Medicine Lodge Archaeological Site recently opened a new immersive cultural center focused on historic and ongoing Indigenous connections to the area.
The state park is in the Bighorn Basin, just north of Hyattville, and is home to a large 750-foot sandstone cliff with hundreds of Native American petroglyphs and pictographs. Archaeological digs have revealed that there’s more than 10,000 years of human history at the site.
With the push of a button, visitors can take a multi-sensory journey back in time through the “Medicine Lodge Cultural Experience,” which is in a newly built addition to the big red barn that also houses the park’s headquarters.
“The people that once lived here belong to the land and the land did not belong to them,” states the opening narration. “They learned from and lived in harmony with animals, plants and landforms. This is an ancestral home of many people and cultures. While you are here, it is important for you to be respectful and show reverence and to honor this space.”
The roughly twenty-minute tour circles through a series of rooms based on the four seasons, starting with spring. In each room, animated videos depict early daily Indigenous life at the site with scenes of hunting, gathering, and community. They’re accompanied by mood lighting, natural sounds and even essential oils to engage all the senses.
The exhibit ends with videos of interviews with Native folks who have continued connections to the area, including members of the Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho and Apsáalooke, also known as the Crow Tribe, Nations.
In one interview, enrolled Apsáalooke member Shane Doyle, who holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Montana State University, explains how Indigenous people of the Northern Plains traveled seasonally in order to survive during the winter.
“They camped down by the rivers and secluded areas, like this place here at the Medicine Lodge. But when summer came around, they transferred their camps on up into the high grounds and got away from the mosquitoes and were able to trade with their partners,” he said.
Robyn Rofkar is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and is also featured in the final room of the exhibit.
“I think one way for people to show respect and to honor the Shoshone people is just to come visit and come learn about our culture,” she said in the video.
Rofkar works at the Eastern Shoshone Cultural Center and helped consult on the project. She also voiced some of the animations in the new exhibit. In an interview after its opening, she said she hopes more people can come away with a better understanding of Medicine Lodge’s importance.
“It's such an important site for people to see, so they get appreciation of petroglyphs and just the ancient people that have lived in the area for thousands of years. And then maybe they're more apt to be respectful of other petroglyphs that are located all over the state,” she said.
More than a thousand rock art sites have been documented across Wyoming, with locations in every county in the state. But almost a quarter of them have been vandalized by things like initials chiseled into stone or bullet marks. Members of the legislative Select Committee on Tribal Relations looked into the issue at an interim meeting in Fort Washakie in May and came away with a plan to draft a bill to address vandalism before their next meeting in October.
Brooks Jordan is the Wyoming State Parks Bighorn District Manager and was previously the superintendent at Medicine Lodge. He came up with the initial idea for the cultural center in 2019.
“What I noticed was missing was our ability to connect our visitors with the history and the culture that is so deep and has been here for so long. We did a really good job of interpreting archeology and the natural sciences, but what was missing was that human element,” he said.
The park received a $600,000 donation from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to bring the idea to life. Progress was delayed due to the pandemic, but the park started construction in 2021 and opened the center at the end of April this year.
Jordan said staff didn’t want to assume they knew what stories should be told, so they spent a lot of time consulting with elders and members from different tribes in the area – some as far as the Blackfeet and Northern Cheyenne Nations.
“That really helped color what we ended up with here in the exhibit trying to focus on family and day-to-day living and some of the introductory spiritual components of life, too,” he said.
Heather Jolley is the current superintendent at Medicine Lodge. She said she’s especially excited about the interviews at the end of the exhibit.
“It's like a journey through time, from old to today. The idea with the interviews was to show people that there's still tribal people today and they still are active in their traditions,” she said.
Medicine Lodge’s cultural center is open during the regular operating hours of the state park, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
