Reservation Dogs

IONCE DESCRIBED BROWNING, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation’s most populated and centrally located town, to a Balkan friend of mine, and he said it sounded like parts of war-torn Bosnia. The reservation is adjacent to Montana’s Glacier National Park; if you’re coming from the southwest, it starts just before you reach East Glacier Park Village. As you drive north toward Browning, there’s a great wall of mountainous peaks off to the west. Chief Mountain stands alone at the end of the range, signaling the border between the United States and Canada, and the end of the reservation. These mountains, which tower above the Great Plains to the east, are known to the Blackfeet as the “Backbone of the World.”

Powerful winds—sometimes even hurricane strength—sweep down from the mountains year-round. The general seediness of the reservation towns is due in part to the lack of any strategy to ameliorate the effects of these winds, which are strong enough to rip the stucco off the side of the casino. Every field is strewn with trash, which eventually passes through town and collects in the western faces of chain-link fences. Everywhere, the stop signs, mile markers, and other street signs are surrounded by broken Bud Light and Twisted Tea bottles, thrown by passing drivers testing their accuracy.

belong to the Blackfeet Nation, and my father is white. I was raised in Missoula, a few hours south of the reservation, but until I was about eleven, I regularly spent summer and winter breaks staying with relatives in both Browning and East Glacier. It