Common Ground

‘We remember where we come from’

But not everyone who leaves the reservation comes home

Mary Baker sits outside her home in the University Villages with her two children, Anthony and Joslyn. She grew up on the Fort Peck Reservation, and has lived in Missoula for three years. Photo by Mary Rizos.

By Mary Rizos and Vendula Krizova 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

“I would never go back.”

Mary Baker is adamant that she has no desire and no reason to go back to the Fort Peck reservation where she grew up. Missoula is where she’ll stay, and where she’ll raise her family.  She is strong, clear-minded, independent.  She is a full-time student, a Sioux, a wife, a mother.  Twenty-six years old, she says that moving to Missoula from Poplar three years ago was, for her and her husband, a matter of life and death.

“We had to get away from the reservation so we could save ourselves,” she says of her struggle against alcoholism and inertia in a place of poverty, unemployment, and violence. Of Montana’s seven reservations, nearly all have unemployment rates over 50%, and alcoholism is a serious and all-too-common problem.

‘I was not born in a teepee, but I am Indian’

As head of Montana Peoples Action and Indian Peoples Action, Janet Robideau is determined to help not only American Indians but all people who need it

By Vendula Křížová and Mary Rizos 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

Janet Robideau is a Northern Cheyenne from southeastern Montana. “I was born in San Francisco,” she says, beginning her life story. “People still ask me and I have to tell them that I was not born in a teepee down by the river. My mother was in the Army; my father was in the Air Force."

Robideau spent her school years in a boarding school. “Everything became a sin; even bubble gum was a sin. And I love bubble gum to this day!” Her family moved to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana when Robideau was 10. And about the time she was 12, she started to learn the Cheyenne language. “My grandfather told me: ‘You are a Cheyenne. And you need to know your language.’ And he stopped talking to me in English. And that is how I learned. I would listen to him and go and point things to find out what he was talking about.”

Her Cheyenne name is “Hatha-o-hio”, Standing Out Woman. Her daughter is 36 years old and her name is a Lone Pine Tree Woman; Robideau’s son is 32 years old and he was named Little Wild Wind by his father, James Robideau.

Police crisis said to undercut Blackfoot economy

Flathead Reservation banks on diversified economy

By Martin Brodsky and Sean Breslin 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

The Blackfeet Reservation is in the midst of a crisis. Recently, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took over control of law enforcement on the reservation, and its arrival hasn’t been welcomed by many in the community.

“They provide spotty—sometimes thuggish—law enforcement,” said John McGill, editor of the Glacier Reporter, a weekly paper based in Browning, Mont.

Aside from the obvious dangers of having an inadequate police force on the reservation, the lack of security has only added to the economic problems of the area.

“They (business owners) don’t bring businesses here because we don’t have a police force,” said Marlene Augare, an advertising representative with the Glacier Reporter.

Keeping the faith

At Rocky Boy’s reservation, two institutions are tying today’s life to traditional ways

By Aleš Kosina and Ashley McKee 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

For students who grew up in densely populated central Europe, Rocky Boy’s reservation seems like the middle of nowhere. The Great Plains seem never-ending and the Bear Paw Mountains look as if they do not belong to the countryside.  The American Indians, who have been living for centuries on this 120,000-acre piece of land, have been living in poverty all their lives.

The reservation, created by the federal government, put together two tribes who were traditional enemies and had fought fierce wars over the scattered resources of the land. Now, the two tribes cooperate with one another and govern their land. According to Native News, a University of Montana journalism class that reports on American Indian issues, Rocky Boy's reservation provides a home for 2,622 members of the Chippewa-Cree tribe.

As each generation of people grows older, it has been a struggle for Indians to keep their culture and traditions alive.  Two institutions on Rocky Boy’s have helped keep the culture significantly.