Austin Amestoy: Welcome to the Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I'm your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We'll answer questions, big or small, about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans for Montana, this is The Big Why.
For this week’s episode our Butte reporter, John Hooks, is back.
John Hooks: Hey Austin, thanks for having me back!
Austin Amestoy: Of course. So I understand you have another history lesson to take us on this week.
John Hooks: I sure do! So, I know you grew up in Laurel, which is really close to the Crow Reservation.
Austin Amestoy: That’s right. Proud Locomotive over here.
John Hooks: Do remember learning in school about why a lot of the land on the reservation is owned by white people who aren’t tribal members?
Austin Amestoy: You know, I don’t remember any classes ever touching on that, but now you’ve got me really curious.
John Hooks: Great, because we actually had a couple listener questions about exactly this. One wanted to know why the Flathead Reservation is majority non-Native, and somebody else wanted to know how much land Montana’s reservations lost to White settlement.
Austin Amestoy: And I understand you have some experience with this subject matter before?
John Hooks: That’s exactly right. Before my MTPR days, I spent over a year of my life researching and producing a podcast called Land Grab that takes a very deep dive into how reservations in Montana were opened to white homesteading
So to start this story, we’re going back to the 1880’s, And assisting me here is friend of the show Dr. Shane Doyle, who grew up not too far away from you in Crow Agency.
Shane Doyle: I’m a member of the Apsáalooke Nation, and a cultural consultant in Bozeman, Montana.
John Hooks: At this point in history open military conflict between the American army and Indigenous nations is basically over. The federal government has signed treaties with tribes and forced them into reservations. But still,
Shane Doyle: These were communities that thrived, and lived off a landscape that was very wild.
John Hooks: This is an important detail because land was still being held in common among the tribes on a reservation, so they could still go through life in the traditional way: Living off the land and sharing resources
Shane Doyle: They had intimate knowledge of the landscapes, the plants, the animals. They would make movements throughout the year and harvest these plants and animals in a way that was sustainable, and also in a way that honored their integrity as communities.
John Hooks: But then, in 1887, something dramatically changed things.
Austin Amestoy: What happened?
John Hooks: The U.S. Congress passed a bill called the General Allotment Act, more commonly known as the Dawes Act, after the guy who sponsored it.
Austin Amestoy: The Dawes Act — OK, so what did it do?
John Hooks: Under the act, each tribal member on a reservation would be assigned 160 acres of land, instead of this big swathe of land held in common. So it broke up reservations into all these individual parcels.
Dr. Kristin Ruppel: So it was really an attempt to essentially privatize their land holdings.
John Hooks: That’s Dr. Kristin Ruppel, she’s a professor in the Native American Studies program at Montana State.
Austin Amestoy: That 160 acres you mentioned reminds me a lot of the homestead act that we definitely learned about in school.
John Hooks: Oh yeah, that is a great connection, because Ruppel says,
Dr. Kristin Ruppel: The flipside of that meant that they could open up a lot of other land to non-Native or White settlement.
Austin Amestoy: So splitting up the reservations like that under the Dawes Act left a lot of land not owned by anybody; And that meant it could be sold off to white homesteaders?
John Hooks: Precisely.
Austin Amestoy: OK, to bring it back to our listener questions: How much land did tribes in Montana lose in this process?
John Hooks: Well, not every reservation was opened and sold off for homesteading. But, the Flathead, Blackfeet, Crow, and Fort Peck reservations were opened, and lost over 2 million acres to white homesteaders. The Flathead Reservation alone lost over a million acres, and that allotment is really the key reason the reservation is still majority non-native in population.
Austin Amestoy: Wow that is devastating.
John Hooks: Yeah. Zooming out it’s even more striking. Nationwide, close to 100 million acres were lost. That means roughly two-thirds of the land Indigenous people held was sold off in less than 50 years until the policy was repealed.
Austin Amestoy: What was the impact of that, beyond loss of land?
John Hooks: All kinds of things. It’s important to understand that this process of diluting Indigenous ownership of reservations was highly intentional
Dr. Kristin Ruppel: The federal government wanted to get itself out of what it referred to as its 'Indian business,' or its 'Indian problem.'
John Hooks: Native people speaking their own language, practicing their own cultures and religions —
it meant they weren’t taking part in American culture and, importantly, the American economy. Which the government explicitly called a 'problem' at the time. So they embarked on a process to assimilate Native people. They sent children to boarding schools, sometimes thousands of miles away. There was systematic abuse and erasure of culture and language. The government outlawed certain forms of practicing Native religion. All of this was part of an effort to assimilate Indigenous people, to, as Shane Doyle says,
Shane Doyle: To integrate them more fully into the economy, and really, take away their identity as Indigenous occupants of this landscape. So, to really melt them into the melting pot, if you will.
Dr. Kristin Ruppel: You know, the General Allotment act was repealed in 1934, its effects haven’t gone away. They’re still here. We’re still living with them.
John Hooks: But even with all of that in mind, I still think you have to say the allotment policy failed at its main goal.
Austin Amestoy: Really? How is that?
John Hooks: Well, because the goal was to completely eradicate 'Indigenous-ness,' to get rid of Native people as a distinct type. But Native people, culture, and land persisted. I asked Shane Doyle to talk about that resistance, and thought he had a really beautiful answer.
Shane Doyle: The United States government understood from the very beginning that if you want to dismantle native communities, take the children out of the homes, take them away from their parents and grandparents. Because that’s what’s really going to cause everything to collapse: When you disconnect people from the source of their knowledge, from the source of their love, from the source of their language. It’s testimony to Native Peoples’ strength of family that cultures are still alive today in the 21st century.
Austin Amestoy: That's really amazing to think about. Well thank you so much for another history lesson John.
John Hooks: My pleasure.
Austin Amestoy: Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana. Submit your questions below. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and help others find the show by sharing it and leaving a review. Let's see what we can discover together!
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