Fort Belknap Agency
Montana
Fort Belknap Agency is the administrative center of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, homeland of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine nations in north-central Montana. The reservation takes its name from a military fort on the Milk River named for William Belknap, Secretary of War in the eighteen seventies. A congressional act in eighteen eighty-eight formally set aside roughly six hundred fifty thousand acres for the two tribes, who had previously ranged across vast stretches of northern Montana and southern Canada.
The Gros Ventre, who call themselves Aaniiih, and the Assiniboine, who call themselves Nakoda, were traditional enemies who found themselves neighbors by federal decree. Over generations they built a shared reservation community, sending delegates to Washington together, chartering a tribal college, and managing lands that include the Little Rocky Mountains and the upper Milk River drainage. The agency sits about forty miles from the Canadian border.
