Photographs of residents of Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation were posted on the walls behind speakers Thursday during the third and final day of the Chippewa Cree Tribal History Summit.

The photographs depicted families, workers, industry and everyday life on the reservation.  They also told the story of the Tribe's struggle, said Alvin Windy Boy Sr., historic preservation officer for the Tribe.

By the Tribe's centennial on the reservation, Windy Boy said he hopes that it can be said that the Tribe is strong.

"We want to be able to show that yes, we faltered, we fell ... but we always hope to say we're over that; we're cured," he said.

Part of that success will be in preserving the Tribe's history and culture and sharing them with the world, he said.  The goal is to culturally assess the sites of proposed building projects and development to make sure that historically significant sites are not disturbed or that the effects of projects are mitigated, he said.

A recent project before the expansion of the East Fork Dam has helped preserve part of that history.

"We're not here to stop projects, but we are here to protect resources," said Bob O'Boyle, an archaeologist who worked on the project and has worked on several other projects for the Tribe.

Artifacts discovered at one site of importance were dated as far back as 5,500 years, he said.

In the case of the sites found during the East Fork project, the artifacts were excavated and catalogued, he said, as a way to mitigate the effects of the dam expansion.

One projectile point, possibly a knife, found is similar to other points found from the Northwest Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, he said, which indicates that there was some communication between various tribes.

He hesitated to connect the artifacts found to a specific tribe, though, saying that it's difficult to take a piece of flint and say that it definitely is an artifact from one tribe versus another, especially since many of the flints might be similar.

Taking oral histories and songs and knowledge from Tribal elders and incorporating them into the preservation process is important, though, he said.

Stones used for boiling food were found at one of the East Fork sites, he said, and night shade, a poisonous plant, was discovered on one after an analysis.

If the Chippewa Cree used night shade for a medicine or poison and there is a record of that, a correlation can be drawn, he said.

A protein analysis also revealed that big horn sheep had been boiled in a pot with one of the rocks analyzed for proteins, O'Boyle said.

"You can really get some pretty detailed information," he added.

O'Boyle said that the Tribe is looking into avenues to fund future excavations in the same area with the hope of discovering more and filling out a portrait of what people in the area thousands of years ago were doing.

"It engages people," he said, an important thing for carrying on cultural aspects of the Tribe.