Crow Indian Reservation, Montana
Located in the heart of the American West, The Crow Indian Reservation is the location for this unique five day cultural immersion educational experience. For these days, your group will be exposed to significant events in American history—up close and personal, that involved the clash of two cultures and two people groups—the Native Americans and the white settlers. More than just a week of learning about a key phase of American history, your group will experience different aspects of the Plains Indian culture, from building teepees to the significance of the horse as your group goes for a ride on the plains, to the use of indigenous plants as medicine. This is a week that will change your students’ lives because it will help them understand their own cultural bias, and learn a bit more to be more compassionate and understanding of cultures other than their own.
Contact your Global Journey representative to discuss how an itinerary can be developed that is just right for your group. We can design trips that focus on one or more of the following:
Our trips focus on one or more of the following: Cultural/Language Immersion;
Eco-Treks (Ecology and Service); and Community Service. Exciting Outdoor Adventure experiences can be added to any of our programs.
SAMPLE 7 days/6 nights cultural immersion trip Crow Indian Reservation
Day 1
Your group flies into Billings, Montana and checks into a local area motel. That evening you will receive orientation and your agenda for the week as you visit Sacrifice Cliff and begin to be exposed to Native American Culture.
Day 2
Morning:
Your group travels by vans to the Crow Nation Reservation, located only 15 miles from Billings in Pryor. There the cultural immersion experience begins in earnest.
Visit the Chief Plenty Coup museum that morning and hear about Indian history from a Native historian. While on your way to your site, you take a horseback ride on the High Plains, and hear first hand the significance of the Pony and its importance to the economy of the Plains Indians. Along the way you will learn how to identify what plants are edible and beneficial from the first people group that had “gone green” by learning to live in harmony with Nature, with nothing wasted.
Afternoon:
Weather permitting you set up your teepees in which you will live for the next two days, and as you set them up, you learn how every component of their “homes” had significance.
Evening:
Debrief session in a “talking circle.”
Day 3
Morning:
This is a day of both education and great adventure. Your group hears from Native presenters. Each of your students will then build their own “medicine wheel” which will help them understand themselves better, and their own cultural bias. Later that morning they travel to the Grape Vine Battle field before heading to Fort Smith for lunch.
Afternoon:
You head up the Big Horn Canyon on pontoon boats to Black Canyon, where a Native guide takes the group on a nature walk and learn about survival in the wilds.
Evening:
The day concludes with another “talking circle.”
Day 4
Morning:
Another full day of cultural immersion. After another presentation by a Native, your group travels to Fort Smith again where they will watch the short movie: Contrary Warriors, then tour the Yellowtail Dam. One of the issues addressed here is the clash of two cultures.
Afternoon:
They hear a presentation by one of the nation’s foremost experts in Native medicines and the use of natural herbs and plants.
Evening:
They learn about Native dancing and arts and crafts and have the opportunity to participate in them if they wish. As this day closes, the talking circle again provides great group closure to their day’s experiences.
Day 5
Morning:
Your week continues with a powerful experience: a visit to the Custer Battlefield in Crow Agency.
Afternoon:
They will hear all about the Battle of the Little Big Horn told from the Indian perspective.
Evening:
Another full day concludes with a talking circle
Day 6
Morning:
Today your group heads for the high country as you travel up the Beartooth Highway to over 10,000 feet elevation through Red Lodge. Stop at the top and enjoy the unbelievable alpine scenery (when you aren’t watching out for getting hit with a snowball from others in your group).
Afternoon:
Travel to Cody Wyoming where your group will put on their cowboy boots and hats and attend the nightly rodeo in Cody.
Evening:
In another talking circle, the group has an opportunity to contrast the cultural differences they experienced this day
Day 7
Morning:
Depending on your flight out of Billings back home, your group concludes this American West Immersion trip with a tour through the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Cited as the “Smithsonian of the American West,” the museum holds one of the greatest Western Art Collections and Gun Collections in the world.
Afternoon:
Return home after six memorable days.
• Programs may be modified to fit specific needs •
