Homelands

These rivers run through homelands

The North Fork, Middle Fork, and South Fork of the Flathead drain almost 6 million acres of some of North America's most ecologically diverse and intact ecoregions in northwest Montana and southeastern British Columbia, Canada. These basins include the traditional lands of the Séliš (Salish), Ql̓ispé (Pend d’Oreille or Kalispel), and Ktunaxa (Kootenai) tribes, and they were frequented by the Amskapi Piikani (the Blackfeet Nation of Montana) Peoples.
Flathead Rivers Alliance, from their story map. A duplicated word is the only change.

Hear it from the nations

Four nations · their own sites

Each of these nations publishes its own history, language, and current work. Those are the sources worth the time. This guide is about river access, and it is not the place to learn whose country this is.

Séliš

Also written Salish

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

csktribes.org

Why this page is short

A river access guide is not the right author for a history of the people whose country it crosses. Anything further published here about these nations will come from the Flathead Rivers Alliance and their tribal partners, and it will run exactly as supplied. Nothing on this page is written on anyone's behalf.

And why there is no territory map

Ancestral territories do not have edges the way a boat ramp has edges. The widely used community-sourced datasets disagree with each other and, in this corridor, with the Alliance's own acknowledgment above. Drawing a boundary here would make a claim this guide has no standing to make. If the nations and FRA want boundaries shown, they will say where they go.

Native Land Digital maintains a community-curated territory map worth exploring. Their own guidance is that it is not authoritative and is not a substitute for consulting the nations directly.