Tribal cannabis thriving as red state Montana still struggling with regulation

In the earliest years of interested party this columnist advocated for a craft cannabis industry informed by a synthesis of statutes that empower organic gardeners, microbreweries, vintners, greenhouses, banking, fiduciary and insurance participation with ways and means hammered out in committee by each state legislature to guide enforcement. Patients seeking a prescription for cannabis as medication would be seen by health care providers and be excused from paying any excise taxes.

After Montana legalized therapeutic cannabis in 2004 discussions about growing the industry on tribal lands began in 2010 with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai (CSKT). The then-purple state legalized for all adults over 21 in 2020 then opened for business in 2022 but because tribes are sovereign nations, state legalization did not automatically apply inside reservation boundaries. 

In 2025, the now-red state legislature passed a bill that included compacts that would govern tax revenue sharing, cultivation limits and how tribally-owned dispensaries would operate on or near reservations but was vetoed by the governor so each tribe chooses how to regulate the enterprise. 

The Montana Department of Revenue is authorized to issue a total of eight "Combined-Use" licenses that allows exactly one license for each of the eight federally recognized tribes in Montana or an entity majority-owned by a tribe. The state caps tribal cultivation under these specific state licenses at a Tier 1 canopy level, the smallest commercial grow size, which remains a point of regulatory friction. A combined-use license permits the tribe to run both a cultivation facility and a dispensary at a single premises and the Crow Nation passed its own independent cannabis ordinance to levy its own local taxes and regulate manufacturing while other reservations remain entirely dry or prohibit sales. 

Tribal entities can operate these facilities within a 150 air-mile radius of the exterior boundaries of their reservation, or tribal services area for the Little Shell Chippewa tribe, provided the host county allows adult-use sales. In 2026, N8V Grown is renowned as Montana’s most trusted dispensary offering premium cannabis products. Founded by an enrolled member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe the award-winning, Indigenous-owned and operated business that takes immense pride in its heritage and commitment to excellence has expanded from locations near reservations to a retail location outside of Billings because Yellowstone County is green but the city is not.

The Flathead Indian Reservation spans parts of Lake, Sanders, Missoula, and Flathead counties and the CSKT operates as a sovereign entity with its own codified laws regarding possession and distribution. 

But white people are struggling how to regulate the industry in the Flathead Valley. Local county commissioners faced fierce public pushback over how to manage the market so in 2022 they attempted to host a public vote to completely opt out of "recreational" cannabis sales sparking protests at the downtown Kalispell courthouse before the county ultimately backed down.

Today, zoning laws vary statewide as jurisdictions navigate the recreational cannabis industry under the Department of Revenue, which had previously been housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. City and county officials over the last four years have been directing dispensary owners where to cultivate, process and dispense cannabis to allow their businesses to operate while avoiding community conflict. Flathead County in 2023 limited cultivation and manufacturing to agricultural and residential zones, meaning some owners could not grow their plants in business zones where their product is sold. This requires many business owners to operate separate facilities in multiple locations to cultivate, manufacture and dispense their products. [Flathead Beacon]

Cities, states grappling with cannabis dispensary oversaturation

Deeply blue cities Santa Fe, New Mexico and Missoula, Montana are about the same population. 

New Mexico's capital city ranks exceptionally high for cannabis retail density, with roughly 43 to 45 active licensed dispensaries serving a population of about 89,000 residents. This translates to an estimated 48 to 50 dispensaries per 100,000 residents, or roughly 1 shop for every 2,000 people. A year ago the NM cannabis excise tax reached 13% and will increase 1% each year until July 2030 when it will hit 18% as set in state statute. On Tuesday an interested party paid $65 in Santa Fe for an ounce of flower containing almost 31% THC as competition weeds out the weak. 

Missoula also maintains one of the highest concentrations of cannabis dispensaries per capita in the United States, peaking at a reported 30.7 dispensaries per 50,000 residents. State statistics confirm there are 54 active dispensaries operating within Missoula city limits so in February the city council mandated that any new dispensary be at least 1,000 feet away from another dispensary keeping additional location restrictions in place but assured existing dispensaries are grandfathered in under the new rules. Just recently, Missoula enacted a prohibition on new cannabis licenses to address a range of concerns while public health officials suggest the city should have no more than twelve dispensaries based on current population.

They've taken over former sandwich shops, coffee shops and other small retail outlets in nearly all corners of Missoula. [Missoula Current]

Signed into law by Governor Tina Kotek in March, 2024 after lawmakers passed House Bill 4121 Oregon established a strict, permanent population-based cap on new cannabis licenses or a maximum of one license per 7,500 residents.

Washington State has a 37% excise tax on cannabis sales so it is struggling to compete with a burgeoning black market.

Guest post: keep US85 historic

Editor's note: After Missoula I returned to Deadwood in 1981 and was hired as a foodservice delivery truck driver by Paul Miller, a mad genius, who ran the transportation for Twin City Fruit. Paul's dad Dave told stories about beating checks back to Deadwood driving rickety old trucks on gravel roads and US85 since the 1940s from Deadwood to Denver's Denargo Market peddling produce from Scottsbluff, Nebraska back to the Gulch. They owned the Scottsbluff market back-hauling beet sugar and Rockyford melons from the area. 

Paul's brother David, Jr., now a local historian, ran the staff and warehouse until selling his share to Paul while their father, Dave, Sr. ran purchasing. David, Jr. also owned Pop's Grabit N Growl on Deadwood's Main Street until gambling came to the Gulch. Paul bought the Fish and Hunter warehouse then built a freezer that featured an impressive 40-foot roof-mounted ammonia refrigeration system to sustain the large-scale walk-ins that sustained Paul's $22 million market share. The property footprint sat directly along the US 85/Highway 14A and Whitewood Creek boundary, which serves as the primary gateway into Deadwood. 

Let me just say that you haven't lived until you've driven a refrigerated truck from Deadwood to Newcastle, Wyoming and back again twice a week for a year and a half on US85 sometimes over ice and snow covered roads.

Denver-based competitor Nobel also distributed in the Black Hills market then it was absorbed by Houston-based Sysco but was the division that ultimately bought Paul's client list. Following corporate transitions later in its history, local lore and historical employee forums note that operations abruptly ceased, with remaining inventory packed up overnight. Paul died in 2014 but not before giving the Fish and Hunter property back to the City.

Today, I can see US85 from my house in New Mexico, drive it nearly every day and my dreams still feature deadlines to meet.

From my inbox.

Hello Larry, 

My name is Mike Miller. I worked with you at TCF in Deadwood. I left in 1987 to work for American Airlines in Tulsa, retired in 2021, and moved to Olympia, WA. I’m sending you this in case you would be able to help my Dad out. He’s 85 and still fighting for the Black Hills at every opportunity. What we are trying to do is get as many people as we can to submit comments to Mark Malone of the SDDOT. Their plan is to widen and straighten highway 85 from Cheyenne Crossing to the Wyoming border. We know what that means. We recently got an extension on the comment period to September 4th. If you, or anyone you know could send a message to Mark, it would help a lot. A comment from you would carry a lot of weight. 

Thank you Larry. 

Sincerely, Mike Miller

Larson inducted into SD Hall of Fame funded in part by Earth hater adversary Schieffer

Citing discovery on Indian trust ground a Republican politically motivated acting US Attorney for the District of South Dakota named Kevin Schieffer upended local control and seized a thunder lizard named Sue in 1992 from Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City. 

A team led by Larson unearthed and restored another Tyrannosaurus named Stan and created replicas of what some call the world's second-finest T. rex fossil. Stan's fossilized bones were found by amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison in the Hell Creek Formation near Buffalo, South Dakota in 1987. After a public feud and lawsuit the first Stan was awarded to Pete's brother, Neal who then teamed up with geologist Walter W. Stein Bill. 

In 2013 then-Governor Denny Daugaard appointed the disgraced Schieffer to the South Dakota Board of Regents. 

In 2019 a replica of Stan was moved from the lobby of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to Farmington to make room for Albuquerque's new Bisti Beast exhibit. The original Stan sold for nearly $32 million in 2020 to an anonymous buyer and today is in a museum in Abu Dhabi. 

In 2022, auction house Christie's withdrew a T-rex skeleton from an event after experts, including Larson, noticed just 79 original bones and over 200 cast from Stan in the fossil known as Shen which was excavated from a portion of the Hell Creek Formation in McCone County, Montana.

Pete Larson has since co-authored and published findings from a study of the effects the Chicxulub asteroid impact had on Laramidia after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction and on the Hell Creek Formation near Tanis, North Dakota.

Today, Schieffer is a lifetime contributor to the South Dakota Hall of Fame into which Pete Larson has been inducted.

"A Visionary in Paleontology:" Operating from Hill City, SD, for over 50 years, Peter Larson heads Black Hills Institute, the world’s largest private fossil company. Internationally known for work with T. rex specimens Sue and Stan, he has authored over 80 scientific articles, shaped federal fossil collection policy, and built a collaborative community spanning business, academia, and government. Peter believes discovery is richer when done together. [press release]

Utility pulls plug on new Montana wind farm

The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting, maintaining then removing and disposing of just one wind turbine eyesore bat and bird killer would take six hundred subscribers to energy self-reliance. 

Microgrid technologies enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to the utilities enabled by moral hazard. And, since utilities are not your friends don’t tie your photovoltaic system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the grifter that reads your meter.

In 2024 NextEra was the fourth-biggest US energy group after ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips but today leads in the market capitalization of solar and wind energy.

NextEra Energy is suspending its $1.85 billion Glendive Wind Project originally scheduled to break ground this year due to the company not securing customer contracts. NextEra plans on maintaining contact with local governments and landowners participating in the Glendive Wind Project as it considers the future of the project. [Glendive Ranger-Review]

Public lands management at risk to Trump's Earth haters

In 2002 Tracy Stone-Manning lectured on the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act or NREPA at the University of Montana where she earned her Masters of Science in Environmental Studies. In 2007 she became an aide to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) then ran the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and in 2014 became chief of staff for Montana Governor Steve Bullock. As Director of the Clark Fork Coalition she guided dam removal and river cleanup and has been co-chair of Missoula's Open Space, Rivers and Farmland. 

After serving as Director of the US Bureau of Land Management she is now president of The Wilderness Society as the Trump Organization ruins the BLM and the US Forest Service faces the collapse of morale and preparedness.

The management structure itself is a tangle. Interior manages parks, refuges, and BLM lands. The Forest Service sits in Agriculture. Marine sanctuaries fall under Commerce. Energy authority is split across agencies. This fragmentation leaves land managers trying to solve twenty-first century problems with twentieth- and even nineteenth-century machinery. That kind of gridlock still plagues decisions across the West. Layer climate change on top of all this—megafires, water scarcity, shifting wildlife corridors—and the mismatch between current laws and present realities becomes even sharper. When the smoke clears, much of the architecture underpinning public-lands management will be in ruins. [Stone-Manning, What I Learned Running the BLM]

Democratic former South Dakota lawmaker Troy Heinert is currently serving as the Chief of Bison Management at Interior focusing on tribal buffalo restoration, returning the National Mammal to the land and working with tribal leadership and conservation groups who are advancing buffalo stewardship. 

In vindictive retribution and a slap at Native America Trump has nominated New Mexico Earth hater, Steve Pearce to run the BLM but his confirmation is hung up in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee because of bipartisan concern that he's a destructive industry apparatchik.

Rewild the West.

American Prairie is the largest rewilding project in the US

Despite Montana's Earth haters and the Trump Organization's war on American Prairie its mission to rewild the West continues.

Greece has the Parthenon. North America had the American Serengeti—a wildlife spectacle so vast it rivaled anything on Earth.

In less than 100 years, it was destroyed. Tens of millions of bison, elk, pronghorn, wolves, and grizzlies were decimated. The Great Plains went from the heartland of biodiversity to fences and wall-to-wall cattle ranching.

But in central Montana, something extraordinary is happening.

American Prairie is building a 3.2-million-acre protected landscape by purchasing ranches and converting them from commodity production to wildlife restoration. They're bringing back bison, restoring natural grazing patterns, and letting ecosystems function the way they're meant to.

In Episode 217, Brooke sits down with Daniel Kinka, PhD, American Prairie's Director of Rewilding, to get the inside story on this historic project. They talk about:

American Prairie's strategy for landscape-scale restoration

The power of ecosystem processes (bison, prairie dogs, fire)

Why the area can’t sustain wolves can't yet—but grizzlies, yes

What this project means for climate, biodiversity, and hope

This is one of the most inspiring conservation stories happening right now.

Episode 217 - The Great Plains Comeback: Inside America's Largest Rewilding Project https://rewildology.com/.../the-great-plains-comeback.../

#AmericanPrairie #Rewildology #Podcast #Rewilding

Fire Thunder granddaughter making Montana history

Katie Fire Thunder is a 25-year-old Oglala Lakota activist who was recently appointed to the Montana House of Representatives for District 59. Fire Thunder is a legal assistant at the Gallatin County Attorney’s Office and co-founder of Bozeman Tenants United, a nonprofit fighting for safe and affordable housing. She served as a legislative aide and was a member of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Her grandmother, Cecelia Fire Thunder, served as the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from 2004 until her impeachment in 2006 purportedly for announcing plans sans council approval to open a clinic that would provide abortions on the reservation.

Old Montana stomping grounds featured in BBC report

Brud Smith is a proud Montana Democrat ranching near the Boulder River in Jefferson County but he also leases property from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. He was recently interviewed by the BBC's Ellie House for a segment on the federal lands sell-off debate. Also interviewed was former BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning who sees the urban sprawl changing Montana as a destructive trend. 

The above image is posted at Xitter. 

Learn more at Grist.

Tester: US nearing dictatorship

Constitutional crisis or just a test? 

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton exposed Trump as unfit and knew retribution was coming. Montana's Democratic former US Senator Jon Tester shared his horror at the march toward neofascism with Maritsa Georgiou.

Breaking news: FBI searching John Bolton’s house by Grounded Podcast

A recording from Grounded Podcast's live video

Read on Substack

Tribes are pushing back on Trump Organization plan to sell off treaty lands

Attorneys are gathering even more evidence that the Trump Organization committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Donald Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Native Americans after lawsuits he lost in federal court over casinos. 

Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.

“This is a frontal assault on tribal treaty rights and the exercise of those,” said Cris Stainbrook, Oglala Lakota and CEO of Indian Land Capital Company, which assists tribal nations in regaining land. “It is unacceptable and downright appalling that Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing to include a provision that limits Tribal involvement in decisions about public lands in the reconciliation bill,” said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the Democratic ranking member on the committee in a statement to High Country News. For decades, tribal nations have advocated for the return of lands taken through government policies and outright seizure. Tribes might support legislation that would make it easier for them to regain ancestral lands, but not like this, Stainbrook said. [Public land sale a ‘frontal assault on tribal treaty rights’]

If there is any good news about this there are Indigenous Nations who can afford to buy much of the land in the public domain if it indeed goes up for sale. After a 23-year effort and $56 million about 47,000 acres in the Klamath Basin have been returned to the Yurok Tribe after studies showed how conservation goals are more effectively met when Indigenous peoples manage their own territories. 

There is at least a $billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so maybe tribes can buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service in occupied South Dakota.

Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership.

Heirs of Native individuals who held Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts that were mismanaged by the federal government must act before the end of June to file a claim and receive what they are owed. [$38 Million in Cobell Settlement Funds Are Still Available]

Above image was captured by AP/Wide World Photo in 1948 showing George Gillette, the tribal chairman of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota or Three Affiliated Tribes, weeping at the Garrison Dam Agreement signing as he was forced to sell 153,000 acres of their land to the federal government. Standing directly behind Gillette is Ben Reifel, who was then the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Superintendent on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Born into the Sicangu Oyate, Republican Reifel went on to win election to the US House of Representatives in South Dakota's First Congressional District when there were two in my home state.

Learn more from columnist, George Ochenski at the Daily Montanan.

Butte rail bypass makes sense

Amtrak service through Billings, Bozeman, Helena, Missoula always seemed like the best idea but commuter rail from Butte to Missoula in the I-90 median, to Helena through Basin over an existing I-15 right of way and even from Bozeman to Butte over Homestake Pass is not impossible.

Surprise! Earth haters turn against law enforcement in Maude case

In South Dakota members of the law enforcement industry enjoy qualified immunity from prosecution for the often lethal offenses they commit in the line of duty so the violence they visit on suspects is simply dismissed as justified. 

But, on January 6, 2021 the attack on the US Capitol was a climax of an anti-law enforcement movement emboldened by the 2014 Bundy standoff. So, it's hardly surprising that Earth haters like Cliven Bundy and Harriet Hageman are defending Charles and Heather Maude because they hate what they call the administrative state even as it benefits them. 

US Forest Service Supervisor Jack Isaacs (now retired), Special Agent Travis Lunders and District Ranger Julie Wheeler are receiving death threats just for doing their jobs then thrown under the bus by the Trump Organization's agriculture secretary. Extremists are screaming that Agent Lunders came unannounced to the Maude ranch in 2024 in full tactical gear to serve the summons to appear in district court because the Maudes blew off civil remedies after breaking federal law. The Forest Service denies the agent was outfitted with "any tactical uniform, gear or assault weapons" even though it is widely known property owners in that part of South Dakota are militantly opposed to gubmint especially those of Democratic administrations but love all that subsidized crop and livestock insurance anyway. 

Jon Haber spent a career in the Forest Service and is now a Missoula, Montana attorney who specializes in environmental litigation.

I was watching this case develop, and then stopped when it got quashed – thanks, Dave [Mertz] for digging into it. I think you quite likely nailed it with: “I would imagine that any similar event in the future would certainly make a Forest Service Line Officer wonder whether the Secretary of Agriculture would have their back.” You have the more traditional “don’t mess with anyone politically connected to the administration, with the addition of an administration that likes to make examples of people as a tool for intimidation. And they especially seem to like to promote stories that make government agencies look bad. Dave’s words, but maybe more to the point in this case as “not interested in the facts.” [comment, Haber, Theft of Government Property or an Innocent Mistake?]

Heather Maude is a Wyoming native and her parents are Trump supporting Earth haters, too.

The case in South Dakota takes place against a backdrop of federal agencies frequently struggling with the way they’re perceived among rural people. [Federal Fence Line Fight With Ranchers Is ‘Odd,’ Wyoming Attorney Says]

But public servants who arrest people of color for trespass in Madison are qualified immune because selective enforcement is nothing new in South Dakota.

Metal tariffs could restart landfill mining

Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a now-dead Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota. In the pre-cellphone days Brohm and this former Twin City Fruit marketing associate shared a radio telephone party line where managers plotting an environmental disaster at the Gilt Edge site unwittingly leaked the news to anyone listening. 

I've preached this for going on forty years. It takes trucks, tub grinders and balers dedicated to specific materials to recycle on a regional scale. The United States has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream just waiting to be repurposed. We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled while tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while metals and plastics, that could be petroleum, are buried in landfills.

Disadvantaged populations have been subject to mining-driven environmental racism for hundreds if not thousands of years and in 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Paul Krugman warned Americans that Earth hating Republicans want to make America one big strip mine. 

In September Sibanye-Stillwater mining company in Montana announced the ending of some 800 jobs after Russia flooded the world palladium market sinking Democratic Senator Jon Tester's reelection. Montana Tunnels Mining, Inc. in Jefferson County is in bankruptcy after a century of pollution and tax fraud.

Currently, the US is 100% reliant on foreign sources of the gallium that's used for integrated circuits and light emitting diodes or LEDs. According to the US Geological Survey the nation imports most of its bauxite and alumina so instead of ripping up ground in America recycling aluminum is mostly working but there is so much metal buried in landfills that if we mined those we'd import even less. Electronic waste containing copper, gold and platinum is valued at nearly $100 billion but only 4% is repurposed while new mines are currently being permitted in Montana and Arizona. 

Today, visitors and skiers at Terry Peak in the occupied Black Hills are increasingly concerned by the encroachment of a massive tailings pile and ever-widening mining scars from decades of scorched earth. But the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are hardly the only public lands plundered by foreign companies under cover of the General Mining Law of 1872 that was enacted to settle Civil War debt and rob Indigenous peoples of their homes and human rights. 

Until it closed in 1939 the Tererro Mine in the headwaters of the Pecos River took gold, lead and other metals then left piles of toxic waste rock in their place. After major flooding in 1991 when sulfuric acid, aluminum and zinc swept into the river miner Freeport-McMoRan was held responsible for the deaths of some 100,000 Rio Grande cutthroat trout and for the subsequent decades of acid mine drainage.

Learn more from the World Economic Forum.

Last time Trump levied similar steel tariffs, it led to an increase of~ 1,000 jobs in steel production -- but 75,000 *fewer* manufacturing jobs in downstream firms where steel or aluminum are an input into production. econofact.org/steel-tariff...

[image or embed]

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 4:15 PM

All dressed up but now what?

Not that anyone’s going to do anything about it, but it might be good to remember that, as an adjudicated oath-breaking insurrectionist, Mr.Trump is constitutionally disqualified under Sec. 3 of 14th Am from taking the oath as president on 1/20/25 unless 2/3 of both houses lift the disqualification

— Laurence H. Tribe (@tribelaw.bsky.social) November 25, 2024 at 4:46 AM

Just weeks before Donald Trump led his attempted autogolpe Stewart Rhodes was inciting the Oath Keepers to civil war. Rhodes formed the white supremacist militia in 2009 after Barack Obama was elected POTUS but is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in Trump's insurrection. 

After bankrupting Ammon Bundy and sending him into hiding Idaho's St. Luke's bolstered security protocols amid threats from the state's Republican Attorney General and others in his party. Idaho is the third most lucrative state to practice medicine just behind Montana and South Dakota as doctors flee persecution from militants like Dorothy Moon, the Bircher who's Chair of the Republican Party there. Raúl Labrador is an Earth hater and Mormon who was born in Puerto Rico, elected to Congress in 2010 with support of the John Birch Society, was Chair of the IDGOP before becoming attorney general and says he believes a fertilized egg is an unborn child.

American Redoubt guy, James Rawles is still blogging away about preparedness for the End Times and awaiting orders as his orange god's transition gaggle is barred from talking to the Biden administration.

Montana's chorus of anti-education legislators included Basin's own Alan Hale, until he died. Today, the state's legislature is no longer recognizable as a democratic body but rages on as a Trumpian horde and Jefferson County is every bit as rabid as any in Montana.

Lee Newspapers and the Montana State News Bureau are running a series on Tactical Civics, a militia group wondering what's next after their Proud Boys brethren were told to "stand back and stand by."

"If we have 50 members, where are they?" a woman named Cathy asked the group. The disappointment that night has been expressed in interviews over the past six months with current and former Tactical Civics members who spoke to the Montana State News Bureau for this series. Travis McAdam, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said historically such groups have lost momentum during Republican presidential terms. After Jan. 6 and the resulting prosecutions, those networks were decimated, sending mobilization efforts back to the local and regional levels with plans to rebrand themselves as forces for good, McAdam said. ['The Heat’s Off': Will Trump's next presidency stall Tactical Civics growth in Montana?]

In Wyoming members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are preparing to crash the legislative session in Cheyenne so maybe that's the next storm front of the End Times. 

Trump World's man for secretary of Defense has close ties to a Moscow, Idaho-based white christofascist cult that aims to turn America into a theocracy.

Learn more at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Biden apology a start: NDN Collective

As part of an English-only movement that flourishes even today in parts of the US there were some 332 institutions that indoctrinated Indigenous children in 29 states. Oklahoma had 78, Arizona was home to 59, New Mexico had 52 and there were 23 in occupied South Dakota. 59 were in the clutches of catholics. 

In 1948 Congress gave the land belonging to the Indian Boarding School in west Rapid City to the City, the School District, the South Dakota National Guard, various churches and the Native Community - except the Native Community never got theirs. 

Leonard Peltier attended the Flandreau Indian School in the late 1950s where my mom practice-taught in the mid 1960s and learned first hand how Indigenous Americans were made to write in English. 

In 2012 the Rapid City Journal refused to publish journalist Jim Kent's column on boarding schools.

In a letter dated 24 April, 2020 US Representative Deb Haaland (D- NM, 1st District) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ, 3rd District) asked for a grant of clemency and the release of Prisoner of War Peltier, a tribal citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In May, 2020 Peltier applied for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but it was denied by the Trump Organization because Donald Trump detests American Indians. In November, 2020 Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden then Deb Haaland became Secretary of the Interior. 

NDN Collective has purchased a home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in anticipation of Leonard Peltier's release.

“Apologies must include meaningful action to repair the harm done – otherwise, they are just manipulative tools giving the semblance of care to distract from continued wrongdoing. Biden can and should make his apology real by:

Passing the U.S. Truth & Healing Commission Bill to ensure continued funding and support for the relatives who survived boarding schools;

Granting immediate Executive Clemency for boarding school survivor Leonard Peltier, freeing him from his 50 year incarceration;

Immediately investing in Indigenous language and cultural revitalization programs; Rescinding all medals of honor awarded to US soldiers for the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which 300 unarmed Lakota people – mostly women and children – were slaughtered;

Instructing the Bureau of Indian Education to conduct a full-scale investigation into failure by the Tuba City Boarding School system to address egregious misconduct and support the nationwide reforms being demanded by parents and students to keep children safe at BIE run schools." [NDN COLLECTIVE RESPONDS TO PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PLANNED APOLOGY FOR U.S. GOVERNMENT’S ROLE IN NATIVE BOARDING SCHOOLS]

In a related story, because the Roman church is being sued into bankruptcy, nuns in some orders are getting involved in activist capitalism to force social change.

Learn more at Cronkite News.

Although an apology is the least a US President can do for over 150 years of taking our children away from our lands and communities, we deserve more. Meaningful apologies require actionable steps toward accountability, healing, and repair. #NoApologyWithoutAction

— NDN Collective (@ndncollective) October 25, 2024

FEMA, tribes, states nearing funding disaster

Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is sounding the alarm over funding shortfalls following multiple climate catastrophes exacerbated by human impacts. 

"82 Republicans Voted to Shut Down the Government During Hurricane Season. 21 of them are from Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas."

But some lawmakers from disaster-prone states — on both sides of the aisle — were aghast this week at the lack of additional dollars for FEMA’s already depleted disaster relief fund and other federal disaster programs. Many of them were incensed that the typically bipartisan priority had fallen victim to partisan squabbles at such a dire time. “The right-wingers here, the MAGA crowd, even after disasters happen, they have opposed disaster aid for communities in need,” said a frustrated Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.). Republican Sen. Marco Rubio disagreed with his fellow Florida senator Wednesday, telling reporters that action to refill federal disaster coffers was long overdue. [Lawmakers stunned as disaster funds left out of stopgap bill]

Tribal communities are concerned, too.

Results suggest Northwest coastal Tribes face significant barriers and unmet needs in realizing their adaptation goals, despite being leaders in climate adaptation. Key barriers and needs focus around five key areas: funding; Tribal staff and workforce capacity; collaboration and partnerships; technical assistance and climate services; and communication, education and outreach. [Climate Impacts Group]

Oregon has nearly exhausted its disaster budget after spending some $250 million on wildfire suppression and remediation.

Phoenix recorded 117° on Saturday which is the hottest day in September in that city’s history and 15-20° above normal.

FEMA is scrambling to cover victims in South Dakota where the Republican governor failed a flood response there but Republican governors in Wyoming and Montana have failed on wildfire preparations, too.

Flooding in southeastern South Dakota was horrific for those facing the worst of it. Late June’s flooding resulted in one known fatality and several washed away homes and roads. Months later, citizens are still questioning local flood plans and the government response. [Months after flooding, some residents still caught in the mud]

Red flag warnings Sunday and Monday in overwhelmingly Republican counties in ranch country have welfare farmers and ranchers sweating the farm bill because it would provide relief for the voters who deny humanity’s role in climate calamities.

Learn more at the Daily Montanan.

All Tornado Warnings issued with #Helene pic.twitter.com/fIGzbyklHH

— Collin Gross (@CollinGrossWx) September 28, 2024

Gaia turns her attention to Wyoming, red state failure

As the so-called Freedom Caucus threatens to burn down Wyoming Mother Nature is beating those Earth haters to the draw. The House Draw Fire is clearing everything in her path.

Johnson County Fire Control District 1 is fighting the blaze along with Clearmont Fire, Powder River Fire, Wyoming State Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest [S]ervice. Seventy firefighters are deployed. [Northern Wyoming Wildfire Explodes To Nearly 200,000 Acres, Others Also Burning]

Some Wyoming legislators just said screw it after the Freedom Caucus sank its claws into Cheyenne and Democrats aren't even bothering to run because of threats on their lives. So, turnout for the state's primary election barely registered as voters just stayed home as an expression of disgust for the extreme white wing of the Wyoming Republican Party.

Going into Tuesday, members and allies of the Freedom Caucus controlled about 26 votes in the 62-member House. By midnight, the caucus appeared to have secured at least 29 seats, according to an analysis by WyoFile of the complete but as yet unofficial results. The Freedom Caucus was also able to elect one of its own members, Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett), to be the second-ranking officer of the body in 2023. Gov. Mark Gordon was the biggest donor to the Wyoming Caucus, personally giving $30,000, while the two largest donors to the Freedom Caucus were William and Jeanie Haas of Hulett, who donated $30,000 each. [Wyoming Freedom Caucus gains power, but November will determine statehouse control]

The good news? Wyoming's suicide rate has more than doubled as the stingy state refuses to expand Medicaid and men are five and a half more likely to take their own lives.

Wyoming and Montana are the only states where at least 50% of buildings are at risk of wildfires. 54% of buildings in Wyoming and 51% in Montana are at risk of wildfires. Texas (45%), Oklahoma (44%) and New Mexico (43%) follow as the only other states with 40% or more of their buildings facing wildfire risk. [Wildfire Risk Highest in California, Florida, Texas]

SDGOP, WYGOP devolving into political cannibalism

Republican secretaries of state in both South Dakota and Wyoming are frogs in boiling water as members of their own parties prepare to dine on their four legs. 

SDSOS Monae Johnson is the first entree on the menu as Republican woman haters called "Life Defense Fund" sued her in a challenge that they say would remove Amendment G from the November ballot.

In its amended complaint, Life Defense Fund argues that if it wins, Johnson could issue a statement prior to the election instructing voters to disregard Amendment G, the abortion amendment. [South Dakota secretary of state now a defendant in abortion rights case]

Tension is high in the Mountain West after threats from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Wyoming US Representative Harriet Hageman so local Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service offices and employees are on alert for militant zealots bent on violent disruptions or worse as federal agencies assess resource management plans.

Ogden Driskill is an Earth hating Wyoming legislator running cattle near Devils Tower National Monument in the Belle Fourche River watershed. WYSOS Chuck Gray said he's receiving death threats.

With just over one week before the 2024 primary elections, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has formally requested that several county clerks around the Equality State redo tests of voting machines. “To do this a week ahead [of the election] is absolutely deplorable,” Wyoming Senate President Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) told WyoFile. “It’s a blatant move to try to force hand-counts of our ballots.” [Secretary of State calls for retests of voting machines 8 days before Wyoming primary elections]

In 2023 Driskill was co-sponsor of a resolution that called on the federal government to amend the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and allow horses wrangled from public lands to be diverted to meat processing domestically for shipment abroad. But even Driskill isn't white enough for some Trumpers and faced a solid write-in campaign from a former chair of the Crook County Republican Party.

“Senator Driskill’s false attacks on my integrity are inappropriate and defamatory,” Gray told WyoFile in an email. “It’s deeply disturbing because with his wrong and defamatory accusations, Senator Driskill is doing the very thing that he is accusing the Freedom Caucus of doing.” [WY Freedom PAC returns $25K donation to Crook County GOP after Driskill files complaint]

Blocking the vote in Indian Country is hardly a new phenomenon since South Dakota and Wyoming have been doing it for decades. 

After its dismissal by a US District Court judge Laramie, Wyoming lawyer Tim Newcomb has appealed his lawsuit to the state's highest court against Gray to bar Donald Trump and US Senator Cynthia Lummis from the general election ballot under the Disqualification Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Learn more at WyoFile.

Democratic-controlled Michigan expanded voting opportunities through ballot measures while Republican-led South Dakota restricted access with legislative action. Both states believe that they're on the right track. Our latest: https://t.co/HnYJj9KNp1

— South Dakota News Watch (@SDNewsWatch) August 15, 2024

Fast-tracking Tower name change in the works

In 2015 with the Oglala Lakota Nation as an interested party Chief Arvol Looking Horse submitted a request to the US Board on Geographic Names saying the words “Devils Tower” are a malapropism since it has been called Mahto Tipila or Bear Lodge for centuries by the Lakota.  

In 2021 Colorado changed several offensive place names and in 2022 First Peoples' Mountain in Montana lost a racist's name. 

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features. Crook City near Whitewood, South Dakota and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal. 

A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills, a county and national forest in Montana are named after a murderer. During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields. 

Since at least 2021 Wyoming's two Earth hating US Senators have introduced legislation that would cancel Indigenous culture at America's first national monument.

Immediately upon taking office as the first Native American to serve as the Secretary of Interior, Deb Haaland in November of 2021 directed the National Park Service to create a new Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names on behalf of the Department of the Interior. If the U.S. [Board on Geographic Names] doesn’t act within a reasonable time, then the Interior Secretary has the authority to rename a geographic feature. The Subcommittee said it is time for the Secretary to rename the geographic feature, as well as the unincorporated populated place, given the time that has passed and the support of 20 sovereign Nations. The National Park Service says that maps from 1857 to 1901 mark Devils Tower as Bear Lodge or Bears Lodge. [Committee asks to fast track Devils Tower name change to Bear Lodge]

Even failed red state, South Dakota has removed derogatory monikers from geographical features but it's not that Black Elk Peak has been renamed for a Lakota holy man that irks Earth haters it's that the mountain was renamed for a warrior who rebuked the Roman Church. 

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