Travel along the eastern edge of Glacier National Park in northwest Montana, and at intervals, you’ll find the Blackfeet Campgrounds. Owned by the Blackfeet Nation and located on the 1.5-million-acre Blackfeet Indian Reservation, each of the four campgrounds — Chewing Black Bones, Duck Lake, Red Eagle and Buffalo Calf — combines traditional recreation with cultural experience, all amid some of the country’s most iconic terrain. Each is distinct in its way, but all of the no-frills campgrounds offer incredible views, peaceful settings and easy access to outdoor adventures, both inside and outside of Glacier.
But these inviting campgrounds aren’t just picturesque places to recreate. They're a story of how Blackfeet tribal members are fostering a tourism economy on the reservation and taking the reins in sharing their culture.
The Blackfeet Campgrounds had a level of popularity in the ’70s and ’80s, but the sites eventually fell into disrepair. A handful of years ago, Gayle Skunkcap, Jr., a member of the Blackfeet tribe, was asked by his boss at Blackfeet Manpower to take over campground management and make them desirable once more. Gayle knew he had his work cut out for him.
“I accepted it as a challenge,” Gayle says, on a fall day at Chewing Black Bones Campground. “It was nothing, not even a shoestring to get [the campgrounds] started.”
Gayle found ways around the lack of funding and resources to repair the worn-down bones of the campgrounds. He partnered with a tribal job corps program that brought in workers and paid them to help with mowing, painting, repairs and cleanup.
He didn’t have the budget to replace outdated RV pedestals, so he hunted down old bus fuses that could get them running. The first year Gayle operated the campgrounds, he concentrated on getting the Chewing Black Bones Campground cleaned up — and he kept extra fuses on hand for the frequent occasions when an RV would blow one on the electric hookups.
But cleanup wasn’t the only thing keeping Gayle busy. He didn’t have experience with camping or tourism, so he dove into educating himself. He reached out to other tribes and his friends and networks to gather ideas, picked up campground and tourism pamphlets on his travels around Montana, attended a tribal tourism conference and talked with visitors who stayed at the campgrounds. He already knew the value of the campgrounds to tribal members — they are places to get outside, gather together and enjoy the landscapes that are integral to their cultural identity. The more he learned and researched, though, the more he recognized the Blackfeet Campgrounds offered non-native visitors a unique cultural and recreational experience right on the doorstep of Glacier National Park — which was seeing upward of 3 million tourists every year.
Caption: Gayle Skunkcap, Jr.
“It’s a great place to be able to come here and relax and get away. We have the beautiful Lower St. Mary Lake right here. It has all the amenities that you need and [it’s] very family-oriented. It’s an awesome place,” says Jenna Skunkcap, Gayle’s daughter, about Chewing Black Bones Campground.
“It’s a great area for our people and also a great landmark to showcase what the Blackfeet Reservation has to offer.” -Jenna
Jenna is a teacher on the reservation in Heart Butte, a remote town about an hour south of Chewing Black Bones. With her dad, she also runs Pikuni Legacy, a Blackfeet cultural consulting business that gives cultural presentations, including traditional dance performances, and works with other tribal nations to bring Indian Relay Championships across the region and into Canada. And like her dad, she's become an advocate for native-led tourism on the reservation.
For Jenna, tourism is an opportunity to “share our history and culture with non-natives and tourists that want to partake in this fantastic scenery,” she says. That “scenery,” including Glacier National Park and the reservation, has deep cultural significance for the Blackfeet tribe. “It’s the backbone of the Earth, so we just want to be able to share it, but we want to share it the right way,” she adds. For her, that means Blackfeet-led businesses providing experiences — like guided cultural hikes, bike rides, horseback rides or interpretive bus tours — where people can enjoy the places they’re visiting and learn about them from a native perspective.
Jenna also recognizes tourism’s potential to benefit the wider Blackfeet tribe. She wants to see the Blackfeet Tribal Council reinvest some of the revenue from tourism — generated by stays at the Blackfeet Campgrounds, for example — into the Blackfeet community where it’s needed most, which, for her, would be youth programs and infrastructure. The Blackfeet Nation faces challenges related to poverty and high unemployment, and as a teacher, Jenna sees firsthand the opportunities to help students set and reach goals for their future.
Caption: Jenna Skunkcap
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Revenue from Gayle’s first season of campground operation was rolled back into the cleanup effort for other sites. He worked on restoring the Duck Lake Campground, and soon after that, he was able to tackle the Red Eagle Campground, near the Two Medicine entrance to Glacier National Park.
Today, the restored campgrounds welcome tribal members and non-native visitors to connect with the land and with the Blackfeet culture that reveres it. Across the four campgrounds, visitors can choose from RV and tent sites, cabins and tipis. Campsites range from more developed to more primitive ones to accommodate any taste. Fishing, kayaking, boating and hiking opportunities abound, as do views of mountains and prairie so stunning they can — and will — stop you in your tracks. Buffalo Calf, the fourth of the restored campgrounds, opened a new visitor center in 2024 that shares information on the cultural heritage of the area. In the real world and online, Glacier tourists are finding the Blackfeet Campgrounds more easily, thanks to campground signage, a website and social media. Word of mouth helps too.
The restoration of the campgrounds served as a bit of a catalyst, and tourism on the Blackfeet reservation has made strides since.
“Tourism here on the Amskapi Piikani [Blackfeet] reservation is something that’s been up and coming within the last five years,” Jenna says. “We have a lot of small business owners that are here and ready to go. The art industry is really booming, cultural consulting is booming, we have some new companies that came in,” she says, mentioning a woman who has started offering guided bike tours and cabin lodging. Jenna’s message to visitors: “We just want to welcome you to Blackfeet Country!”
Prompted by his learning curve with the campgrounds project, the conversations he had with other tribes about it and a desire to help Montana, Gayle spurred the creation of the Montana Indigenous Tourism Alliance. MITA brings together members from tribes across the state to share knowledge and work together to promote, develop and advocate for tribal tourism. In 2023, MITA won the Tribal Tourism Award at the Governor’s Conference on Tourism and Recreation.
For Gayle, it was welcome recognition for his commitment to giving tribal tourism a firm footing on the Blackfeet reservation — and throughout Montana — and ensuring that the native perspective is at the heart of it. “We started this organization for all the tribes,” Gayle says, “and we hope it goes on the up and up.”
The Blackfeet Campgrounds consist of four separate campgrounds conveniently located near the St. Mary, Many Glacier and Two Medicine entrances on Glacier National Park’s east side.
Visit blackfeetcampgrounds.com to reserve a site for RV, tent or tipi camping or to book a cabin rental.
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