 Trosper traces his ancestry to noted American Indian leaders who valued education as a means of defending tribal sovereignty during American expansion in the 1800s.Trosper is the great-great grandson of Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone, who emphasized the importance of education, and was responsible for the 1868 negotiations with the United States that created the Wind River Indian Reservation.Washakie was trilingual, speaking Shoshone, French, and English, which he learned from trapping alongside people like Jim Bridger during the 1830s fur trade era.