Researcher on Indigenous bison stewardship receives Montana State’s 2026 Distinctive Collections Travel and Access Award

BOZEMAN - A researcher on Indigenous bison stewardship has received the Montana State University Library's Distinctive Collections Travel and Access Award, which he will use to support his research.

Josias Agustin Mendez, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University whose work draws on both geography and history, received the $3,000 honorarium. The award, which is being given for the sixth time, will help fund Mendez's summer travel to Bozeman, where he will use the MSU Archives and Special Collections' considerable materials related to bison in Montana and the region.

Specifically, the award will support research for the second chapter of Mendez's dissertation, "Herds on the Range," which analyzes how members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes responded to the cultural, political and spatial consequences of the establishment of the National Bison Range in 1908 on reservation land.

The award is a collaborative effort between the MSU Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, the Archives and Special Collections at MSU and the Friends of MSU Library. It is jointly funded by the Friends of MSU Library and the Doig Center.

The MSU Library offers research and information resources to university students and employees, as well as to Montana citizens and interested scholars. Its Archives and Special Collections contain manuscripts on the West and the Greater Yellowstone region, including collections focused on agricultural history; trout and salmonids; select records of MSU; area-focused books; angling; and more. For more information, see https://www.lib.montana.edu/archives/.

Named for writer Ivan Doig, MSU's Doig Center fosters the study of the American West, emphasizing connections across the humanities, arts, social sciences and natural sciences. For more information, see https://www.montana.edu/doig/.

Friends of Montana State University Library was founded in 1994 and helps develop the library's collections, spaces, programs and community presence. For more information, see https://www.lib.montana.edu/about/friends.