Browning Montana

Imagine calling 911 for an ambulance and the dispatcher tells you there isn’t one available. That could soon be the case for many Glacier County residents. The county says its emergency medical services are close to folding amid the local government’s long standing financial woes.

In January in Great Falls, Stanley Weber, a former Indian Health Service pediatrician who worked on the Blackfeet Reservation in the 1990s was sentenced to 18 years in prison for sexually abusing boys in his care.

Tonight on MontanaPBS, the investigative news program "Frontline" will spend an hour detailing Weber’s story, and why it was allowed to go on for more than 20 years.

Joining us now is Chris Weaver, a Wall Street Journal reporter who worked with "Frontline" on the story.

Lou Bruno likes to watch birds, but he calls himself a lazy birder. Especially when he’s at his home in East Glacier during the summers, looking out over a beaver pond.

In Browning, Blackfeet Community College held a ceremony this week to name a newly-built $7.5 million Health Science and Education Building in honor of the late Blackfeet tribal elder, Elouise Cobell.

On Monday, nearly two dozen nursing students wearing brand-new navy blue scrub tops stood in front of a crowd outside the east entrance of the newest building at the college. They linked arms as one student used scissors to cut through red ribbon.

As members of the Crow tribal council stood alongside Republican Senate hopeful Matt Rosendale for his pro-coal stance at the Bozeman airport Saturday, tribal leaders from the Blackfeet Nation and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes threw their weight behind Democrats Senator Jon Tester and Congressional candidate Kathleen Williams.

They started their day in Browning with a breakfast feed. By afternoon, they were at Elks Lodge in Polson with the Blacklodge drum circle.

Schools and government offices on the Blackfeet Reservation were closed again Tuesday after another bout of winds buffeted the reservation, leaving roadways impassable, buried under snow drifts.

The reservation remains under a state of emergency and an Incident Command team is coordinating with the State of Montana, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other state, tribal and non-government groups.

The Blackfeet Reservation remains under a state of emergency as yet another blizzard bears down on the Rocky Mountain Front tonight into tomorrow. The series of storms have forced Heart Butte Public Schools to close 10 times since the start of the year.

A prolonged winter storm has closed roads, schools and tribal offices on the Blackfeet Reservation. 

Five feet of wind-drifted snow buried roads in some places, preventing plows from reaching outlier communities like Heart Butte. Some people have been stranded since the weekend after a blizzard moved through the eastern Rocky Mountain front last week. 

Montana’s special election results were officially certified this afternoon, and June 21 has been set as the date for Greg Gianforte to be sworn in as Montana’s Congressman.

Before the election there were concerns that counties wouldn’t have the resources they needed to conduct it smoothly. There were few complaints about voting overall, but some voters in Browning had to wait 30 to 60 minutes — sometimes out in the cold rain — before casting their ballots.