The reservation is home to both the Aaniiih (Gros Ventre) and Nakoda (Assiniboine) tribes, which share a single government as the Fort Belknap Indian Community. Fort Belknap encompasses 623,000 acres of mostly prairie grassland in north-central Montana. The moist meadow was surrounded by stands of aspen sweetgrass is often found in wetlands and along riverbanks, where it stabilizes the soil against erosion. “Can I come back next summer?” Savannah Spottedbird, a 17-year-old member of the Nakoda Tribe, shouted across the meadow, waving long blades of grass. ![]() Sweetgrass is braided, used in smudging ceremonies and presented as a gift by many Indigenous people, both here on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation as well as across the United States and Canada. ![]() ![]() One held strands of sweetgrass in her mouth as the plant’s scent, reminiscent of vanilla and oak, drifted through the air. Laughter and the chirping of grasshoppers mingled on a mild August morning as several young women, members of the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes, searched for sweetgrass, running vegetation through their fingers as they tried to determine whether they held satiny sweetgrass or rough sedges.
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