The 2023 Legislative session is shaping up to be one of the ugliest in living memory. Bills attacking Indigenous Peoples, medical privacy, LGBTQ+ children, and the poor have dominated the session. And today, in yet another show of ignorance, Republicans tabled Senator Shane Morigeau’s bill to recognize Indigenous People’s Day.
Attempts to change the name of Columbus Day have been made at the state, local, and national level for years. So today, I’m sharing a piece from Rylee Mitchell, who wrote this piece as a Teen Columnist for the Great Falls Tribune in 2017. At the time, the requested change was for “Montana Heritage Day” to replace Columbus Day, a measure which also failed. Though this piece is nearly six years old now, Montana decided again today to continue honoring the rapist and genocidal murderer, Christopher Columbus.
This piece was written by Rylee Mitchel and published by the Great Falls Tribune on February 27, 2017.
“Columbus Day or Montana Heritage Day — the name of the holiday might not mean much to you, but to me, as a Native American, it matters quite a lot.
And it’s not just the name of the holiday but also how we teach Native American history in our schools. Learning about Columbus Day involves taking 10 minutes to go over the day he reaches America and how he sailed the ocean blue in 1492 in search of gold, spreading Christianity along the way. Then we jump to Thanksgiving and then to Lewis and Clark with nothing in between. No discussions about boarding schools, wars or mass killings. Native American history gets left in the past.
Let’s not forget that Columbus paved the way for the wicked and cruel murder and rape of the indigenous people.
We are people who don’t deserve to live in the Europeans’ shadow. We deserve to have our stories told in the history books just like everyone else.
By not properly educating people about Native American history, it makes them much less likely to relate to us and understand us. They think we aren’t like everyone else.
But why?
Because of the color of our skin? Because we should be on a reservation?
Ignorance leads to name calling like redskin, Pocahontas and war heads. We aren’t depicted as real people in pictures, just as fictional characters.
“All that Native Americans gave us was land and diseases.”
“Native Americans killed us, like the holocaust.”
“God gave the Indians Europeans to help them.”
I heard all these comments and more when we talked about Native Americans in class last year.
Native Americans still deal with the mass killings of the past. The times when the men went to get food and came back to find all the women and children killed and the camp burned. We deal with the history of boarding school rapes and abuse and the sterilizing of Native American women.
Our tribal members still must cope with all these things, and the drinking that can come with it. We are still getting hurt, stereotyped and treated like we aren’t human. We are lucky we are still here.
Changing the name of this holiday would give a voice to Native Americans and represent a step forward to understanding our culture. We deserve for our history and stories to be told in schools. Education leads to more understanding and fewer labels and stereotypes.
We are human. We deserve to have our story told.”
Rylee Mitchell is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Montana. Rylee is from Great Falls, Montana. Rylee is currently studying Civil Engineering at Montana Tech in Butte, Montana.
“We do not allow children to make many kinds of unhealthy decisions, such as smoking, drinking, child pornography, sex with adults, and illegal drug use.”
That’s how Senator John Fuller opened his promotion of his bill at the hearing for SB99 on Friday: by equating gender transition with child porn and statutory rape. Got to protect the kids from pronouns and porn!
It went downhill from there.
My friend and I had driven through a snowstorm that day from Belgrade to Helena to join the many doctors, therapists, trans and Two Spirit folks, and parents of trans kids to voice our opposition to the bill. It’s a bill that would make it illegal for us to seek gender affirming care for our kids. A bill that would insert the state between our families and our providers, designate evidence-based practice as “child abuse,.” It would even make it illegal for our kids’ teachers to use their names and pronouns if such things didn’t match their genitals.
We sat and listened to the line-up of proponents. These included many religious right-wing organizations, such as the Montana Family Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, Restore Liberty, Moms for Liberty, and the Family Research Council. There were several out-of-state professional “detransitioners” who travel around and warn about the regrets of transitioning. There were chiropractors, a physical therapist, someone from New York who claimed to have a PhD in psychiatry, and a lot of angry, disgruntled parents and grandparents, some from Montana, some from other states.
They didn’t even pretend that parental rights applied to this topic. They all flat-out stated that parents of trans kids don’t have the same rights as everyone else. That they were singling out gender-affirming care as the One Terrible Thing that medical consensus, science, and best practices get utterly wrong. This is the hill their fanatical parental rights movement dies on. Fuller even stated, as did others, that the state needs to protect kids from “their parents’ influence.” Because surely parents like me are chomping at the bit to force our boys to be girls and force our girls to cut their hair and change their names. (Maybe they should turn the spotlight on their churches before going after us if they’re worried about “parental influence.”) I’ve never seen these rabid parental rights zombies state that the government needs to protect kids against their own parents before, and I grew up in the fundamentalist homeschooling world that invented anti-government parental rights fanaticism.
As expected, proponents started pulling “stats” out of their asses and claiming heart-rending stories of pain, regret, and “body mutilation”. One professional detransitioner claimed he’s gotten more than 10,000 emails from people who want to detransition. Another dude from a Christian organization in Billings stated that the instance of girls transitioning to boys has “increased 5000% percent,”, while people from the Heritage Foundation and the other hate groups made claims that 82% of people who transition regret it. At one point my friend leaned over and incredulously whispered, “They’re just making shit up!”
I should have made a bingo card, because they hit all the same talking points: transitioning is a lucrative business, look at Sweden, kids can’t make their own decisions, they’ll never be able to have sex or make babies (lots of obsession with how kids will have sex), trans people existing is an assault on the traditional family, people can’t make decisions until they’re 25, “I wanted to be a boy, too,when I was a kid,” “My son identified as an airplane,” and “out of state interests are trying to destroy Montana families.” (Even though the majority of proponents were out-of-state activists.)
It was one and a half hours of a daunting onslaught of bigotry, ignorance, lies, propaganda, and outright hatred. One senator at the end even equated suicide with gender transitioning, stating sarcastically that he should seek “suicide-affirming care” for his son who was determined to kill himself. It was an astonishing display of vitriolic word vomit.
When opponents got up to speak, the entire energy of the room shifted. We had twice as many people and 99% were actual Montanans. We had representatives from every hospital and medical association in the state, along with doctors, nurses, therapists, endocrinologists, independent clinics, domestic violence organizations, state representatives, and so many more.
But all my love and respect goes to the trans kids and adults who stood up to tell their stories. The youngest child to speak was 13. They fearlessly told their stories of growing up trans in Montana and begged the heartless committee to not take that away from them. It broke my heart and inspired me. I stood up and asked why they think I should get rights over two of my kids but not the other two. Parents told life-changing stories about their children to senators who didn’t care, who will probably vote this bill through anyway. I actually got a photo of Senator Theresa Manzella scrolling on her phone, and Senator Barry Usher falling asleep while one parent talked about how gender-affirming care saved his child. They are ghouls with a black hole where their hearts should be.
But Montana showed up that day. From professionals to parents to friends to children, Montana showed up to passionately voice their opposition to this cruel bill that would strip life and liberty from the most vulnerable among us. Unlike the proponents who were mostly out-of-state activists loudly claiming out-of-state activists were trying to turn our kids trans, opponents of the bill were everyday Montanans like you and me, standing up for the children of Montana. And it was beautiful. We’ve got each other’s backs, Montana. “We will fight like hell,” as Rep. Zooey Zephyr stated that day. Keep showing up, keep speaking up, and never back down.
“You may legislate with hate, but we will protect each other with love” ~Keegan Medrano, MT ACLU
Recently, there has been a divisive movement spearheaded by Republicans to emphasize parental rights – especially in HB 234: Revise dissemination of obscene material to minors laws.
How about considering parental responsibility?
Simply:
Parents are responsible for being part of the curriculum development process in schools, and there is a complaint process available if a parent is concerned about a teacher’s implementation of a particular curriculum or book choice by school and public librarians. If a parent does not take the time to be aware and involved through the processes described above, then they have abdicated their rights.
Parents are responsible for knowing what their children are reading and setting the family standards for what is appropriate as children begin to select their own reading material. If parents do not supervise what their children are reading, then they have abdicated their rights.
Parents are responsible for imparting their values regarding “obscenity” to their children. They are responsible for developing open lines of communication with their children so that the children can share any concerns about what they may be learning/reading, including something that might seem obscene.
Because there are wide variations within families as to what is acceptable, particularly regarding “obscenity,” it is the responsibility of schools and libraries to provide curriculum/book selections that span those variations. It is not the school’s responsibility to cater to any one set of possible parental standards. Nor should public libraries. There are general guidelines in place to determine the appropriate age for reading material and curriculum. Public schools and libraries have a duty to follow them.
What is “obscenity”? “To see it is to know it” does not work, as seeing something like “obscenity” “lies in the eye of the beholder.” Educators and librarians are not the arbitrators of what is/is not obscene for our society.
When he’s not working diligently to keep his rental tenants in poverty with his hand out at their doors, he’s working in the House to make sure they can join the growing unhoused community in Great Falls. That’s right, Great Falls’ reigning Dairy King and local landlord, Rep. Steven “Mr. LOLA” Galloway, is heading legislation (HB-282) to speed up the eviction process for renters in Montana.
Specifics noted in the bill include:
Protections for landlords to issue 24 hour notices for property access or to correct rental agreement violations with tenants facing eviction proceedings within 3 days for refusing property access.
Putting extra stress on our already overloaded courts by significantly shortening the filing due dates and hearing scheduling windows. Meaning, where courts and tenants typically had a cushion of anywhere from 10-20 days before, multiple lines of Sections 70-24 and 70-33, MCA have been amended to an allowance of only 5 days instead.
Interestingly, or maybe better put – strategically, in reference to the 24 hour notices, there are no exceptions for tenants who may be working out of town, be hospitalized, on vacation, or otherwise. In sum, tenants who are working hard, severely ill, or enjoying time off away from home can find themselves in the crosshairs of their landlord’s impatience.
Rep Galloway was quoted by Montana Public Radio as saying this legislation is an attempt at “alleviating the stress on the judicial system that has more pressing issues”, but if that’s truly the case, why shorten their working time? With Rep. Galloway himself identifying that our courts have more pressing issues, these amendments read as a greasy attempt at further overwhelming the courts and floating their eviction actions with little to no pushback.
While some supporters of the bill say this proposed legislation will be used for “worst case scenarios”, anyone with any kind of sense can see that this is the first of many blows to deliberately weaken already feeble tenant’s rights, and Rep. Steven Galloway is more than happy to be the champion of those endeavors.
It’s too bad the Great Falls Tribune doesn’t print guest editorials. It means here in Great Falls we miss editorials like this one written by a local resident and WTF406 occasional contributor published by the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record and the Missoula Current dealing with important issues in MT.
“If the government would just get out of the way and free the power of the competitive market, we would have a much better economy.” It’s good political rhetoric. The current Republican administration and their pals in the Republican legislature are repeating it over and over as a part of Governor Gianforte’s “Red Tape Reduction Initiative.” The problem is, what Republicans get when they push to eliminate regulations is often not what anybody wants.
The last time we heard this kind of rhetoric was during the 1997 Legislature and passage of the bill that deregulated the Montana Power Company. The result was the bankruptcy of the state’s largest utility and years of chaos and steadily increasing power rates in Montana. The dams on Montana rivers were sold, the natural gas reserves, which had been dedicated to Montana citizens, were sold, and businesses were closed across the state. Our power rates went from some of the lowest in the country to the highest in the Pacific Northwest. It was the biggest economic disaster in the history of Montana.
The effort to deregulate was driven by the greed of the Montana Power Company combined with ideological blinders worn by the Racicot administration and the Republican legislature. No one in the rooms at the Capitol had any idea what the bill to deregulate Montana Power would do. They voted for it because it was presented as promoting competition and, therefore, would lead to lower prices. For the politicians involved it was as simple as, free markets are good and regulation is bad. We are still paying for their simplistic view of how the world (and the economy) work.
So here we are, almost 30 years later with a conservative Republican in the governor’s office and a Legislature composed of some of the most extreme right wing legislators we have seen in decades. Once again we are being treated to a lot of rhetoric about the power of the free market being hampered by regulations.
But the irony in all of this is that a “free market” cannot work without regulation by the government. Private enterprise needs a level playing field for competition to occur. Bad actors need to be policed (yes folks, there are greedy people out there who are willing to cheat to get ahead). If you go to an architect or a CPA, you want to know that person has the qualifications to do what he or she promises.
Someone needs to be sure that businesses are following the rules, or bad actors will have a huge advantage in the marketplace.
The Republicans apparently think businesses should be free to pursue their self interest without regard for the public. They forget that big business, left to its own devices, has a long history of abusing the public trust and the community at large. From the Copper Kings, to Enron, to Martha Stewart’s insider trading, to the subprime mortgage collapse, the examples of greed over ethics in the world of private enterprise are many and consistent.
Most of us realize that our economy is far more complex than simple free-market capitalism. It is baffling that big business is now viewed as more virtuous than our public institutions. Economist John Maynard Keynes said it best: “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.” The Republicans in Helena would do well to heed these words before they set about dismantling regulations which protect the public.”
See the editorial here: https://billingsgazette.com/opinion/columnists/ken-toole-beware-republican-deregulation/article_0beb2c38-905c-11ed-a2f9-033f13bf82bf.html
On January 2, 2023, the 68th legislative session made its debut swearing in the newest batch of Montana legislators. This also marked the first time that one party formed a supermajority since Montana’s constitution was adopted 50 years ago. Speaking of which, this Republican supermajority is champing at the bit to introduce a slew of amendments to the constitution. They’ve proposed 54 such amendments already. Some of the topics they want to legislate on are: the way elections are handled, the way judges are selected, redistricting rules (read: gerrymandering) amendments defining gender, banning abortions, and enshrining school choice and a parental bill of rights.Their plans are clear. They want Big Government to control Montanan’s personal lives and public institutions. Confusingly, Sen Steve Fitzpatrick has proposed a constitutional amendment on proposing constitutional amendments. If Republicans have their way, Montana’s constitution will be unrecognizable before the session is through.
Concerned about Republican’s extremist agenda, a group of activists from Great Falls organized an event – Occupy MT Leg. We were joined by concerned citizens from around the state. Why occupy space on the first day of the session? To let these legislators know that we will hold them accountable for everything they do during this session. Our sizeable group from Great Falls, Helena, Belgrade, Conrad, and more, first gathered in the rotunda to protest Superintendent of Public School’s Elsie Artnzen, who had brought in a slate of far-right speakers (an abuse of the office) to mount yet another unfounded attack on our public school teachers and administrators. Artnzen’s “event” was small, disorganized, and met with Boo’s from protestors in the crowd.
We then moved to the Old Supreme Court Chamber, where the public reception was to be held for the newly-sworn lawmakers. Cakes were there, ready to be served, doubtless alongside much back-slapping and self-congratulations. We had aimed to speak with our legislators and make sure they know what we expect of them, but it turns out that they didn’t want to face the public. Not to be deterred, we gathered around the balcony of the rotunda, displayed our signs, and filled the space. We are here, and we will not be ignored.
Finally, following the swearing-in, we marched around the capitol building. The group was comprised of people from different generations, different parts of Montana, with different advocacy issues. But we experienced a solidarity that we believe we share with a large portion of Montanans. Far-right extremism is not representative of most of us, and this “super majority” does not represent us. They are not some aristocracy, and we are not some peasantry. We can and will raise our voice when they eat their cake and throw us the crumbs. We’ll be keeping a close eye on their votes, and the bills they sponsor. With this supermajority, they feel emboldened to show their true colors. And we are committed to rejecting fascist ideology wherever we see it.
