Many Kalispel people living in Montana are descendants of the Idaho Kalispel, who were exiled from that state after the 1887 Sandpoint treaty.
For generations, the state of Idaho refused to recognize its Kalispel Indian heritage and consequently excluded the Kalispel from their official list of native residents. But in recent years, north Idaho residents became more insistent that their factual ties to the Kalispel be recognized by the state bureaucracy.
And, at the same time, an organization called the Mythweavers stepped up its activities in Idaho, joining natives and non-natives in a cooperative effort to increase public awareness of Idaho's much neglected Kalispel heritage.
Members of the Mythweavers have been working since 1989, when they began their educational efforts as a non-profit association. By the year 2000, this organization was drawing many local residents [ many sympathetic to native American issues] as well as Montana, Washington, and Idaho Kalispel descendants to ceremonials at the junction of the Clark Fork river with lake Pend Oreille. This site is known by locals as Indian Meadows, the historic gathering place of native peoples in the era just before the American invasion of Idaho.
