Teton County Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the ancestral homeland of the Mountain Shoshone People, who have cared for and stewarded this place for thousands of years. We also honor the many other Nations who moved with intention across this land and made it their home, including the Kiowa, Lakota, Cheyenne, Bannock, Nez Perce, Crow, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, and others. We thank them for their enduring strength and resilience in protecting this land, and we aspire to uphold our responsibilities in their example. With gratitude, we honor these Indigenous Peoples and the land itself, and we pay our respects to their elders past and present.

We acknowledge the sovereignty of these Nations and the traditional territories that were taken in the creation of the Wind River and Fort Hall Indian Reservations through the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. This treaty, and others like it, were tools of dispossession that enabled colonial expansion—an ongoing harm as Native lands remain occupied through broken agreements.

As we gather in the valley beneath what is commonly called the Teton Mountain Range, we also remember that the Mountain Shoshone name for this range is Teewinot, meaning “many pinnacles.”

We affirm that this land acknowledgment is only meaningful when paired with accountability, relationship, and action. It is a first step toward honoring the land and the Indigenous peoples who have lived here and cared for it since time immemorial.