By ANGIE WAGNER
Associated Press
ROCKY BOY - Hunched over the kitchen table inside the small house on a hill, mother and son slowly thread colored beads together, she with weary fingers and tired eyes, he with strong, but delicate hands.
It's slow, tedious work that will take hours before the blur of yellow, red and blue begin to resemble purses, but this is a family tradition, one the Big Knife family has done together for generations on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation.
Hugh and Evelyn Big Knife never make much money on their crafts. But they hope that will change as millions of tourists travel the Lewis and Clark trail during the three-year bicentennial of the historic expedition to the West.
Hugh Big Knife, 35, runs the Chippewa Cree Native Arts Cooperative, a group trying to get a federal grant to open a store to market local tribal arts and crafts during the bicentennial.
"Someone coming in might like something we make," he said. "The arts and crafts center could provide an education to the public, tourists who pass through."
Tribes across the West may not all embrace Lewis and Clark, but they are hoping to cash in on the expected tourism.
"We're not exactly jumping up and down, but the reality is this thing is going to happen," said George Heavy Runner, a planner for the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana. "We just want to be players in that tourism market. We think we have something to offer."
Some tribes are developing tour packages for visitors to travel to different reservations and learn about Lewis and Clark from the tribe's perspective. Tribes know tourists will come anyway, and they don't want sacred sites destroyed, so they figure they might as well try to capitalize on tourism.
In South Dakota, the Lower Brule are training teenagers to become tour guides. At the reservation's high school, students are learning how to put up a tepee and tan buffalo hides and, most importantly, how to tell their tribe's history to tourists.
"We don't want to be honoring them for coming through this area. We want people to see our perspective," said Daphne Richards-Cook, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe tourism director and chairwoman of the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates.
"Let's bring 'em all in and market what we have," she said.
But doing that isn't easy for reservations that don't have the infrastructure to begin with - stores where crafts are sold, tour guides and traveler information.
"All of the rural areas are concerned with capacity issues on reservations," said Ed Hall, national coordinator for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. "I think it's managing and being able to identify where and when the visitors and the tribal businesses and artists can transact."
Hall is helping tribes apply for grants to open businesses and restaurants to meet tourism demands and talks to them about incorporating the 1804-06 journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark into events reservations already hold each year.
By the end of summer, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Indians in North Dakota will invite tourists to stay overnight in earth lodges they are building for the bicentennial. Lewis and Clark wintered with the Mandan Hidatsas, and during the bicentennial the tribes will tell their history to tourists along the trail.
"I would hope the people would take some time to learn about Indian culture," said Amy Mossett, tourism director for the Three Affiliated Tribes. "Why not learn something about them rather than continuing to believe a lot of the old stereotypes?"
The Confederated Tribes of Umatilla in Oregon already have a CD tourists can listen to as they travel the trail near the Umatilla Indian Reservation. They also offer a free map showing the expedition route through their homeland along with stories from tribal elders about Lewis and Clark.
Like the affiliated tribes in North Dakota, the Umatilla reservation is also developing a culture village of lodges, where Indians will demonstrate how to dry meat, fish and make tulle mats, said Bobbie Conner, director of the reservation's Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and secretary of the board for the National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
Hall said the publicity generated from tourism to Indian reservations will inspire people to visit tribes even after the bicentennial.
"Lewis and Clark is only one of many stories that we have to tell," said Heavy Runner, who is working to erect a panel exhibit about the Blackfeet history.
"We're here. We're vibrant people. We know who we are. We have a sense of land, of who we are, of history," he said. "We do not want to become part of the American melting pot. If that means not having the best of the material life, then so be it.
"We think we have something special."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.