Bonnie Combes HeavyRunner (died November 24, 1997) founded the Native American Studies program at the University of Montana. She was the director of the Native American Studies department and pioneered the creation of The Payne Family Native American Center on the University of Montana campus. She was a member of the Blackfeet Nation and worked to create a support system for Native American students on the University of Montana campus until her death of ovarian cancer on November 24, 1997. [1]
Bonnie "Sim-sin" HeavyRunner grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana. She grew up with her parents, Gene and Gertie HeavyRunner, and 12 brothers and sisters. Both of her parents were taken from their tribes in Montana and educated in boarding schools in Kansas and Pennsylvania before returning to Montana. She received her law degree from the University of Montana before becoming the director of the Native American Studies department. She battled ovarian cancer for over five years before she died in 1997, a year after Native American Studies became available as a major on the University of Montana campus. [1]
Bonnie HeavyRunner is perhaps best known for her work with the Native American Studies Program that she launched at the University of Montana. She sought scholarships and mentoring for the close to 300 Native American students on campus at the time. She also had the idea to give Native American students a place to call their own, which led to The Payne Family Native American Center. [1] She was credited with educating people on the importance and necessity of such a facility. For this reason, the Native American Center's main lobby was dedicated in her memory as "The Bonnie "Sim-Sin" HeavyRunner Gathering Place." [2]
She helped organize the first Kyi-Yo Academic Conferences on the University of Montana campus that bring together Native American scholars. [3] The Kyi-Yo Native American Student Association also hosts an annual Kyi-Yo Pow Wow that includes a "Bonnie HeavyRunner Memorial Tipi Race" where students compete to erect a tipi the fastest in her honor. [4]
Browning is a former town in Glacier County, Montana, United States. It is the headquarters for the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and was the only incorporated town on the Reservation. The population was 1,018 at the 2020 census.
The Marias Massacre was a massacre of Piegan Blackfeet Native peoples which was committed by the United States Army as part of the Indian Wars. The massacre occurred on January 23, 1870, in Montana Territory. Approximately 200 Native people were killed, most of whom were women, children, and older men.
A tipi, often called a lodge in English, is a conical tent, historically made of animal hides or pelts, and in more recent generations of canvas, stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The word is Siouan, and in use in Dakhótiyapi, Lakȟótiyapi, and as a loanword in US and Canadian English, where it is sometimes spelled phonetically as teepee and tepee.
The University of Montana (UMT) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fall of 2018. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" as of 2022.
The Blackfeet Nation, officially named the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, is a federally recognized tribe of Siksikaitsitapi people with an Indian reservation in Montana. Tribal members primarily belong to the Piegan Blackfeet band of the larger Blackfoot Confederacy that spans Canada and the United States.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
Earl Old Person was an American Indian political leader and the honorary lifetime chief of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, United States.
Elouise Pepion Cobell, also known as Yellow Bird Woman, was a tribal elder and activist, banker, rancher, and lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class-action suit Cobell v. Salazar (2009). This challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans. She pursued the suit from 1996, challenging the government to account for fees from resource leases.
Blackfeet Community College is a private tribal land-grant community college on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana. The Blackfeet reservation occupies an area of 1,525,712 acres adjacent to Glacier National Park, Lewis and Clark National Forest, and the province of Alberta, Canada. In 1994, the college was designated a land-grant college alongside 31 other tribal colleges.
Denise Juneau is an American attorney, educator, and politician from the U.S. state of Montana who served as the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2009 to 2017. She is a Democrat and the first female Native American elected to statewide office in the United States. Her mother is Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, while her father is Blackfoot.
Madison Buffalo Jump State Park is a Montana state park located seven miles south of the Interstate 90 interchange at Logan in Gallatin County, Montana in the United States. The park preserves a canyon cliff used by Native Americans as a buffalo jump, where herds of bison were stampeded over the cliff as an efficient means of slaughter. The main geographic features of the jump site remain largely unchanged since the days of the jumps. Archaeologists have found tons of bison bones buried at the base of the cliffs. They have also uncovered the remains of tipi villages.
Missoula College is the junior college of the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. The college was founded in 1956 and became part of the University of Montana in 1994. It offers 35 programs including career, transfer, and technical programs. The five academic departments include the Department of Applied Computing and Electronics, Department of Industrial Technology, Department of Applied Arts and Sciences, Department of Business Technology, and Department of Health Professions. The college also provides workforce development for the region as well as dual credit courses for hundreds of high school students in the area, and works to support adults seeking new career opportunities or professional development. During the Fall 2010 semester, 2,444 students were enrolled at Missoula College.
The Payne Family Native American Center, located at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, is the first facility built exclusively for a department of Native American Studies and American Indian Student Services in the United States.
Tipi rings are circular patterns of stones left from an encampment of Post-Archaic, protohistoric and historic Native Americans. They are found primarily throughout the Plains of the United States and Canada, and also in the foothills and parks of the Rocky Mountains.
John Canfield Ewers was an American ethnologist and museum curator. Known for his studies on the art and history of the American Plains Indians, he was described by The New York Times as one of his country's "foremost interpreters of American Indian culture."
Jessie Spaulding Wilber was an American printmaker and educator.
Olga Ross Hannon was an art professor at Montana State College from 1921 to 1947. As an artist she is known for mountain landscape and Indian culture paintings.
Jessica Louise Donaldson Schultz Graham (1887–1976) was an English professor at Montana State College and social worker on Native reservations in Montana and Wyoming.
Mountain Chief was a South Piegan warrior of the Blackfoot Tribe. Mountain Chief was also called Big Brave (Omach-katsi) and adopted the name Frank Mountain Chief. Mountain Chief was involved in the 1870 Marias Massacre, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, and worked with anthropologist Frances Densmore to interpret folksong recordings.