Montana is one of VISIONS' oldest program sites, and a truly special place. The glimpses you will have of Native American culture and community are to be greatly anticipated. Some people and places you’ll meet along the way will be like no others you’ve encountered. We welcome the contributions you can make to this long-standing and cherished program.

Your home is either at the Flat Iron Ranch*, which also benefits from our service, or in a school or Head Start facility on the reservation. Regardless, there are gender-separate spaces, either separate classrooms or opposite ends of the center, and privacy spaces for guys and gals. VISIONS provides burly air mattresses; you bring a pillow, twin sheets, and a sleeping bag. You’ll have a cubby for your personal stuff and handy access to bathrooms and showers. Our living space is always simple, clean and sufficient. We do laundry once a week.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head to your chosen community service project with your work team and a staffer or two. We typically work five or six hours, with short breaks and at least one hour for lunch. A rotating group of three or four students and one staffer stays back from projects each day for what we call "home base". These folks clean our living space, prepare lunch, and also help our dinner cook with meal preparations and clean up afterwards.

After work we make time for other activities, such as short hikes or swimming in nearby rivers, visiting elders, stopping for snacks at local spots, showering, and sometimes just relaxing before dinner. Several evenings each week after dinner, we set aside time to meet as a group of volunteers. This is a slow-down time to speak and listen to each other, share our reactions to the day or iron out occasional issues together. You’ll have the opportunity to call home once a week.

There will be constant opportunities to explore and learn about Plains Indians culture. We learn crafts from local artisans, go to a Blackfeet rodeo, explore Browning--the commercial and governmental center of the rez and most other places of interest within and outside the reservation. You will meet tribal members who are native speakers, historians, medicine people and healers. You will take part in a traditional sweat in a sweat lodge, learn about medicinal plants and how tipis are constructed, visit the Museum of the Plains Indian, and try your hand at beading under the tutelage of a Blackfeet beader.

Weekends are all about exploring. There is a backpacking trip into the gorgeous wildernesses of either Glacier National Park or the Bob Marshall. You can ride horseback with the Gross Guns family on their ranch adjacent to Glacier National Park. We will travel through Glacier Park on our way to a rock climbing site on the edge of Lake Koocanusa in northwestern Montana, attend a Blackfeet pow wow either in Browning or in Heart Butte--a traditional three-day gathering of tribal members (and relatives from other tribes) where you’ll see spectacular regalia (traditional clothing), dancing and stick games, hear native drumming, and eat “Indian Tacos” made from frybread.

* Flat Iron Ranch is 1,100-acre parcel on the eastern Rocky Mountain front on the Blackfeet reservation. It respresents a unique conservation partnership between the Blackfeet Indian Nation and the Nature Conservancy, which holds the land in trust for the tribe.  The property will ultimately be a cultural and environmental educational center to educate Blackfeet youth and others about the environment and specifically the unique indigenous plants that grow on the reservation.