Our project intends to archive history from the Native American point of view, and ultimately to publicize a narrative documenting the political, ethnic and environmental interactions between the citizens of Montana’s Fort Belknap Reservation and the Pegasus Gold Corporation. It was the continuous efforts of Native and non-Native activists, lawyers, and citizens which eventually exposed the illegal actions of Zortman Landusky Inc. and led to its bankruptcy and the beginning of environmental and social renewal. In tracing the discourses, public policies, and empirical recordings regarding pollution, land and water rights, industrial regulation, and multiple levels of government, we hope to document a story of local agency and international power. Above all, we are attempting to provide a stage and microphone for Native voices to be heard, legitimized, and allowed into spaces of academic knowledge production and the writing of history.
