We All Believed Indian: The Life and Prosperity of a Mixed Blood Tribal Elder on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana, 1897–1995

This book is a window into the Flathead Indian Reservation of western Montana in the twentieth century. The manuscript has been taken from the transcripts of a series of thirteen audio and video interviews conducted with Charles Duncan McDonald between 1982 and 1991. He tells much about his life, experiences, and the Flathead Reservation ordeal during the twentieth century.

McDonald was a widely respected elder of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. During his long life (1897–1995), he was an eyewitness to almost a century of economic and political change on the reservation. He experienced the loss of his allotment and the hard times of the second decade of the last century and the Depression years in the 1920s and the 1930s.

As a tribal councilman and later as a tribal employee, he witnessed the slow growth of the economic and political power of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes between 1935 and the end of the twentieth century. In his later years his excellent memory and willingness to share his experiences made him a frequent source of reservation history.