Sally Thompson

The Rocky Mountains are my home. After growing up in Denver, ski-bumming in Aspen, completing graduate school in Boulder, then working as an archaeologist in the Four Corners region, I headed north in 1979 to enjoy the more open spaces of Montana and never looked back. Through the years, I have worked as an archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnohistorian, filmmaker, educator, and as a tribal consultant and collaborator. My narrative nonfiction writing focuses on the contrasting worldviews embedded in American history. My 2015 book, People Before the Park, was a collaboration with the Kootenai Culture Committee and the Pikunni Traditionalist Association of the Blackfeet Tribe. While at the University of Montana (2001-2010), I interviewed over 250 tribal elders and educators and together we produced extensive curriculum materials for Montana teachers. In my new book Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories that Awaken Montana’s Past, I bring readers along on adventures in the field. These stories tell the flipside of what we generally see in print, like the Blackfeet perspective of their encounter with Meriwether Lewis in 1806, what the famous Jesuit Pierre Jean De Smet learned from the Salish and the Kootenai, and how Abraham Maslow concocted his famous model for understanding what humans need to flourish. I focus on the lives behind the treaties, the actions behind the words, and the beliefs that shape experiences in the world and with each other.