September 1976: Education

My dear friend, Mike, watched Susie and I writing fieldnotes almost every day he came to our trailer … and that was every day. He’s the guy who marveled at watching me use up Bic pens. He saw the sheets of yellow legal pads covered with these notes. When I finally completed my dissertation and received my degree, I sent a copy of it to Mike. It would be impossible to characterize just how important a part of our lives he was during this time. It was such an emotionally intense time for so many reasons. I included both Mike and Bill Chambers in my acknowledgements. Mike often mentioned to me that Susie and I were as much a support for him as he was to us. When Mike received my dissertation, the first thing he said to me was, this is only 250 pages long … where are all those notes? Well, Mike, they’re going to be in these stories! My dissertation committee was barely able to tolerate my 250 pages.

Every single day we lived in Hays was an entirely unique experience. There was no such thing as routine. When you live in your own society, so much of your life can become routine. There was absolutely nothing routine about our lives at the base of the Little Rocky Mountains, on a reservation, and living and working at a Catholic mission. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. And I was academically obligated to write it all down on those yellow legal pads every single day. Susie would come home from anywhere and would start to tell me about her day. I would politely stop her and ask her to please just write it all down. And such were our lives for those two magnificent years.

The mission school year began on August 31st. I was teaching 5/6 grade and 7/8 grade history, social studies, and geography. The two grades were together in the same class, because the numbers of students were so low. I had each class for half an hour. The boys and girls avoided each other at school. This applies for all ages and grades. In both of my classes, the boys would sit on one side of the room and girls on the other. This seating arrangement was by choice. The sisters let them sit where they wanted.  I have yet to see a boy or girl talk to each other, except for a brother or sister giving an order or message.  Play during recess or gym was separated by gender even when the gym classes are held together, as in grades 1/2 and 3/4.  At breakfast and lunch, the boys and girls are also usually separated from each other. 

Discipline was a problem.  The kids have no attention span, even for activities they enjoy, such as drawing. They are constantly talking, fooling around and fidgeting. The boys are much more outgoing than the girls in grades 5/6 and 7/8. The girls have no desire to participate in classroom activities and do not cooperate in doing their assignments. They are extremely shy and just sit and giggle among themselves.

The girls are very passive. Most of the boys are loud and disrupt the class quite often. Only a couple of the boys are quiet. The kids have no conception of geography and only a few of them have been out of the state. Most have not been very far from the reservation. 

I might as well explain the entire discipline issue right from the outset, and then I’ll try to put it away. I learned very quickly about the history of mission education from people in the community. Discipline was harsh and often involved physical punishment. Physical punishment was no longer permitted in the school, but as both grandparents and parents attended the mission school, and shared their experiences with their children, this remained a sensitive subject. Harsh or physical discipline just isn’t in my repertoire. By my nature, I had the same approach in raising my children. I wanted my children to respect me based on my relationship with them and my character, and not because they feared me. I didn’t hit my children, although there were many times when I wanted to strangle them. I used my words, and I relied on logic and a fundamental assumption about how human beings should treat each other.

My childrearing practices resulted in a wild ride for all involved. I’d love to announce that my approach resulted in two fantastic adults who are wonderful human beings, excellent husbands and exceptional fathers. I think I might have had some part in this result. I also believe that how they turned out has more to do with their personalities and character and a heaping amount of dumb luck.

As to my approaches to discipline in my classroom, I employed my same parenting practices. I wanted the children to respect me based on my relationship with them and my character, and not because they feared me. I used my words, and I relied on logic and a fundamental assumption about how human beings should treat each other. And I had the same friggen wild ride in my classrooms as I had with my kids until they went away to college.

I had my students for half an hour every day, for the five days during the school week. Even if I had some great strategies for disciplining these children, if I spent my time discipling, that would be all I would accomplish in that half hour. As I later learned from Pauline, an effective approach to discipline in school requires cooperation from home. For most of these children, home was complicated, because everything on the reservation was complicated. Thus, these kids pretty much had their way with me, and I had to work hard to get them to listen for long enough to learn anything. I also had to work hard to find material that they might find interesting and relevant enough to deem worth of a listen. The history of the One True Religion wasn’t going to cut it. As I was given next to no direction as to what I was going to be doing with these children, I spent considerable time searching for the holy grail of fascinating and relevant.

During the first week of school, one of the 5th grade boys asked me if I smoke grass. Thus, I learned that this was a thing on the reservation. I was able to offer an honest answer by telling him that I did not. He didn’t ask me if I smoked grass every Saturday night before I arrived on the reservation. As representatives of the mission and school, Susie and I felt an obligation to present ourselves to the community, and particularly to the children, in as responsible a way as possible. We never smoked marijuana in the two years we lived in Hays, and we very rarely drank any alcohol, and when we did, it was when Susie and I were alone or when we were invited to a special occasion where alcohol was being served. And the latter case was extremely rare.

I gave grades 5/6 and 7/8 their first writing assignment during the second week of the school year. From the small sample I’d seen thus far, the kids don’t have great writing skills. In my attempt to find interesting and relevant, I asked the children to go home and ask a parent or an elderly relative to explain the traditional meaning of Eagle Child in the Little Rockies.

In the 5/6 grade class, three of my students described it as a mountain. The rest of the students wrote that they didn’t know. Interestingly, a couple of the kids wrote answers on their papers, but when they saw that others were not answering the question, they erased their answer. The children will do everything possible to avoid outdoing or appearing better than another student.   

I was really pleased by the responses I got from my 7/8 class. While six of my students didn’t respond or said that they didn’t know, seven of the children wrote that it was a place where people went to fast and pray. One of the students even said that a boy went up to the mountain to get magical powers from the eagle. Progress.

One of my students wrote that Columbus thought that he was in Indiana, so he called the people Indians. I hope I gave this kid bonus points.

Mike took the 3rd/4th graders up into the canyon to play during their physical education class.  The boys were playing cowboys and Indians. Mike asked one of the kids who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. The boy responded: the Indians are the bad guys because they stole the cowboy’s firewood, and they froze to death. Some Indians are good, and some are bad, and some whites are good, and some are bad, but they are all good if they just play cards. The 1970s version of Kahlil Gibran on the Fort Belknap Reservation. World peace will be achieved when we put down our weapons and pick up cards.

One of the things I decided to focus on in my history, social studies and geography class was reservation governance. I wasn’t sure the children would be interested, but how government operates on the reservation couldn’t be more relevant. So, we spent a considerable amount of time focused on civics lessons. I wanted to get a handle on how much my students knew about their tribal government. I asked my 7/8 graders to write down everything they knew about tribal government. Some of them told me that they weren’t interested. So, I asked them to write down why they weren’t interested.

About half of the students responded that you have to be 21 years old to vote and since they aren’t, they weren’t interested. One of the students said that the BIA was in charge of everything on the reservation. Most of the students said that they’d never heard anything about tribal government. One person said that Jack Plumage was the tribal chairman. Another student responded that Frank Cuts the Rope was the Hays representative on the council. Finally, a student said that the tribal council makes decisions that concern me, and they get a lot of money for a lot of things. So, three of my students had at least a minimal understanding. I had my work cut out for me.

I have already begun to discuss my classroom experiences with some adults in the community. One of the parents told me that the children have never been taught to complete an assignment, and therefore do not take you seriously when you give them something to do. The children went to the public school for a few years after the old mission school burned down and before the new one was built. I was told that the public school does not require the children to do much work. The teachers are right out of college. (I think it is possible that some of these teachers are incented to teach on the reservation as a way to forgive student loans). They stay on their small compound at the school, collect one year’s salary and then leave. Their interest in improving the children’s education is minimal – they give up and make it through the year. 

I have a few students in my classes that are interested in learning and enjoy reading and writing. The problem is that it is unpopular to do so, and they do not perform well when other students are watching. Many of the kids copy from each other directly. I don’t want to embarrass them, so don’t stop them. When I asked the children to practice reading out loud, one of the girls turned around in her chair and helped the reader with the words that she could not pronounce, by whispering them to her. 

My 5/6 grade class decided today that I am giving them too much work, and they began to complain in unison – the work is too hard, I can’t do it, I don’t know how to do it. One of the girls told me that I work her so hard that she got blisters in her mouth, and she proceeded to pull down her lip to show me. I gave them seven questions to copy from the board and some of the kids took 1 ½ hours (3 days) to do it. I think they’re giving me blisters all over my head.    

These next few images are from the end of the school day at the mission. In this first image, some of the kids are lining up to get onto the school bus. Father Retzel is opening the gym so that kids can play while waiting for the bus or their rides home.

In this image, Jimmy is demonstrating his level of acculturation. His use of the appropriate fingers to communicate his sentiments reflects a thorough understanding of American hand signals. His use of both fingers reinforces the depth of his feelings for me. Jimmy was my student. I don't remember Jimmy ever working hard enough to develop blisters.

Mike took the flag down every day after school and worked with the kids to teach them the proper way to fold it.

The kids were really beautiful!

This is Susie with Father Simoneau. I might say it every time I see a picture of him ... he was such a character.

We started bringing Gahanab to the mission with us when we went to school in the morning. We would chain him up at the rectory, so he could watch all the activity, and the volunteers would visit with him during the day. We didn't want to leave him alone. I had lunch with Sister Giswalda and I told her that we named the dog Gahanab. She asked me if that was Yiddish.

This is Darian. She was such a great kid. She was in Susie's gym and music classes in 1/2 grades with Sister Benno. We became close with her family. Her mother was a student in both my cultural and physical anthropology classes. Camie graduated from the program and received her BA in education from the College of Great Falls. She became an A'aniii language specialist in the Hays / Lodge Pole School System.

After we left the reservation, we stayed in touch with Camie through letters and cards. When I brought Pauline to Hays for the powwow in 2017, we stopped to visit with Camie and Darian. May her (Camie) memory be a blessing.

I had a conversation with an older gentleman who had attended the mission school. We were talking about the drop in enrollment. He said that the mission forced their religion on the Indians. 

They were convicted before they were even tried. The missionaries never even bothered to see what the Indian religion was like. Now that time has passed from the beginnings of the missionaries, the people have begun to reflect on the situation and resent the treatment given them by the missionaries. Most of the people who have kids today had experience in the mission boarding school. The kids had to go into the mountains to cut wood for the heaters. They had to drag the logs down and split them and then carry them up four flights of stairs. One of the brothers had a rubber hose that the kids named Fritz, and he used to beat the kids with it. They would also have the backs of their hands cracked with the wooden plank that came off the backs of the chairs. He said that when he was a child, one of the sisters hit him across the face as hard as he’d ever been hit in his life. There is no physical abuse today in the school (Sister Giswalda is emphatic about telling teachers not to touch the kids) but the parents remember their experience in the schools. It is the same teachers (Sisters) and they have the same attitude. How different could it be? The mission has not been too helpful in getting the parents to cooperate in the discipline of their children. Instead of talking about ways to improve the situation, the sisters complain to the parents about their children’s misbehavior. The parents won’t go to the parents’ nights anymore because of this complaining. When they do have parents’ nights, they show movies or have bingo instead of talking about the children and what is going on in school. The Indians sometimes respected the missionaries because they displayed so much courage. And this was an important characteristic to the Indians. But they are resentful of the missionaries forcing their religion on the people. After all, everyone is praying to the same god.   

I had a similar conversation with a different gentleman who had also attended the mission school as a child. We were talking about the discipline problem.

While the school is a cross-cultural classroom, you shouldn’t worry about the traditional values, because the kids don’t know what these values are. The values are important to teach the children because they should be made aware of their heritage and traditions, and find pride and integrity in those traditions, but as far as practicing these values and traditions, the children do not know them, and it is too late to go back to practice them.

I asked him what the children’s values were. He said,

The children are very confused. I’m 50 years old and I’m confused.

There’s a problem with the children that starts in the home. The children do not respect their parents, and the parents do not teach the children to respect them. They cuss at the parents and show disrespect. The parents want the children educated but do not help much in this process. Once the kids leave the house, the parents feel that the teachers should take on the parent’s role. The teachers have the responsibility to educate and discipline the children. From the time a child is born until he enters school at age 6, these years are so important for teaching kids respect, and teachers cannot be expected to teach respect to these kids if they have not had it before this time from their parents. 

In a conversation I had with a woman who had attended the mission school as a child she said,

when the sisters first came to the mission, they told the Indians that they were not allowed to touch them. That if they touched the sisters they would be struck down.  She said that they were afraid that they would be scalped or something. The Indians would feel very bad because they would see a white woman come to the mission and touch the sisters, and they would have their arms around each other. 

One of the things we’re studying in my classes is the tribal constitution. We were talking about political power. When I asked my 5/6 students to describe political power, one of them told me, AIM (American Indian Movement). Another student then asked me why people make such a big deal about Custer and why people like him so much and think he’s such a good guy. When I asked him where he’d heard that he told me his cousin. We then had a conversation about the historical view of Custer from the white man’s world and the perspective from the tribal world.

I hope my kids remember some of these conversations.

My students in both classes do not appear at all interested in the tribal constitution. None of them understood the role of the BIA on the reservation. They told me that they had never heard the words enrollment or allotment. They didn’t know how a person gained status as a member of either of the tribes, and they didn’t understand the concept of degree blood. And they didn’t seem to care about any of it. If you read my blog about federal policy and the history of the Tribe, you understand just how critical these issues are for these children. Not knowing this stuff will not serve them well as adults and perpetuates their distrust and cynicism about the government at all levels – tribal, local, state and federal. Not knowing fosters the sense of being victimized by all of these political forces. Trying to make a difference in their communities can only start with understanding the history, how it all works, how it needs to change, and the motivation to get involved in making these changes.

Unfortunately, distrust and cynicism are a result of real experiences. It is not just that the government hasn’t helped people; the government was involved in purposely causing so much harm. That the children understand and know so little about the government on and off the reservation is likely a reflection of how negative people’s attitudes are about government and politics. This lack of trust and this level of cynicism have been earned by centuries of abuse. BUT … none of this was going to change without these children growing up to be adults who want to make life better for themselves and for their people. While I had the opportunity, I was going to try to offer the education and try as hard as possible to minimize causing them blisters.

Towards the end of September, Father Retzel took the 7/8 graders up into the canyon for an outdoor mass in the afternoon. We went up into the meadow (where the powwow arbor is now located). They went up in two pickup trucks and talked about drugs and alcohol the whole way up.  All the girls went up in one truck and the boys went up in the other truck.  The boys and girls stayed away from each other the whole time we were up in the canyon.

Chester ... we remain in touch with each other. His father was the director of the Urban - Rural Program. Chester was an excellent student and a great kid. He was such a deep thinker and an innovator. He was able to get away with excelling in school and wasn't judged or ridiculed for it by the other children.

First the kids were made to sit on bales of hay (someone was cutting the field while we were up there).

Then Father asked them to walk in the woods alone and think about the things in nature that reminded them of God. The kids walked out alone (as required) but once out of sight, they grouped back together. They threw rocks at each other. I pulled one guy out of an aspen tree who was trying to break it in half by hanging from the top. I did so gently.

Father Retzel called them back and then went around the circle asking what each of them thought about in the woods. The girls, when asked, did not even pick up their heads to look at him and said nothing. The boys either said, I don’t know, or they didn’t say anything. 

Then Father Retzel said mass and Nade played a song on her guitar and sang. The kids were all bored out of their minds.

For the eucharist the kids fought to get in line, and when they had the wafer in their mouth some of them licked their lips or joked in some other way.  They did not really care about the service. They were just happy to be out of school.  I was happy to be out of school. The canyon and the mountains are spectacularly beautiful in the fall.   

It was comforting to observe that there was nothing special about me. The head honcho (priest) was receiving the same treatment from the seniors in his school that I got with them for half an hour every day in my classroom. Fortunately, my classroom didn't come with any trees to hang from.

And while I previously noted that Mike usually had far fewer discipline issues with the kids than most of the rest of us, I did observe the following.

On a hill up in the mountains above the school, there were rocks painted white and arranged in a large M for Mission. The white paint was wearing off the rocks and Mike took his boys’ shop class up onto the hill to repaint the rocks. While they were up there, three boys tried to paint his truck white. They got the tires and were starting on the side when he caught them. None of them would own up to having done it even though he saw them. 

So, it turns out that Mike is only sort of special.

One of the major criticisms of the Hays/Lodge Pole Public School is that the teachers come to teach for a year or two, they live on the campus compound and do not get out into the community, and they are not around long enough to be invested in the children. People from the community complain that they don’t know any of the teachers, and the teachers do not understand the cultural differences. I never spent time in a classroom in the public school, so I can’t say what kind of teaching or learning was going on. What I can say from my own observations is that the teachers were almost entirely separated from the community. In the two years we lived in Hays, just a mile or so from where the teachers lived, I never saw any of them at a community function. I can't remember seeing them outside.

The Urban – Rural Program is located in two trailers on the square mile section in Hays where the public school is situated. It is funded by Basic Education Opportunity Grants and Title 4 funds (Indian Education). This was an excellent program, the purpose of which was to bring a college education into a rural community that would otherwise not have this opportunity. The teachers traveled between rural communities to bring a college education to primarily women who had children and would not be able to move to attend a traditional college. Another wonderful aspect to the program was that they were receiving degrees in elementary education. Thus, with the completion of their degrees, they would be applying for jobs teaching in the Hays/Lodge Pole Public School System. A teacher who is from the community brings a different kind of investment in the children than was occurring in the school system up until this time.

The students are paid for attending classes from these funds, which is a significant incentive for people in the community who have limited resources. If a student misses a class, they do not get paid. If they are late, money is deducted. The students’ books are also paid for with these funds. There are about 30 people in the Urban/Rural college. There are about 5 or 6 courses offered each semester. The college is a branch of the College of Great Falls. All the teachers also teach at a branch campus at Lewistown. They travel back and forth during the week. When in Hays, they sleep in the trailers that make up the classrooms and they also eat in the trailer. The other trailer is composed of offices for the administration of the college.

I was having a conversation with Sister Kathleen about the Urban – Rural Program and she told me that they were looking for teachers. She suggested that I have a conversation with the director of the program, if I was interested. I went up to the Urban – Rural trailer and discussed my teaching background with the director. He asked me to give him a resume and to fill out an application. He said that I would be able to teach Introduction to Cultural Anthropology in the fall semester and Introduction to Physical Anthropology in the spring. My pay would be $500 for each course. As Susie and I were making $100 a month at the mission, this additional income was a veritable bonanza.

But the real value of this teaching experience for me had nothing to do with money. I love teaching at the college level. Additionally, one of the strongest ethical issues surrounding anthropological fieldwork is that the people with whom you are living need to understand what you are doing in the community. There can be no secret about the purpose of your work. Beginning very early in my work in Hays (September), I began to teach Cultural Anthropology to a group of people from the community. I had one male student; the rest were women and most of them had children. As we covered the material, I had the opportunity to explain to them why that information was important and why I was interested in it in their community. There were about 130 households and around 600 people who lived in Hays while I was doing my work. The students I had in class represented just about every major family in the community. By the end of the fall semester, there was far less confusion about what Susie and I were doing in Hays.

What was interesting about this dynamic is that Susie and I were involved in so many different activities in Hays, it would have been quite easy for people to ignore that I was an anthropologist doing fieldwork. Beyond our work at the mission, which entailed so many different activities that touched people’s lives, we were involved in things that had nothing to do with the mission. For instance, I was an instructor at the Urban – Rural College. I was teaching hunting safety to the kids through the Montana Fish and Game Department. I served on a PTA Committee for the Hays/Lodge Pole Public School.

While my role as an anthropologist was clear to most everyone, it very rarely came up. People knew Susie and I in so many other capacities that it was those that were more often the focus of how we were identified in the community. If I was doing a formal interview or asking questions about traditions or language, then I looked like an anthropologist. For most of our time in Hays, we didn’t look all that anthropological.

My teaching in the Urban – Rural program also offered me a unique opportunity to have the students describe their own society to me over the course of the semester. These writing assignments were fascinating, and I think they provided my students with some interesting insights into their own culture. I gave them the opportunity to be anthropologists and to think about, describe and explain their own culture to me as an ‘outsider.’

Through my teaching in the Urban – Rural Program, I was also able to meet and get to know a group of people from the community in a way that would have never happened had I not been their teacher. We spent a few hours together each week, and most of the classroom involved discussions. We had some wonderful conversations about cultural anthropology, about the peoples and cultures on the Plains of North America, about the tribes on Fort Belknap, and about the contemporary way of life on the reservation. Men didn’t ordinarily find themselves involved in an activity with mostly or only women. This was definitely an out of the ordinary thing. The only other opportunity I had during these two years to work with a group of women in the community like this was when Father Retzel put me in charge of working with about 50 women to prepare all the meals for the three-day Catholic Indian Congress. That whole thing is a wild story for another time.

My class met three days a week for an hour at a time. I loved teaching in the Urban – Rural Program, and I loved getting to know the women who were in my classes.

Between our teaching in the St. Paul’s Mission School, my driving the school bus, Susie’s involvement in the arts and crafts program in both Lodge Pole and Hays, my teaching in the Urban – Rural Program, our participation in the evening recreation program, taking our turn at the rectory telephone (which involved meeting people coming in to make calls and also running to people’s homes to deliver messages), and bingo night … by the end of September, everyone in Hays either knew who we were, or they just weren’t getting out enough.

Today, there is A’aniiih Nakoda College, located at the Agency. Toward the end of the time we were living in Hays, the tribes were beginning to discuss the establishment of this college. I was approached to possibly teach some classes. The opportunity did not materialize before we left the reservation. I am thrilled that this tribally controlled college has developed on Fort Belknap. It represents another important option for students who would like to stay close to their homes. There is also a branch campus of Montana State University in Havre. At the time I was doing my work, the college in Havre was Northern Montana College. It has since joined the Montana State University system.

Early in September, there was a mission school board meeting. The school board is composed of Father Retzel, Sister Giswalda (the principal) and Ray Gone and Davey Hawley, two highly respected people from the community. It is an open meeting, and a couple of people were there from the community, along with Mike, Bill and me. The principal and the coach of the Hays/Lodge Pole school also attended.

The purpose of the meeting was to decide policy about the new gym at the mission. The gym was built from money given by the Gros Ventre treaty committee ($75,000), the Assiniboine treaty committee ($15,000) and a grant from the Kresge Company. ($75,000). During the meeting, Ray went around the table asking everyone’s opinion about the topics discussed.  Everyone had a chance to give their opinions. That is the Indian way.

One of the greatest worries was vandalism. It is a real problem in the community and much of the policy was oriented towards avoiding it. 

The gym will be used for mission gym classes and girl’s and boys’ basketball for both the mission and Hays/Lodge Pole school teams. The gym’s use will be free for all school and non-profit organizations. The gym will also be used for dances and meetings by community members. The dedication dance put on by the dance committee in Hays will be the first such event on October 24th. The first basketball game is scheduled for October 9th by the Hays Public School.

I was speaking to a middle-aged gentleman about the kids who go on to college from Hays. He said that people often struggle with college because they don’t learn good study skills in their early education experiences. They also don’t learn the basics, like reading and math. The children cannot wait until they are 16, because they can then quit school by law. He said that many of the Indians go to college only for the money, because they get their tuition and expenses paid for them. That is why most of them do not complete their education. Some of the kids go into technical programs because the BIA has the money for these, and they want to fill the positions in these training programs. When people complete these programs, most of them do not want to leave the reservation and they can’t use their skills on the reservation.

Susie and I attended a Tribal Council meeting on a Saturday in September. The Superintendent of the Harlem School District attended, and he gave a report and speech. He complained that the Indians were abusing the busing system by using it as a taxi service for their children. He said that the buses did not have to pick up kindergarten children nor have to take children home after school activities, but they did. They also did not have to feed the children lunches, but they did that also.

The Harlem schools are attended by the northern half of the reservation. The dividing line is People’s Creek. The children south of that line go to either Hays – Lodge Pole Public School or to the mission school. 

He also talked about ‘Indian money’ in the Harlem schools. The Johnston O’Malley (Indian Education Act) funds are supposed to be used for Indian education only, but the Harlem school system uses the money for teacher’s aides for all students. I think there is a lawsuit against the school for this use. He said that the only way the school could use the funds for only Indian children was to segregate the Indians into separate classrooms. He also complained about the Indian enrollment. He said that the enrollment was up 10% this year and the school system had to open a new room and hire a new teacher because of this increase. There are 199 kids in the high school and they expected only 165. There are also 50 students who live south of People’s Creek. These kids are either taken to the division line by their parents and picked up by buses there, or they live with relatives on the northern part of the reservation.  The superintendent said that they didn’t have to take these kids, but they did anyway. 

The superintendent’s presentation was both aggressive and antagonistic. Finally, one of the councilmen broke in and reminded him that he was a public servant and had no business coming into the meeting with his attitude. He also said that the problem was not with the ‘Indian money’ but with the administrative use of the funding. The superintendent said that maybe the solution to the problem was to have the Indians build their own school for the northern half of the reservation. Another councilman then blew up at this statement and told him that he had no business advocating segregation. He said that if he didn’t want to work with the Indians to go back east. But as long as he was out here this was the Indian’s home. The superintendent was about to walk out of the room but they made him come back and sit down. The meeting was being tape recorded and they threatened to report his actions to his superiors. A councilman said that the enrollment of Indians in the Harlem schools was 79% but there are no Indians on the school board, and they have no say in the curriculum. There is nothing about Indians in the curriculum. He suggested that they start adding courses.           

All relationships with the white towns off the reservation are not this antagonistic, but many are a challenge. There is a lot of history wrapped around these relationships and so much if it isn’t great.

A representative from the Indian Health Service also attended the Tribal Council Meeting. They are working on a health careers awareness program and plan to go to all the schools on and off the reservations that have Indian students to raise awareness about these careers. The program is focused on 11th and 12th graders and will be implemented in Montana and Wyoming. They are not presently involved in obtaining funds for the Indians’ schooling but are planning to get involved in this area. They will also provide a list of schools that have programs in health field education. The council asked about obtaining funds for graduate and professional schools for the children. Presently funds are available for 4-year programs, but there isn’t much money for graduate and professional education, such as veterinary school.     

The council meeting took a break and Susie and I went to lunch with Frank Cuts the Rope, the tribal councilman who represents Hays. Susie and I became close friends with the Cuts the Rope family in Hays, Frank’s mother, his brother and his sisters. Frank told us that St. Paul’s Mission was given the land on the southern part of the reservation for the purpose of educating Indian children.  At one time this was the only school for the children.

Bingo is held at the mission in the all-purpose room on every first and third Thursday of the month.  Many people from the community attend and the room is filled. All ages come to play. They pay for the cards and there are money prizes for each game. The mission also sells food and soda. The mission makes about $100 from each night. Susie works in the kitchen, and I sell cards. BJ, Mary’s husband, calls the numbers.

There’s not much entertainment in Hays, and people really enjoy coming out to play and visit with their friends. Bingo is one of the major recreation activities. Other organizations besides the mission hold bingos to raise money, including the Dance Committee of Hays, the Day-Care Center, and the mission arts and crafts program.     

Susie woke me up in the middle of the night screaming. She was standing in the hallway with her boots on and holding a boom. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and saw a packrat the size of a cat walking down the hallway with one of Gahanab’s bones in its mouth. I went back to sleep after taking a picture of Susie. I don't hunt packrats in the middle of the night. 

The next day, Mike and Bill were at our trailer. We were winterizing the trailer by running electric wires around all the water pipes and adding insulation. We announced to Mike and Bill what had happened the night before. After a good laugh, life went on.

We were living with this packrat for a while. Somehow, it found its way into one of the small kitchen drawers below the sink and got stuck in there. We told Mike and Bill. Bill told me that he would get it out of our trailer. As previously noted, Bill was very creative and took on all sorts of complicated stuff and usually did a great job. So, I told him to have at it. He came up to the trailer to do the job. I asked him if he really wanted to do this … that this packrat was about the size of a cat. He confidently responded that he was up to the task. He took an oven mit out of another drawer. We could hear the packrat scratching at the drawer. Bill’s plan was to fill the kitchen sink with water, throw the drawer open, grab the packrat with his mitted hand, and drown it in the sink. Breathlessly, we stood behind Bill admiring both his creativity and courage. Bill threw open the drawer, took one look at the packrat and shouted, holy crap. Bill was frozen and the packrat jumped out of the drawer and ran behind the stove where he couldn’t be reached. Bill looked at me sheepishly, and I said, well, I think I could have done that.

The packrat lived with us for another week before I could get to a hardware store to buy a c-trap. The c-trap looks like a regular old mouse trap, but much much larger. We put it in the kitchen and loaded it with both marshmallows and peanut butter. We had to watch Gahanab to be sure he didn’t get struck. Later that night, we heard the loud whap. I got up to see that the food was gone, but there was no packrat. There was, however, some blood on the metal bracket. The packrat was gone, and we never found it. We figured that he had stumbled out of the trailer with a serious concussion (or he died somewhere in the trailer, and we never found it). There’s no living in a trailer at the base of a mountain and mouth of a canyon without sharing your living space with creatures. It’s as much their piece of the universe as yours. And that’s just how it was.

Susie and I went up to Harlem to purchase a metal cabinet. The mice and packrats get into everything. We needed to find a way to store food so that we could keep the wildlife out.

Gahanab was quickly growing into his paws. He was beautiful ... and have I mentioned that he was really wild? As my people would say, a veritable vilde chaya.

This first image is our front yard, looking east at mission ridge of the Little Rockies. The next two photographs are looking east and then south from our yard. Fall came quickly in September. The days could be warm (sometimes very warm) but the evenings and nights were getting cold. Fall doesn't last long in northern Montana. The result of this weather pattern was that we often had fog in low lying areas. It was beautiful to see in the mornings, in the mountains and across the prairie.

Susie and I took a drive up into Mission Canyon and Whitecow Canyon to enjoy the fall leaves. The first two photographs are Mission Canyon, the entrance to which was just steps away from our front yard.

The next few images are going up Whitecow Canyon into the Little Rockies. The entrance to Whitecow Canyon is behind the fairly new settlement of homes in this area.

This is Gahanab posing for me in the canyon.

This photograph is looking out at one of the tallest peaks in the Little Rockies, Antoine Butte.

This is an image from Monument Peak looking north and northwest. From this view, you can see almost the entire eastern side of the reservation. Lodge Pole and the western edge of the reservation would be to the right and below where I am looking. The faint green line on the horizon is the Milk River, the northern border of the reservation. You can barely see up into Canada which is about 30 miles north of the reservation border. You can also see that some of the prairie is cultivated between Hays and the agency. This is leased land that has been aggregated from many different individual allotments. The owners receive payments based on the proportionate size of the leased land. No one is getting rich from these lease incomes.

The next two images are also looking north and northwest. These photographs show the three major features on the prairie heading north toward the agency, Three Buttes, Wild Horse Butte, and Snake Butte.

This image is looking west at the Bear Paw Mountains and toward the Rocky Boy Reservation. Mike and Ligia lived in the Bear Paws, and they raised their two sons there.

These next three images are looking south and west from the mountains.

This last image is the Bear Paw Mountains. That is Miles Butte at the farthest north on the range.

I wrote about the Carlisle Indian Boarding School in my blog about Federal Government Policy and Gros Ventre history. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School operated between 1879 and 1918.

During that period more than 10,000 Native American children were enrolled there, representing an estimated 50 tribal nations. Numerous children from Ft. Belknap attended the school. Some of them died there and never made their way back to the reservation. Likely, some of them died and their deaths were never reported to their families.

On Thursday, September 19, 2024, the Fort Belknap Indian Community welcomed home the remains of three young people who died at Carlisle in Pennsylvania more than 100 years ago.

Almeda Heavy Hair (Heavy Hair on Side of the Head), Niece of Lamebull

Entered Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA on April 13, 1890

Date of Death – August 28, 1894 (16 years of age)

Bishop L. Shield (Sleeps High) – Father (Little Shield), Mother (Paunch Arm)

Entered Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA on April 13, 1890

Date of Death – July 30, 1890 (17 years of age)

John Bull (Dwarf) – Family Members Unknown

Entered Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA on April 13, 1890

Date of Death – May 7, 1891 (16 years of age).

Our dear friend, Beatrice, was a Lamebull.

The three children are in this photograph, but no one was able to identify them. 

A wake was held for these children at the Hays/Lodge Pole School, and they were buried on the reservation the next day. May their memories be a blessing.

This was reported by MTN News out of Great Falls.