For millennia, Native people who lived in what we now call Greater Yellowstone were able to meet their needs by living in harmony with the lands, waters, and wildlife of the region.

The plants and animals they shared the landscape with supported their nutritional, medicinal, and ceremonial needs, shaping and sustaining their cultures.

Today, we call the right and ability of a culture to obtain culturally appropriate, sustainable foods and medicine their “food sovereignty.”

Since the arrival of European colonists in Greater Yellowstone, Indigenous food sovereignty has been declining. Today, many Tribes feel they are profoundly disconnected from the traditional foods and medicines so paramount to their cultures and identities. Much of this loss of food sovereignty is the result of intentional disruption and marginalization, such as the near extermination of buffalo due to the American military’s efforts to eliminate bison in an act of war against Tribes, and the displacement of Tribes to reservations a fraction the size of their ancestral homelands. Further loss of food sovereignty has occurred as habitat loss and environmental degradation put native plant and animal species in increasing peril.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition believes that restoring the food sovereignty of Greater Yellowstone Tribes and protecting the ecological integrity of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are powerfully complementary. In order to advance Tribal food sovereignty, we are helping the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho augment Tribal buffalo herds, supporting the mission and work of a community group called Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food, and restoring riparian corridors along the Big Wind River to simultaneously create habitat for traditional foods and medicines while improving the health of the river.

How we’re strengthening Tribal culture and conservation.