'Beyond Bison' at Missoula Art Museum
By Chadd Scott on
In 1908, the Federal Government created an 18,776-acre National Bison Range in western Montana between Kalispell to the north and Missoula to the south. It was established as an island of bison protection in a sea of slaughter. By that time, white settlers and market hunters had obliterated America’s bison population from perhaps 50 million at the turn of the 19th century to a low of a few hundred 80 years later.
The Range was located in the middle of the Flathead Indian Reservation. Unceded land. The Tribes protested the additional incursion. Further theft of their land.
The United States stole Flathead land during colonization and Westward Expansion, stole more Flathead land to rescue a species it had nearly wasted to extinction, and also needed Flathead bison to start a herd to save the species. It took those too. Isn’t it ironic?
The original National Bison Range animals descended from a free-range herd managed by the Tribe as it witnessed the species being massacred to extinction by the newcomers. Individuals from the herd were also sent to Yellowstone National Park to sustain its bison population.
Indigenous people across North America had sustainably lived with and lived off bison for thousands of years; an achievement settler colonials couldn’t duplicate for even 100.
The Flathead Indian Reservation is home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. The tribes are a combination of the Salish, the Pend d'Oreille, and the Kootenai. In June of 2021, after decades of legal wrangling, the Department of the Interior transferred all lands comprising the National Bison Range to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be held in trust for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) of the Flathead Reservation.
The Tribes would again manage the bison on their land.
Tailyr Irvine, Bison Range, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
“The establishment of the National Bison Range was an historic use of lands to preserve wildlife, but we must also acknowledge that this act reduced the Salish and Kootenai peoples’ homeland by thousands of acres,” Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said at the time. “The return of these lands back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is truly a significant milestone in their relationship with the Interior Department and the United States.”
As of 2022, the Bison Range – just “Bison Range,” no longer “National Bison Range” – was fully owned and managed by the CSKT Natural Resource Department.
Here is where Salish and Kootenai journalist and photographer Tailyr Irvine picks up in “Beyond Bison: Returning Land to the Original Stewards,” a photographic exhibition on view at the Missoula Art Museum.
“I'm excited to have (the exhibition) and very intentionally put it at the museum in Missoula so people who are in the photos have a chance to view instead of having it shipped off somewhere and having them hear about it online; they get come and see it,” Irvine said. “That's important, that people who are in the photos have access to them.”
Indigenous Photograph
Born and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Irvine’s photography amplifies Indigenous voices while challenging stereotypes about Native Americans, centering the people, stories, and complex issues within the diverse communities that make up Native America.
Irvine tinkered with digital cameras growing up, but homed in on the idea of photojournalism as a career during a class at the University of Montana School of Journalism that showed pictures of 9/11 as examples of effective storytelling. She graduated in 2018 then went on to work at The Dallas Morning News and Tampa Bay Times before beginning her career as an independent journalist.
What Irvine experienced on the job led her to co-found Indigenous Photograph, an organization dedicated to expanding the inclusion of Indigenous photographers in media and ensuring that stories from their communities are told with authenticity, agency, and care.
“I was the only Native in all of these newsrooms and it felt very isolating,” Irvine remembers. “I felt isolated and alone so I created this community where we could all connect to each other. There's a lot of editors who would love to hire Natives, but didn't have a list, didn't know where to find them. With Indigenous Photograph, we took that part out so there is no excuse to not hire (Native photographers).”
When news organizations hire Native photographers, their coverage of Native news, all news, deepens.
“It's a perspective that’s missing from reporting in our country since cameras happened, since we started journalism,” Irvine said. “For the last 150 years, the reporting of Indigenous communities has been from outsider perspectives, usually white men who come in with a camera – parachute in – and then leave without letting people know where the photos go, what the story is, and they frame (the story) however they want to frame it. It's important to balance that coverage with coverage from an insider perspective, have (Native) people tell stories of their own community, see how that shapes and fills the void in the world.”
Irvine, who lives in Missoula, is now a regular contributor to The New York Times, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. She has even earned the distinction of being a National Geographic Explorer.
“Photos have the power to connect us,” she told National Geographic. “I think when you're able to relate to the emotions in the photos, you're able to relate to the person in the photo, and that's what good photos do. They take you out of your world and let you experience someone else's life, and it creates empathy. When you change people's perspective, that's what changes the world.”
Photographing Indian Country
Early in her career, Irvine made a decision. She was not going to further historic stereotypes of Native people by portraying them wearing regalia in her pictures. She had seen enough of that.
“Coverage of Native communities, it always involved what people in journalism call ‘The Four D’s:’ dancing, drinking, drumming or death. A lot of that was in regalia,” Irvine explained. “We've seen Natives dancing. We've seen regalia. We've seen that side of Indian Country, and it's a valid side. It exists and it's beautiful and it's part of our culture, but it's not the only part of our culture. That's where mainstream media missed the mark, that's how they represent us as entire people, it wasn't accurate. For a long time, I wanted to battle those stereotypes and show what else is out there.”
Older, more experienced, she’s now including regalia photos in her work.
“If you have intention behind the story and you're telling something new, then I don't mind it,” Irvine added.
In July of 2022, she produced an article for The New York Times centered on her reservation’s powwow.
“I did it all with regalia; I was very intentional with the way I shot it. I photographed it with very bright, poppy colors, summertime. It was outside of the arena. There's a lot of smiling going on,” Tailyr said. “It wasn't just here's is Native regalia – beautiful. It had a story. It told the history of the dance outfits and why the regalia is, what pieces belong to them, pieces they inherit, and after COVID, how all those pieces came together again in having new outfits for everyone.”
Story, not stereotype.
Photographs sharing insight into Native America, not simply looking at it.
Tailyr Irvine, Pray, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
“We see the consequences of Edward Curtis’ work with the vanishing race,” Irvine said of the famed photographer’s turn of the century pictures cataloguing images of Native people across North America before they disappeared – or so white culture expected. “That's what people’s lasting impression of Native American tribes are, that we’re vanishing. We’re still here. People forget that and that’s where stereotypes come from.”
The Bison Range
For the Missoula Art Museum exhibition, Irvine photographed around the Flathead Reservation, primarily, as well as portions of aboriginal Salish homeland. Bison and people.
“For a lot of people, the Bison Range is about managing bison and having access to buffalo. Sure, tourists can still stop by and see them and say ‘hi,’ and making sure that access isn't impeded when the tribe owns it (is important), but for the tribe, it's bigger than that,” Irvine explained. “It's beyond buffalo, about the land itself, and how our tribe chooses to protect that. Without access to the land, we don't have access to our culture, we don’t have access to our traditions. It goes so far beyond the buffalo, it goes straight to who we are as a people.”
Who Irvine is. Who her family is.
“These projects are more personal and so it's a very insider perspective,” she said. “There's been a lot of outsider perspective, but my perspective is different because I experience it, and I live here, and I know these traditions, these experiences, and I include my family in this work.”
“Beyond Bison” can be seen through March 24, 2026.
