Little Shell Tribe marks 5 years of federal recognition

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Prior to 2019, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians had rich cultural ties but few physical assets.

“Without federal recognition, we had an enrollment office, which was it,” tribal Chairman Gerald Gray recently told Montana Free Press. “And then a part-time receptionist.”

They have been referred to as “landless Indians” who refused a 19th-century reservation treaty in North Dakota and spread out. Many migrated to what is now Montana. For decades, that treaty refusal kept the tribe out of federal programs that support Indigenous people in the wake of destructive westward expansion. And the Little Shell, a small organization, relentlessly pursued federal recognition.

Colleen Hill, now the tribe’s secretary and treasurer, has been a tribal member since 1987. When she was younger, she saw her mother work in the early pushes for recognition.

“It was a struggle,” Hill said. “Once my mom got involved, I was in my early 20s. And I’m 66 now.”

The tribe’s status changed on Dec. 20, 2019, when Congress approved federal recognition of the Little Shell.

Montana’s federal delegation had worked for years to pass bills recognizing the Little Shell. What ultimately worked was tucking official recognition into a massive 2019 defense spending bill. It noted that the Little Shell formally petitioned the federal government for recognition in 1978 — a request that remained pending by 2019.

The defense bill passed, and Little Shell recognition along with it. 

Now five years after that recognition, the Little Shell tribe is starting to see its holdings grow around its Great Falls headquarters. The tribe has institutionalized cultural programs, developed housing assistance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and made business investments around the region.

Gray said those are the direct results of the tribe’s formalized status.

“All of them,” he said. “We would not have had these opportunities if not for federal recognition.”

The most visible mark of progress so far is the Little Shell Tribal Health Clinic, which opened in 2022 in conjunction with the federal Indian Health Service. Gray said that in early conversations with federal officials, he was shown a priority list with a Little Shell clinic at the bottom.

“So you’ll probably get a clinic in 40 years,” Gray said. “And I said that’s not acceptable.”

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As with so many things, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the situation. Funding from a COVID-relief bill, the CARES Act, put the clinic on the fast track.

The clinic is available to the tribe’s 6,000-plus members, though not all of them are based in Montana. There are enrolled Little Shell members in 49 U.S. states, Gray said.

Another big development in the works is the construction of a community housing complex on acreage in the shadow of Hill 57, which was a physical center for the landless tribe but historically a site of impoverished Native American residents living on the edge of Great Falls. Now, Gray said, architects are working on plans for up to 30 single-family homes, as well as apartments and duplexes. Nearby, the tribe already operates a cultural center and the Shawn Gilbert Event Center.

“On that same area, we have a food distribution building that is growing in terms of being able to help those in need with food boxes,” Gray said. “It’s grown every week, it seems like. As costs have gone up, people are in need to get groceries.”

There are also plans for a ceremonial center to be built on those grounds. Hill said the tribe’s unique standing as a landless tribe scattered across the continent can be a strength, finding opportunities for growth among the mainstream cultures in which they’ve lived. And there’s much more to be done.

“Our list is long,” Hill said. “It keeps us quite busy. Our main objective is to get things in order to benefit our members.”

Still, Gray said working with federal bureaucracy is a positive but slow process. The agency wasn’t used to working with a newly recognized tribe in Montana without a reservation, he said.

“We’ve had a lot of citizens that expected things like a light switch to turn on and they would have immediate access to things that other tribes have built over hundreds of years,” Gray said. “Some of those aspects don’t work that way.”

But it’s a period of growth — a new era, as Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray wrote in his book, “Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home.” Given the long and fraught road the tribe has been down, La Tray expressed cautious optimism about the Little Shell’s new working relationship with the federal government.

“Of course we deserve to be seen by the feds, whatever the reasons for it,” he wrote. “We never chose to be a diaspora. We never left our homeland; it was taken from us. We never chose to live on the fringes; we were pushed there. Finally being seen is necessary and important.”

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