Irrigation, Timber, and Hydropower: Negotiating Natural Resource Development on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, 1904–1945

Irrigation, Timber, and Hydropower is the story of the Flathead Irrigation Project and the Flathead Lake Dam, two early twentieth-century enterprises whose consequences are still felt today on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana.

The Flathead Irrigation Project was originally promoted by Sen. Joseph M. Dixon as benefiting the Flathead Reservation tribes, but it soon became a medium for using tribal funds and assets to benefit white homesteaders. Garrit Voggesser traces the history of natural resource conflicts on the reservation and recounts how competing interests fought at the expense of the tribes.

In the 1920s and early 1930s a national controversy swirled around the dam site at the foot of Flathead Lake. The lease for the dam site was granted to the Montana Power Company over the objections of the tribes, but the tribes retained ownership and were able to negotiate from a position of strength fifty years later when the lease came up for renewal. Voggesser describes the struggles of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that ultimately secured their control of reservation resources and helped to build a better future for tribal members.