Rooting in Motion: Montana

Rooting in Motion: Montana

Jun 18, 2021

In this edition of Rooting in Motion, we're going to Montana! Stopping in a Norwegian family farm, traveling to the town of Polson, Glacier National Park, a 4-mile hike with Diego the cat :O, a buffalo range, and a haircut from an 8-year-old. Read on to join our adventures...

At the bottom of my story here, I've left instructions for how to research and get in touch with your local Indigenous communities. I'm making it a point to find out the basics of Indigenous roots of each place we stay in, with the goal of un-settling my own view of land and how it came to be "settled." BUT it would be super exhausting for me to try to do in-depth research or to create a relationship with the original stewards of every place we pass through, so I'm counting on you. See a place you live in? Do more research, make a donation, give land back, get in relationship. OR just use those steps to do the work in your home town NOW. Thanks :)

And if you're a nomad yourself, check out this Rooting Ritual you can do to unsettle/decolonize for yourself.

Missoula

On May 10, we rolled into the SoJo Norwegian Farm, settled on Ktunaxa (k-too-nah-ha) land that is colonized as Missoula, Montana. There, Diego made friends with some goats and a cat named Lucifer, and we met a family of RVers who have two pre-teen children and have been on the road for 5 years!

This meeting settled a lot of my fears about bringing potential future children into our traveling lifestyle - and I hope it helps you with that, too!! We'd seen families accommodate kids, either with RVs or in their own school bus builds, but our biggest concern was how they might make friends on the road. Apparently, there is a whole community of families who travel! They all coordinate their itineraries and caravan together, meeting up at campgrounds and national parks. The kids we met (about 8 and 12 years old) said they loved it and had plenty of friends on the road. What a hopeful discovery!!

Arnold in gorgeous Salish-Kootenai (KOO-tun-ee) land

Polson

May 12, we arrived in the most beautiful town I've seen (quoting myself, "it's some Sound of Music shit.") on Salish & Kootenai land (of the Flathead Nation), colonized as Polson, Montana, where Anthony's aunts, uncles, and cousins live their magical lives (shoutout to Aunt Helen & Aunt Cynthia who hosted us!!).

Some fun things about this town:

  1. It is SMALL. Anthony and I took an afternoon to walk through the entire town and to the property that used to be a cherry orchard owned by his grandparents. We walked from his aunt's house, to the town's main street, to Flathead Lake, to farmland on the opposite end of town and back in 10 miles. Small, gorgeous, and delightful.

  1. This is the only town in our travels so far where the local tribes still have such a collaborative presence in the community. Signage around town is written both in English and the Salish language, and signs along a walk by the lake detailed history about the tribe's removal, the land's colonization, and even significance of animals to the tribe. From discussions with relatives, it seems that this comes from the community's settlement ON the tribal reservation, and so much of the tribal rights to the water, land and other resources is preserved. Though a quick google on the Hellgate Treaty & Allotment Act (pictured above) shows that a lot of tribal rights are still being disputed, there is much more representation here than we've seen anywhere else - no glossing over the forced removal of the people or the clashes of the past (and present) like we see EVERYWHERE else, even in Glacier National Park.

  2. Anthony's Aunt Cynthia teaches at a small farm school with about 30 children total. She invited us to come to the school while we were there and give tours to the students there, all kindergarten - 6th grade. It was a blast! But the kids' favorite part of the whole thing was Diego :) I'm glad he was still a favorite, because he ate grass, got anxious about all the kids, and puked after the first tour, poor little guy. This is not where I got my haircut.

Glacier National Park - stolen land from the Black Feet Nation

Glacier National Park

On August 13, 1967, two women were killed by grizzly bears in Glacier National Park. There's a whole book you can read about it, called Night of the Grizzlies. The park restaurants used to leave trash outside to ATTRACT THE BEARS!! The whole allure of the park was the chance to see a bear. But that all came back to bite them when bears tore through campgrounds on that night in 1967.

The park used bear boxes widely now, but since we decided to visit in the spring just as the bears are starting to wake up from hibernation, we picked ourselves up some bear spray.

Here, we took a beautiful hike along a creek (or river? It was small but powerful) to a glacial lake nestled in the mountains. We encountered some very aggressive rodents that were the size of squirrels but looked like chipmunks (let me know if you have any idea who they could be!). I'm putting a second photo in this section to make sure you've seen a lot of the beauty (this isn't the glacial lake from the hike, but still a glacial lake).

No bears in site! I was a bit disappointed - I really wanted to see one. From a distance. Have you ever seen a grizzly?

Jewel Basin

We had our first experience of Google Maps taking us on a back forest road, wayyyyy up into the mountains, to the point where we hit snow and had to turn around (28-pt turn style on this narrow dirt road ON THE CLIFFSIDE). It was pretty terrifying. But we made it.

Here, we took Diego for his first big hike - 4 miles!! I did carry him for most of it, and toward the end he got super duper grumpy and allowed us to put him in his cat carrier (a soft backpack) so he could nap. But I'm so proud of my little boy!! This photo is him at the top of the mountain as we tried to get him to stop for snack time and water. This was high stress, but also high reward.

National Buffalo Range, on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Anthony's photography is pretty awesome.

The night before we went to the National Buffalo Range, I let an 8-year-old cut my hair, Anthony's cousin's daughter (His first cousin once removed? Second cousin? Not sure.). Because I have a pixie cut, it really wouldn't matter if she did a good job, because it grows so quickly, and besides, no one ever sees the back of my head. And I guess I just don't care! If you ever let a small human cut your hair, it helps to make sure they are nervous about it. She expressed fear of messing up my hair, and I responded that this was even better because I knew she would be careful. And it turned out great! I highly recommend. It's fun for the kid to experiment, and gets you a free haircut.

ANYWAY, we also highly recommend a visit to the National Buffalo Range if you go through/around Polson, Montana. It costs $10 for a day pass and takes about 2 hours to drive around the loop. We saw herds of buffalo - some in the distance, some RIGHT next to the road or even in the road. We saw some badgers, lots of deer, and coyotes. We were hoping to see elk or grizzly bears, who others had reported seeing recently with their cubs!! However, we did pull up to one of the two short hiking trails they have and realized as we parked that a bison was standing right next to my passenger side window on the hill right under the parking lot!! They left before I could snap a photo. There were so many baby bison to see as well!!

Fun fact, and then we'll wrap up - we actually do NOT have buffalo in the United States. Buffalo are only found in Europe and Africa, and what we have are BISON.

Alright, I'll see you on our next stop in South Dakota/driving across the midwest!!

______________________________________________________

Steps to connecting with your local Native community (source: According to Weeze Podcast, Giving Land Back to Indigenous People, with Nazshonnii Brown):

  1. Find out where you live, on native-land.ca.

  2. Do your own research on the history of your land, which tribes occupied it, and what peoples are there currently.

  3. Contact the Indigenous tribes who may have occupied that land (according to native-land.ca) and ask permission to enter into conversation. Something simple like, "Hi, I've learned about [X] from [website, museum, etc] and I have a few questions about confirming the Indigenous people to attribute this land to, and how to help with current re-matriation efforts or anything else that serves you. If you are willing and have the time I'd love to hear how to best offer support."

  4. Be in relationship, and don't make it about you. If you're invited into community, bring coffee and tobacco as a gift for the elder making the greeting with you (source: Corinne Rice-Grey Cloud)

  5. Instead of donating towards this post, go make a donation to the Tribe whose land your are settled on.

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