Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center

About this museum

Within Yellowstone National Park - a landscape managed primarily as a geothermal and ecological wonder - the Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center occupies a genuinely distinctive position, insisting that visitors understand the human history of this landscape before and beyond the park's 1872 founding. For more than 11, 000 years, Indigenous peoples inhabited, traveled through, and maintained spiritual relationships with the land that became Yellowstone, and the center was established to make that truth central to the visitor experience rather than a footnote. The exhibits draw on the knowledge and perspectives of the many tribal nations with historic ties to the greater Yellowstone region, including the Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho, Crow, Bannock, and others, presenting a view of the landscape that predates and enriches everything the park's geothermal wonders might otherwise overshadow. With a rating of 4.8 stars from visitors who have sought it out, the Tribal Heritage Center has clearly made an impression on travelers willing to look beyond the geyser basins and wildlife corridors. Admission is free, consistent with National Park Service interpretive programming. Visit the NPS website at nps.gov/places/000/yellowstone - tribal - heritage - center.htm for current hours and location within the park, as the center's schedule and access may vary seasonally. The Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center is located within Yellowstone National Park. A visit here works best when paired with time on the landscape itself - the center provides the human and cultural context that transforms a sequence of geothermal spectacles into a place with deep meaning and long memory.