Sally Thompson

The Rocky Mountains are my home. After growing up in Denver, ski-bumming in Aspen, completing graduate school in Boulder, then working as an archaeologist in the Four Corners region, I headed north in 1979 to enjoy the more open spaces of Montana and never looked back. Through the years, I have worked as an archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnohistorian, filmmaker, educator, and as a tribal consultant and collaborator.

My narrative nonfiction writing focuses on the contrasting worldviews embedded in American history. My 2015 book, People Before the Park, was a collaboration with the Kootenai Culture Committee and the Pikunni Traditionalist Association of the Blackfeet Tribe. While at the University of Montana (2001-2010), I interviewed over 250 tribal elders and educators and together we produced extensive curriculum materials for Montana teachers.

In Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories that Awaken Montana’s Past (Farcountry Press, 2024), I bring readers along on adventures in the field. These stories tell the flipside of what we generally see in print, like the Assiniboine perspective on the arrival of Lewis and Clark in 1805, what the famous Jesuit Pierre Jean De Smet learned from the Kootenais, and how Abraham Maslow concocted his famous model for understanding what humans need to flourish. I focus on the lives behind the treaties, the actions behind the words, and the beliefs that shape experiences in the world and with each other. This book won best Historical Nonfiction from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards!

My most recent book, Black Robes Enter Coyote's World: Chief Charlo and Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains (Bison Books, 2024) weaves a tapestry of the surprising historical threads that joined together in the mid-19th century in what is now Montana. This book won a Will Rogers Medallion Award and is finalist in two categories for the High Plains Book Awards.