fort Belknap Reservation, in the Milk River Valley of Montana. The butte is home to powerful traditional snake medicine, religious areas for fasting, environmental resources for collecting, and cultural features that convey the living and remembered traditions of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine peoples. Despite Snake Butte’s known power and significance to the tribal community, the area was once mined for raw granite used in the construction of the Fort Peck Dam. The buttes high quality granite continues to be vulnerable to resource extraction in the modern era. This work seeks to record and preserve the stories of Snake Butte using an ethnoarchaeological approach. Drawing on a theoretical framework and methods from Indigenous archaeologies and cultural landscape theory, researchers worked to produce a traditional cultural property report and nomination that reflects tribal values. Collaborative archaeological field methods, ethnographic interviews, and archival research are combined in this thesis to investigate the importance of alternative ways of knowing within the field of applied archaeology.