Bison calves being moved at the American Prairie Reserve (Photo courtesy of the American Prairie Reserve).
This past weekend, I attended the seventh annual MINT (Montana International Film Festival) in Billings, and if you haven’t attended this festival, I recommend you put it on your bucket list for the coming year. Founder Brian Murnion has done a remarkable job of creating something out of nothing, and he and his team have proven to have a fabulous eye for quality films. And it truly is international, with this year’s festival featuring a segment of Iranian films, a selection of indigenous shorts that included films Hawaii and Alaska, as well as films from Finland, Japan, Morrocco, Hong Kong, Israel, Argentina and Spain.
Two of the best films I saw this weekend were made by indigenous people. The first was a feature documentary by two rising stars in the film world, Montana’s own brother/sister tandem of Ivan and Ivy MacDonald. The MacDonalds have already had a series produced by Showtime, “Murders in the Bighorn,” but this new film, Bring Them Home, is a terrific account of the 40-year effort to bring the buffalo back to the Blackfeet reservation.
There was another short documentary about saving the Red Wolf, a species that nearly went extinct a few decades ago, but thanks to the efforts of many people who were passionate about keeping these remarkable animals alive, they are enjoying a renaissance, with the first litter of pups born in captivity just last year.
Both of these films got me to thinking about something that has puzzled me since I moved back to my home state in 2007 after being gone for 25 years. Because of that long absence, I had minimized in my mind the ugly way that Native Americans have been treated in our state. So I was stunned when I came back in 2007 at some of the bullsh– I heard coming out of peoples’ mouths about Natives. The thing that surprised me most was that people would deliver these comments with an attitude that it was just understood that I would agree with them. So it was clear that things had not evolved much since my childhood.
I am happy to say that it feels as if this has shifted dramatically in the 17 years since I moved back home, but there’s one aspect of this dynamic that still baffles me.
Ever since Montana was “settled,” there has obviously been a struggle to find a balance between those who see our land as a commodity and those who see it as a gift. People often point to the gold rush as the beginning of this battle, but it actually began earlier, with the fur trappers, who were the first to impinge on the Native culture. It just exploded exponentially with the discovery of all of the rich natural resources that we are blessed to have here in Montana. And I’m not going to bore anyone with the fact that the Copper Kings and many other wealthy industrialists since then have exploited our state and its people for their own advantage ever since. We all know this.
What troubles me is that there has never been a concerted effort to utilize one of the best resources we have in our state to explore the best ways to manage this balance between commerce and conservation. And of course I’m talking about the Native Americans themselves. For decades, we have listened to their explanations of how to treat the land with respect and responded with condescending smiles, as if it’s all very cute in theory. But we somehow manage to dismiss the fact that for centuries before colonialism, they really did have this all figured out, and a huge part of their approach was determining the best way to extract what they needed to survive while still treating the earth, the plants, and the animal world with respect.
Of course, the industrialists have never seen the value in this approach. To them, it’s all about quantity rather than quality. The more land, the more trophies on their walls, the more power, the better. Many of our current political leaders in the state obviously adhere to this philosophy, as our governor kills animals trapped by others, and our current candidate for senate aligns himself with one of the most odious organizations in the state, PERC (Property and Environmental Research Center), a cleverly named group that disguises the fact that they hold a strong belief in privatization of public lands.
Somewhere along the line, it would be fabulous to see someone in the business world have the foresight to realize that they might even have a chance of finding new ways to improve business by consulting with some of the elders that have sat by for all these years and watched us pillage the world around us as if we have every right to do that. The original inhabitants of this place would be appalled.