Charm of the Wilderness - Ep. 3 - Indigenous History of Yellowstone National Park and Beyond with Shane Doyle

Charm of the Wilderness - Ep. 3 - Indigenous History of Yellowstone National Park and Beyond with Shane Doyle

From Cramming for the Apocalypse Podcast by Elizabeth Doerr

May 30, 2026 · 35 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the Indigenous history of Yellowstone National Park, highlighting the erasure of Native peoples and the significance of recent archaeological findings.

In January 2021, The Smithsonian Magazine published an article called “ The Lost History of Yellowstone .” I was already in the middle of an awakening about the origins of how the land of North America became settler land (i.e., it was stolen from Indigenous peoples). The article interviews and follows researchers who had recently uncovered artifacts that proved what is now called Yellowstone National Park was a major thoroughfare for Native communities traveling through the Northern Plains region. These artifacts were not only interesting archeology, but they proved that the land so many of us were taught was uninhabited before it became a national park was, in fact, inhabited, and it was sacred ground. It thwarted the myth that we were all sold, which actually covered up the atrocities committed by the U.S. government to force Native peoples out of the region. In that story, then-research associate, Shane Doyle, who is a member of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation, was also interviewed. The story’s author, Andrew Geiger read a quote from a current-day Yellowstone brochure to Doyle and his colleague Doug MacDonald: “When you watch animals in Yellowstone, you glimpse the world as it…

People in this episode

Host: Elizabeth Doerr

Guest: Shane Doyle

Topics covered

  • Indigenous history
  • Yellowstone National Park
  • Native American culture
  • Archaeology
  • Land dispossession
  • Cultural erasure

Keywords

  • Yellowstone
  • Indigenous peoples
  • archaeological artifacts
  • land history
  • Native communities
  • cultural significance
  • settler colonialism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Smithsonian Magazine, Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation

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