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'Racism,' 'discrimination,' 'partisan': Native lawmakers reflect on session [1]
['Nora Mabie', 'Thom Bridge', 'Independent Record', 'Antonio Ibarra Olivares', 'Provided Photo', 'Photo Courtesy Of Montana Legislature', 'Tom Bauer']
Date: 2023-06
When people in Crow Agency see Rep. Sharon Stewart Peregoy around town and ask her how the legislative session went, she tells them, “It was terrible.”
“That’s the only way I can respond,” she said.
And she isn’t alone. Other members of Montana’s American Indian Caucus share the sentiment.
Sen. Susan Webber, D-Browning, said the session was “nasty,” describing her experience as a “really difficult and horrible time.” Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, who has served in the Legislature for two decades, described it as “the most hyper-partisan, super hyper-partisan session I’ve ever been in.” Rep. Frank Smith, D-Wolf Point, who said this was his 24th year in politics, said “it was the worst session yet.”
There are 11 Native American state lawmakers in Montana, nine of whom are Democrats. The group, formally known as the American Indian Caucus, is a minority within a minority in Montanan’s Legislature, which boasts a Republican supermajority.
This legislative session, the caucus faced blatant and subtle racism and discrimination in the halls of the Capitol, in the elevators, in committee meetings and on the House and Senate floors. Before they could make a case for their bills, caucus members often had to first educate lawmakers on the basics of Indian law, tribal sovereignty and tribes’ unique relationship with the federal government.
Caucus members also had to strategize and build relationships across the aisle so they could pass bills to help their communities. Many found themselves toeing a line — making calculations about when to call out racism and when to let things go to ensure they could still work with their colleagues.
Setting the stage
In a redistricting meeting last August, months before the session began, the Daily Montanan reported that Rep. Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, said it wasn’t “fair” that Indigenous people are “overrepresented” in the Legislature. The 2021 session was the first time the American Indian Caucus achieved parity in the Legislature, meaning their representation in the House and Senate mirrored their representation in the state population.
The Havre Daily News reported last summer that Rep. Ed Butcher, R-Winifred, made disparaging comments about Indigenous lawmakers.
“The reservation doesn’t always send their best and brightest,” he was quoted as saying. Butcher was appointed to his seat this session when Doug Flament resigned due to health concerns.
Later, in December, legislative aide Drew Zinecker publicly questioned whether Native Americans living on reservations in Montana should be able to participate in state elections.
Webber, who is Blackfeet, said the various comments set a tone.
“Before (the session) started, we knew we were going to be on defense,” she said. “You could just feel it.”
Racism in the session
In January, when the session started, the caucus members found themselves on defense.
Sen. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, drafted a joint resolution that urged Congress “to investigate alternatives to the American Indian reservation system.”
The resolution contained stereotypes and misinformation, saying, in part, that reservations have “produced the negative effects of drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, welfare dependence, poverty and substandard educational achievements, resulting in lack of opportunity for their future well-being and happiness.”
Members of the American Indian Caucus were quick to condemn the resolution, calling it an attack. The resolution made national news, and Regier later said he would not bring it.
Later in January, Webber brought a bill to establish a Chief Earl Old Person Memorial Highway on the Blackfeet Reservation. Old Person, an advocate, orator and the longest-serving elected tribal leader in the country, died in October 2021 at 92. Montana leaders, including Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, spoke at his funeral. Webber, who brought the bill on behalf of her 12,000 constituents, said she thought it was a “slam dunk.”
Instead, the bill was initially tabled in committee, where members cited an “unwritten rule” that highways can only be named for law enforcement members who died in service. Webber ultimately “blasted” the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor, where several Republicans spoke against it. Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, cited the cost for the highway signs — $4,700 each — as a reason for her opposition, though the Legislature this session was working with a $2.4 billion surplus.
The bill eventually passed out of the House and Senate, and with Gianforte’s signature, became law, but Webber still thinks back on the barriers the legislation had to overcome.
“They made up these rules,” she said, referencing some Republican lawmakers. She added that when she drives from her home in Browning to Helena, she passes through Dupuyer and sees signs for the Ivan Doig Memorial Highway, named for the famous writer.
“He’s not law enforcement,” she said. “They made up these rules on the spot because Earl Old Person was an Indian — that right there is racism.”
Perhaps one of the biggest wins for the caucus was the advancement of a bill that would codify parts of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act into state law. Windy Boy, Chippewa Cree, brought the bill, and in his introductions, he emphasized that the federal law, called ICWA, was enacted in 1978 in response to decades of state child welfare and private adoption agencies separating Native children from their families.
Sen. Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, later introduced a bill dubbed “ICWA for all,” which would expand some concepts of the federal law to apply to all children in Montana. Windy Boy insisted that his bill and Lenz’s could coexist.
“When you think about it, ‘ICWA for all’ shouldn’t even be a term,” Windy Boy told Lee Montana newspapers. “ICWA stands for Indian Child Welfare Act. It was made in response to Indian children being taken from their parents.”
Windy Boy asked Sen. Jason Small, one of two Republicans in the American Indian Caucus and the chair, to carry his ICWA bill on the Senate floor, and Small, who prides himself on his ability to work across the aisle, agreed.
The floor discussion was heated. Sen. Steve Hinebauch, R-Wibaux, said he heard “that 49% of kids on the reservation are being investigated for child abuse.” Small said he “can’t imagine” that’s the case. Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, said he would support the bill if it applied aspects of ICWA to all children in Montana, and Sen. Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls, asked Small if the word “Indian” was struck from the bill, would he still support it? Small answered that, yes, Lenz’s bill applying some ICWA concepts to all children passed the Senate 50-0.
“That (hearing) was a tough one,” Small, who is Northern Cheyenne, recalled. “There’s definitely some kind of turbo-charged racism there. There’s some misunderstandings. ICWA is the gold standard for child welfare. Meanwhile, they won’t let us have it? It was just getting so ignorant.”
The ICWA bill eventually passed both chambers with some new amendments, and it awaits Gianforte’s signature. If passed into law, Small said it would be “a big step forward.”
Native lawmakers said racism wasn’t just prevalent in committee meetings or on the House and Senate floor — it also showed up in the hallways, in muffled conversations and snide comments.
Keegan Medrano, Muscogee Creek and policy director for the ACLU, tweeted that he got a haircut, and “the next day, a legislator asked if I’d been ‘scalped.’”
Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, replied on Twitter saying in 2013, when he was a lobbyist, he wore a hat, and a lawmaker asked if it was his “war bonnet.”
Stewart Peregoy, who is Crow, said Rep. Tanner Smith, R-Lakeside, approached her and two other Native caucus members this session to complain about Supaman, a famous Crow hip-hop artist who had recently visited a school in his district.
“(Smith) was upset that Supaman in his presentation told kids, ‘You’re living on stolen land,’” Stewart Peregoy recalled. “He asked us if we know Supaman, and when we said, ‘Yes, we do,’ he said, ‘We should get after Supaman for saying that.’”
Stewart Peregoy said she told Smith that she will not condemn Supaman because what he said is true and he has a right to artistic expression.
“I just thought, ‘I’m not going to put up with this,’” Stewart Peregoy recalled. “So I did take him on. I told him that he has white privilege and that as an American Indian woman, I am treated as a second-class citizen even within this Legislature.”
Smith denied calling for condemnation of Supaman and wrote in an email to Lee newspapers, "I was genuinely wondering their perspective on having these discussions with the younger age group."
Looking back, Stewart Peregoy said Smith’s comments “crossed a line.”
“I’m Crow, but I’m not in charge of all Crow people or all Natives,” she said. “The idea that we’re all the same is stereotypical. And those attitudes and assumptions impact how these people vote.”
Rep. Donavon Hawk, D-Butte, said when it came to “Native bills,” a small group in the House consistently voted against them.
Reps. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, and Caleb Hinkle, R-Belgrade, were among five lawmakers who voted against establishing the Chief Earl Old Person Memorial Highway. The same four legislators were also among 10 lawmakers who opposed a bill strengthening Montana’s Indian language preservation. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle and the vice-chair of the Montana Freedom Caucus, was the only person to vote against establishing a missing persons training grant program. He was also one of three lawmakers to oppose a bill extending the Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force, and he voted in opposition to a resolution that would recognize the harm done in Indigenous boarding schools.
Notably, Rep. Rhonda Knudsen, the other Republican in the American Indian Caucus, voted “no” on several of the caucus’ priority bills. She did not support Windy Boy’s ICWA bill, and she did not support the resolution to recognize Indigenous boarding schools.
Knudsen declined to comment on her role within the caucus.
Lack of education
Several caucus members noted that oftentimes, before defending their bills, they first had to educate lawmakers on things like federal Indian law, criminal jurisdiction and what life actually looks like on reservations.
Webber brought a bill that would provide tax exemptions to tribal members who own fee land and are in the process of converting that land to trust and spent much of her time defining “fee” and “trust” land for the committee.
She concluded the hearing saying she hoped she educated the committee, and the bill later died in the House. When she introduced the bill on establishing an Earl Old Person Memorial Highway, Webber fielded questions from committee members on what it means to be a chief and what roles that person fulfills in a tribal community.
“It’s a lack of knowing your neighbor,” Webber said later. “It’s a lack of knowing what goes on in neighboring communities. It showed me how little they know about their Indian neighbors and how little they want to know.”
Montana was the first state to constitutionally mandate a commitment in its educational goals to understanding Native American tribes and cultures, but lawmakers are not required to receive such education.
Morigeau, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, introduced a bill to improve lawmakers’ grasp on tribal issues by making information on Indian law and policy “readily available to all legislators.” He said in his testimony that while there was a training offered to lawmakers on Native issues this session, it lasted just 10 minutes. The bill didn’t pass out of committee.
Morigeau said he was disappointed by the bill’s failure, adding that training would “have helped people make better, more informed decisions.”
When it comes to legislation aimed at improving life for Native Americans, Morigeau said some Republicans have an “us vs. them” attitude.
When he proposed his bill on tribal education for lawmakers, for example, he said he heard that people were upset by the idea of having to learn about Natives.
“They think, ‘Why don’t you (Natives) have to learn about us (non-Natives)?’” Morigeau explained. “Well, the thing is, we learn about dominant society and history every day. We live it.”
Morigeau said he saw this kind of attitude during ICWA discussions, too, particularly when Emrich suggested removing the word “Indian” from the legislation.
“It’s this idea of, ‘Why aren’t we getting this and you are?’” Morigeau said. “In their mind, (legislation that applies to Native Americans) is this special thing.”
This attitude, Morigeau said, is another reason why educating lawmakers on Native history, policy and law is important. If people knew that ICWA was first enacted to address harmful and assimilationist U.S. policies, maybe they would understand why the law applies to Native Americans and not all children, for example.
“What we’re trying to do is close gaps so there is equity,” Morigeau said.
With a lack of education and formal training, Stewart Peregoy said stereotypes persist in the Capitol.
“(Some lawmakers) are completely ignorant of Indigenous people in Montana,” she said. “It’s willful. When they see us, they think we’re a bunch of drunks who live off the government. That’s the attitude.”
‘Asking for scraps’
Webber said when compared with the $2.4 billion surplus the Legislature dealt with this session, Native bills were afforded “pocket change.”
Stewart Peregoy said several of the Native bills, including the one on language preservation and a missing Indigenous persons task force, are “one-time only,” meaning funding expires, and the bills must be revisited every session.
“That’s the intent,” she said. “We have to go in and fight for them every year and justify them up the wazoo.”
She noted that a bill to expand and enhance the Montana Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force originally requested $50,000 and was cut to $5,000.
“You can’t do anything with that,” she said. “It’s piecemeal.”
Morigeau said a former lawmaker said being in the American Indian Caucus “feels like we’re dogs asking for scraps.”
Rep. Marvin Weatherwax, D-Browning, said the environment in the Capitol was so bad, he “hardly went to any of my committees.”
“It wasn’t going to make a difference anyway,” he said, adding that his other commitments as a tribal councilman and leader of the Coalition of Large Tribes were more fulfilling for him.
“I doubt I’ll run again,” he added. “I don’t feel like degrading myself like that.”
Weatherwax said he was able to vote by proxy so his constituents still had a voice in the Legislature, but there was at least one time where he did not vote by proxy, which a Democratic spokesperson attributed to a communication error.
"A lot of (my constituents) didn't notice I was gone," Weatherwax said.
Supporting Rep. Zooey Zephyr
When Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker from Missoula, was censured for saying legislators should be ashamed to support bills that would hurt transgender youth, the American Indian Caucus was among the first groups to issue a formal statement in support of her.
Morigeau said when legislators voted to keep Zephyr off the House floor, he could tell members of the American Indian Caucus were upset.
“They were upset about what happened to her, but I could also see it was a bummer for people because it triggered other emotions from things we’ve dealt with in the past,” he said. “Man, we’ve been hurt so many times, and the Zephyr thing really disturbed the ground. It’s like when you drop a rock in a mud puddle and a bunch of dirt comes up and floats around. It really brought up emotions and experiences for people.”
Morigeau himself was also criticized for speaking on one of his bills, prior to Zephyr’s censure.
In his introduction to a bill replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, he listed atrocities that Columbus had committed against Native people, including amputation, rape and beheading.
Sen. Dan Salomon, R-Ronan, blamed Morigeau for the bill’s failure.
“(Morigeau) starts off with accusing Columbus of rape, beheading, amputations … I have never in my experience been so mad,” he said.
“I shared factual information,” Morigeau said later. “They didn’t like hearing those facts. It’s a double standard of, ‘Just don’t say the things we don’t like and you’ll be alright.’ … The point is, they say stuff all the time that makes us uncomfortable.”
Stewart Peregoy called Zephyr’s censure “blatant fascism,” and Webber said it was “discrimination.”
“We know all about discrimination in the American Indian Caucus,” Webber said. “And for Zooey, it was discrimination. Bottom line.”
Rep. Donavon Hawk, D-Butte, said Native communities have supported and integrated Two-Spirit people, who occupy a traditional third gender, into their communities since time immemorial.
“It surprises me that this country is only a couple hundred years old, and we are not able to function with LGBTQ people in our communities,” he said. “(The caucus) knows what it’s like to be persecuted, to be written out of existence, so we stood up.”
‘Walking on eggshells’
Morigeau said as a Native lawmaker, he often feels like he’s “walking on eggshells.”
“When you’re in a minority, you have less room for error,” he explained. “If I get upset about something, then I’m just the angry Native guy who has a chip on his shoulder. So you can’t get too upset or emotional because it pushes people away. You have to keep your composure. I’m not going to get anything passed if I’m enemies with people. We have to get along.”
While Native lawmakers faced discrimination and combated stereotypes this session, many said they came to the Capitol prepared to do exactly that.
Webber views the Native caucus as a “firewall” protecting tribes from harmful policies. Windy Boy said if people are making decisions on behalf of the people he represents, “I want a seat at that table.” And Sen. Mike Fox, D-Hayden, said if Natives aren’t in the room, rumors and misinformation spread.
“We grew up with this stuff,” said Morigeau, referencing stereotypes and discrimination. “And we’ve learned to ignore it or handle it respectfully. A lot of us have dealt with this our whole lives.”
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