Lawmakers override governor’s vetoes of state hospital reforms
Late Thursday night, the Montana Secretary of State announced that lawmakers scattered across Montana had officially overridden two high-profile vetoes from Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, confirming policies aimed at reforming the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.
The governor in May had rejected bipartisan bills seeking to improve patient care and oversight at the troubled adult psychiatric facility, calling one policy “legally insufficient” and the other a risk of causing “irresponsible, inappropriate, inhumane” outcomes. The two-thirds vote of each chamber to uphold the laws, Senate Bill 4 and House Bill 29, signals the closing of one political chapter in the interbranch disagreement and the beginning of a long road toward systemic changes.
Asked Friday to comment on the overrides and the executive branch’s plans for implementing the new laws, deputy communications director Brooke Stroyke said the governor’s concerns with the policies are “well-documented” and that Gianforte “trusts [the state health department] to implement the legislation as approved by the legislature.”
Charlie Brereton, director of Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services, participates in a Health and Human Services Committee hearing in the Montana State Capitol on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. Credit: Samuel Wilson / Bozeman Daily Chronicle
In a Friday email, health department spokesperson Jon Ebelt said the agency “won’t be providing comment at this time.”
SB 4 and HB 29, would, respectively, require the health department to share patient abuse and neglect reports with the federally authorized watchdog group Disability Rights Montana and set the state on a path to ending the involuntary commitment of patients with Alzheimer’s, dementia and traumatic brain injuries. Each passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support.
But the policies were consistently opposed by the state health department, an arm of Gianforte’s executive branch. In an 11th-hour attempt to revise the bills shortly before lawmakers adjourned the session, the governor’s office said SB 4 risked compromising private patient information, a claim Disability Rights Montana and bill supporters denied. Regarding HB 29, the governor said the policy “either represents a deep misunderstanding of or a failure to acknowledge the fundamental concepts underpinning the need for involuntary commitments of individuals suffering from a serious mental illness.” Supporters countered that the bill takes necessary steps to place people with Alzheimer’s and dementia in clinically appropriate, community-based settings rather than the state hospital.
“It is federal law, good policy and the right thing to do to make sure people are cared for in the least restrictive, most appropriate setting,” HB 29’s sponsor, Rep. Jennifer Carlson, R-Manhattan said in a Friday statement.
The governor’s veto of SB 4 was overridden by more than the required threshold in the House and Senate, with 72 representatives and 39 senators voting in support of the policy. HB 29 was upheld by a closer margin, with 67 representatives (the two-thirds threshold in that chamber) voting to override the veto, alongside 39 senators (four more than the requirement).
Several more lawmakers opposed the policies in polling than when the bills were considered during the session. Roughly 30 Republicans and Democrats voted in alignment with the governor’s vetoes, shedding light on some of the tense political dynamics that have developed since lawmakers left Helena after sine die.
Aside from the veto overrides of SB 4 and HB 29, the governor’s office notched a partial win Thursday related to that pressure campaign. Another much-watched bill Gianforte opposed, House Bill 37, would have significantly changed the state’s process for responding to child welfare cases by requiring a judicial warrant for child removals except in certain emergencies — a measure the health department said risked tying caseworkers’ hands in urgent scenarios. Despite near unanimous support for HB 37 during the legislative session, lawmakers did not meet the two-thirds requirement to reverse Gianforte’s veto. The override failed by seven votes in the House.
Carlson, the sponsor of HB 37 and among the bill’s most vocal champions, said she was “very disappointed” in the outcome of the override poll. She cited multiple hurdles the legislation faced throughout the legislative session, including a weeks-long delay in transmitting it to the governor’s desk even after it had passed both chambers. Conversations about requiring judicial warrants for non-emergency removals will continue throughout the interim before the next legislative session, she said.
“Parties involved in this process have notice now that this issue is not going away. Montana leads the nation in time it takes for a family to receive judicial review of removals. Between the constitutional implications and the best interest of the child and the family, this is simply not acceptable,” Carlson said. “We can do better.”
The failure of HB 37’s override was due to flips of support from some Republicans and Democrats. Other lawmakers, including Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, simply did not return their ballots in time to have them counted. Dissenting lawmakers who responded to MTFP’s inquiries on Friday said they were swayed by the governor’s reasoning against the bills as presented in his veto letters.
Rep. Alice Buckley, D-Bozeman, the sponsor of the affordable childcare bill awaiting Gianforte’s signature, was among the legislators who voted to uphold the governor’s vetoes of HB 29 and HB 37, despite having supported both policies during the session. She attributed her decision to a reconsideration of the reforms the governor rejected.
“The vetoes caused me concern about the administration’s interest and ability to implement these policies,” Buckley said in a Friday statement. “I felt like we needed to come back to the drawing board over the interim and search for more workable policy solutions.”
Rikki Held’s last name has been referenced in legal briefs, news articles and water cooler conversations for two years now, since the court case Held v. State of Montana was filed in Montana’s First Judicial District Court. Held was one of 16 youth plaintiffs who filed the 2020 lawsuit against several Montana government agencies, and its governor, alleging that the implementation of two energy-related policies is an infringement of the youths’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. Since she was the only plaintiff of age when it was filed, it’s her name that will be forever attached to the decision made in the landmark case.
Held was brought to the legal table by a meandering path that runs through the heart of her family’s ranch. Held grew up on a 7,000-acre cattle ranch and saw the destruction of the land and her family’s livelihood caused by the changing climate — an experience she feels can be understood by the rural state’s ranching and farming communities.
“I think that ranchers see it in a different way, ranchers are on the ground every day,” Held said. “Maybe they aren’t having as many conversations about climate change necessarily, but they are seeing these changes with wildfires and are worried about the daily impacts of hay prices going up because of drought and losing cattle from water variability or fires.”
Between growing up on a ranch and a chance encounter with the world of scientific inquiry at a young age, Held charted a unique path to the courtroom. And while Held didn’t set out to become a climate activist, she felt compelled to act on behalf of her younger peers. Those who are too young to vote on the actions of the government look at the world through a different lens than their older counterparts, she says.
“As youth, we are exposed to a lot of knowledge about climate change. We can’t keep passing it on to the next generation when we’re being told about all the impacts that are already happening,” Held said. “In some ways, our generation feels a lot of pressure, kind of a burden, to make something happen because it’s our lives that are at risk.”
Before it was a legal reference, Rikki Held’s name was first published in the acknowledgments of a 2015 peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal GeoResJ titled “Preserving geomorphic data records of flood disturbances.” Though Held was in middle school at the time, she is credited with helping U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers survey cross sections of Montana’s Powder River, one of the longest undammed waterways in the West, which happens to pass through her family’s 7,000-acre ranch.
The Powder River begins in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and flows north through Montana before joining the Yellowstone River between Miles City and Glendive. With no man-made modifications along the route other than some diversions to irrigate farmlands, Powder River provides a lengthy, natural, outdoor laboratory — a scientist’s dream. A study on the river that began in the 1970s has quantified the natural erosion, transport and deposition of sediments throughout the riverbed, and mapped changes to the river’s channel with specific focus on years of high flood or periods following nearby wildfires. Researchers have established 24 survey sites along a 57-mile stretch of the Powder River, several of which are accessed through the Held family ranch.
A satellite timelapse of the meandering Powder River near Held’s family ranch.Credit: Flathead Beacon
Several scientific papers have come out of the study over the years. One documented the aftereffects of a major flood event in 1978 where as much as 65 feet eroded from sections of the river bank. Regular follow-up studies characterized sediment composition, erosion patterns and plant distribution along the river.
“Even when I was little I would go out with [the researchers] during surveys, just following them around and learning from them,” Held said, adding that she “got kind of caught up” in the science, which later led to internships and ultimately the mention in the 2015 paper. “I think that really got me interested in science, I was able to connect it back to my ranch, my home.”
Throughout high school, Held gravitated toward the hard sciences. “I remember a wind pattern diagram with Hadley cells, and I just thought that was fascinating how things could be explained,” she said. “I got really interested in environmental science that way and learned about climate change in high school. I just knew that this is a really serious issue that we need to focus on.”
A diagram showing global air circulation, including Hadley cells near the equator. Kaidor, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Held, now 22, graduated this spring from Colorado College with a degree in environmental science and is figuring out how to use her aptitude for environmental research to carve out a career path. Speaking about a recent NASA-funded study she contributed to, Held grew visibly excited as she described her work on “combining ecology and geomorphology to map out invasive Russian olive species.” She said she’s considering future studies in climatology or hydrology, something “about Earth processes where I can bring it back to the people and use science to help them.”
While Held was learning to survey stream widths and how Hadley cells circulate tropical air around the globe, she was also witnessing the effects of extreme weather events on her family’s livelihood. The complaint states that in 2007, following several years of drought in southeastern Montana, the Powder River dried up, eliminating the water source for the ranch’s crops and livestock. A decade later, an early spring thaw flooded the river basin, nearly reaching Held’s house and eroding several feet of riverbank. Increased risks of major flooding events, such as the 2022 floods that damaged an entrance road to Yellowstone National Park, have been linked to global warming. One study published using the Powder River data also cites climate change as a contributing cause for the river’s changing migration rate over time.
Saturated farmland off of Steel Bridge Road in Kalispell after flooding along the Flathead River on June 15, 2022.Credit: Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon
The Held family has lost cattle to flooding events, an economic hardship for any ranch. On the elementally opposite side of the extreme weather spectrum, the Helds also lost a great number of animals in 2012 to starvation following a wildfire that burned through acres of grazing land. The fire took out miles of powerlines in the area, leaving the ranch without electricity for weeks. During another spate of nearby fires in 2021, Held recalls ash falling from the sky, dusting the ground for days, and local schools being set up as shelters for families that had to evacuate their homes. The wildfire smoke, along with a record-breaking string of triple-digit days that summer, didn’t keep Held inside — there was ranch work that couldn’t wait.
“When you’re in the moment, you have to just keep going with daily life, you have to do everything you can to keep up with the business or keep your livestock as safe as you can and figure out issues like how to get them water,” Held said. “It’s hard to think about it more broadly in terms of climate change … but from studying this, I know that we need to make some big systematic changes in what we’re doing to not continue down the route we’re taking.”
The increased effects on her family’s ranching lifestyle, along with her growing interest in studying environmental science in college, led Held to reach out to Our Children’s Trust when she heard about the potential lawsuit.
“When I was first learning about climate change in high school, I saw it as something on the other side of the world, like polar bears and ice melting or the coastlines with sea level rise,” Held said. “Living in the U.S., in a landlocked place, I didn’t really think about how it affected me, even though I’d seen these changes while I was growing up.”
“Being part of this case, it’s been nice to put my own story into the broader climate change narrative and make the connections through science and observation of how my home plays into it,” she said. “Montana is a big emitter of fossil fuels and is contributing to climate change. I know it’s a broader global issue, but you can’t not take responsibility.”
Held doesn’t know whether she’d consider taking over the family ranch, saying she’s “unsure what the future will be there.” It’s a sentiment about the viability of the industry she thinks is shared by many farmers and ranchers in the state — indeed it’s her lived experience on the family ranch that she thinks will allow the lawsuit to resonate with a greater portion of Montanans who may not as readily engage in discussions of climate change
Across the state, though, Held believes that Montana is still a place where residents value their neighbors and the land and resources they’re entrusted, making it a unique place for this lawsuit to play out.
“Those values could play into this conversation and make a change,” she said. “It’s important that this case is happening here.”
Montana has a long history of making money by extracting and exporting its natural resources, namely coal. State politicians and Montana’s largest electricity utility company seem set on keeping it that way.
Reveal’s Jonathan Jones travels to the town of Colstrip in the southeastern part of the state. It is home to one of the largest coal seams in the country – and one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the West. He learns that the state has signed off on a massive expansion of the coal mine that feeds the plant and that Montana’s single largest power company, NorthWestern Energy, has expanded its stake in the plant, even though it’s the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gas in Montana. Jones speaks with Colstrip’s mayor about the importance of coal mining to the local community. He also speaks to local ranchers and a tribal official who’ve been working for generations to protect the water and land from coal development.
Jones follows the money to the state’s capital, where lawmakers have passed one of the most extreme laws to keep the state from addressing climate change. He meets with plaintiffs involved in a first-of-its-kind youth-led lawsuit who are suing Montana for violating their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Jones dives into lobbying records behind a flurry of bills that are keeping the state reliant on fossil fuels. He also finds that NorthWestern is planning to build a new methane gas plant on the banks of the Yellowstone River, and the company is being met with resistance from people who live near the site and from state courts.
Finally, Jones visits the state’s largest wind farm and speaks with a renewable energy expert, who says Montana can close its coal plants, never build a new gas plant and transition to 100% clean energy while reducing electricity costs for consumers. He also speaks with NorthWestern’s CEO and looks at other coal communities in transition.
Reporter: Jonathan Jones | Producer: Stephen Smith | Editor: Jenny Casas with help from Kate Howard | Additional reporting and research: Amanda Eggert | Fact checker: Nikki Frick | Production manager: Steven Rascón | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Episode art: Stephen Smith | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson
Reported in partnership with the Montana Free Press. Special thanks to reporter Mara Silvers and editor Brad Tyer of the Montana Free Press and Yellowstone Public Radio.
Transcript
Al Letson: From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. The local coal industry has always been a villain in William Walksalong’s life.
William Walksalong: They’re like a monster, and its teetering, ready to fall over. And that, I want to be part of the effort to cut its throat and let it bleed out and let it go away.
AlLetson: William grew up on the northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southeast Montana. It’s near one of the largest coal seams in the country and one of the largest coal fire power plants in the west. He remembers when they started building it when he was in high school in the seventies.
William Walksalong: Oh, I remember distinctly all kinds of strange people from all over the country, construction workers. They’d blast those power plants to test them and you could drown everything out even in the classroom, kind of startle you when they were starting those big power plants up.
Al Letson: The power plant is in a town called Colstrip, and William was against it from the beginning. But when the construction was done, a lot of people from his community went to work there.
William Walksalong: I had adults and high school students telling me and my brother we were traitors, that we should go back to Colstrip and dig coal.
Al Letson: William never worked for the power plant or the coal mine that fed it. In the nineties, he became the vice president of the tribe at a time when there was a push to expand coal mining into the reservation.
William Walksalong: They were trying to get rid of our Indian nation as a obstacle or a barrier to unfettered energy development, including undermining our sovereignty, promising economic self-sufficiency, at the cost of our historical cultural sites. It was just a total shakedown of our way of life.
Al Letson: For the last three decades, William has done everything he can as a tribal administrator to keep coal mining off the reservation. And most recently, he was a part of an ongoing lawsuit against the Biden administration’s decision to permit coal leasing on public lands. Coal is, by far, the single biggest contributor to climate change. In 2022, global coal production rose above 8 billion metric tons, its highest level in history.
William Walksalong: I remember growing up. We had deeper snow, better runoff, and I’ve never seen so much drought in my life, and I’ve been alive for about almost… Well, I’m 64 years old, and I’ve never seen drought last that long. [inaudible] Creek dried up that one year, never seen that in my lifetime, and it’s due to climate change.
Al Letson: More and more states are shifting their energy consumption away from coal, but Montana is running in the opposite direction. The state is expanding coal mining and the legislature has been passing laws to prop up the fossil fuel industry.
Interviewees: Coal really is our ace in the hole. We just want to keep producing coal and bring money into the coffers.
And we’ll help encourage that industry to stay in the business of generating electricity.
We have a third of the nation’s coal, which greatly supports the state of Montana.
It’s good for Montanans and it’s good for business.
William Walksalong: They must live on a different planet. I don’t understand that. Well, I know the Republican super majority, they want to make it a clear path, easier path for energy development, dirty energy, I guess, coal and gas plants.
Al Letson: Montana is a place with some of the most extreme laws to prevent the state from addressing climate change. There’s also a powerful fossil fuel lobby and it’s a state with a lot of potential to completely shift to clean renewable energy. Reveal’s Jonathan Jones went to the Colstrip power plant, the one that was built when William was in high school and where the fight over its future has implications for the entire planet.
Jonathan Jones: I’m standing next to a big coal field. There’s a big black ridge of exposed coal, and then there are these big earth moving machines that are pushing the coal. This is the Rosebud coal mine. It’s right outside the town of Colstrip in southeastern Montana and one of the largest strip mines in North America.
Jonathan Jones: Bulldozers and large trucks that are bringing massive amounts of coal in from the coal mine to this big pile of coal that they’re then going to put on a conveyor belt. And the conveyor belt is like this long sort of khaki colored centipede that carries the coal from here to the power plant.
Jonathan Jones: The conveyor belt feeds coal directly to the Colstrip power plant that towers over the town.
Jonathan Jones: It’s a massive structure with four smoke stacks, two of which are active, two of which are quiet, and then there are two big cooling towers with billowing vapor coming out of it.
Jonathan Jones: Along with that vapor, the plant also puts out more than 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. It emits more greenhouse gas than any other single source in Montana, making it one of the biggest producers of CO2 in the western United States. The electricity made here has powered homes and buildings across the state and the Pacific Northwest since the 1970s.
Jonathan Jones: It’s coal fire power plants like this that’s provided most of our electricity for generations. But that’s changing now with the shifting energy market as more and more states pass legislation to wean themselves off coal.
Jonathan Jones: But not Montana. The Rosebud strip mine is expanding and one of the owners of the Colstrip power plant plans to keep burning coal until at least 2042 and people in the town want it that way.
Jonathan Jones: There are very few retail stores here. Right next to me is the Energy Employees Credit Union and outside there are two signs, one of which says “Coal keeps the doors open,” and the other one says “Coal keeps the lights on.” It’s almost hard to go one block here without seeing some sort of sign promoting coal, defending coal, and reminding people of coal’s importance to the energy sector and of course to Colstrip.
John Williams: My name is John Williams. I’m the mayor of the City of Colstrip. Everything here is either coal or power production as a result of coal.
Jonathan Jones: John Williams first moved here in 1971 when there were only a few hundred people in town.
John Williams: Colstrip came from the fact that this was a large strip of coal here. The story is that it was misspelled by the federal government when they put in the post office down here and that’s the name, and it stuck with it. C-O-L-S-T-R-I-P rather than C-O-A-L. That’s the story.
Jonathan Jones: Mayor Williams says he was one of the first two employees who oversaw the construction of the power plant. He essentially built the town and helped incorporate it as a city in the nineties. As I drive around, you can’t help but see a lot of the signs that say “Coal keeps the lights on,” “Coal keeps the doors open.” Can you talk a little bit about that?
John Williams: It’s happened because of the threat against coal, the war against coal. I mean billions of dollars within our state have been created as a result of the mining of coal and we get a lot of benefit as a result of coal, jobs, taxes.
Jonathan Jones: Together, the coal mine and the power plant are the two largest employers in the Colstrip area. The jobs and the tax revenue support a first class public school system, a nine hole golf course, medical services, a park system, and a median household income that’s 35% higher than the state average.
John Williams: Don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg, so that’s my take on that. Right or wrong, that’s how I feel.
Jonathan Jones: So obviously this is a community as you’ve said that is extremely dependent on one natural resource, coal.
John Williams: Coal.
Jonathan Jones: And we’ve talked about sort of its positive aspects, but how has this created some challenges for the community?
John Williams: Well, part of the challenges are that we’re considered to be a one horse town, one industry town. And there’s also, we have a number of companies, the Pacific Northwest companies are making decisions or having decisions made for them that to remove themselves from coal.
Jonathan Jones: What he’s referring to is that for decades, Colstrip’s biggest customer for electricity was the Pacific Northwest. The Colstrip power plant is owned by six power companies, the majority of which are based in Oregon and Washington, and now they want out of Colstrip for what boils down to two main reasons. First, those companies are facing new climate laws requiring them to stop using coal power. Second, they say it’s too expensive to run the coal fire power plant. But there’s one main stakeholder staying put in Colstrip and buying out the other’s shares, NorthWestern Energy. It is the single largest electricity provider in Montana.
Brian Bird: I may be the only CEO in the utility industry adding coal to his portfolios.
Jonathan Jones: That’s NorthWestern CEO, Brian Bird at a meeting of state lawmakers and other officials in Montana’s capital. He’s announcing that NorthWestern is buying out another owner in Colstrip and for an unbeatable price, nothing.
Brian Bird: So understand why are we doing this, we’re doing this for our customers and our communities in Montana. And by the way, we’re doing it for three reasons, reliability, affordability, and sustainability.
Jonathan Jones: After the announcement, environmental groups blasted NorthWestern’s new Colstrip deal. They said it had nothing to do with reliability, affordability, or sustainability.
Anne Hedges: So NorthWestern wants that plant to continue to operate, not because it’s this great resource that it can’t possibly do without, it’s because that’s a lot of money and they don’t want to lose it.
Jonathan Jones: Anne Hedges is co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. It’s one of the state’s leading environmental groups. Her organization has legally challenged Colstrip stakeholders over a dozen times over pollution, rate increases, and mining expansions.
Anne Hedges: NorthWestern doesn’t give a hoot about its customers. It is more concerned about its executive salaries and bonuses and its shareholders than it is about the people who pay the bills.
Jonathan Jones: The company operates as a monopoly in Montana. It profits from generating electricity and charging people for it, and it also makes money by recouping the costs of its investments from its customers. So buying up shares and owning a bigger portion of the Colstrip power plant means more money for NorthWestern. This is how electric utilities operate in most states.
John Oliver: Our main story tonight, utilities, specifically electric utilities.
Jonathan Jones: John Oliver explained it this way on his show Last Week Tonight.
John Oliver: When they build something, a piece of physical infrastructure, they’re allowed to then pass along that cost to you through your bill, plus an additional percentage that they get to keep as profit, usually around 10%, and this creates a clear incentive. The bigger the project like a power plant, the more profit they make.
Jonathan Jones: John Oliver uses this analogy. It’s like a waiter in a restaurant where there’s a guaranteed tip. The more money that is spent on the meal, the more the waiter is going to make. NorthWestern first bought its stake in Colstrip in 2007 and paid around 187 million for it. But then the state approved the company’s request to value their assets in the power plant at 407 million, more than double what NorthWestern paid for it. And since utilities get to make back their expenses plus another eight to 10% profit, NorthWestern gets to pass the cost of the plant onto its electricity customers. In other words…
Anne Hedges: As long as that plant operates for the life of the plant, which was expected to be about 2042, NorthWestern will continue to collect from its customers. That’s a lot of money over time.
Jonathan Jones: A lot of money and a lot of consequences for the environment. Here’s Anne speaking on a recent webinar called What the Hell Is Going on with the Colstrip Plant.
Anne Hedges: Eight to 10 million tons of greenhouse gases a year being released from that facility. If we can’t solve a problem of one single plant like Colstrip and get it on a path towards closure and replacement, then we simply can’t solve our climate problem. I mean, it’s that simple.
Terry Punt: Girls and boys, [inaudible]…
Jonathan Jones: About an hour’s drive south of Colstrip Rancher, Jeanie Alderson and her husband Terry call out to their cows. Well,
Jeanie Alderson: We have about 50 mother cows and then we have yearlings, two year olds and a three year olds. We butcher them about three years old and so they just get fat on… We feed them through the winter and then in the summer they’ll go out on grass.
Jonathan Jones: Jeanie’s a fourth generation rancher. Her family’s run cattle here since the 1880s.
Jeanie Alderson: My dad’s family came from the deep south. My great-great granddad was from Alderson, West Virginia, and he was a Baptist minister. He was an abolitionist, so he had to leave the town and they went to Texas and then they came up from Texas to Montana.
Jonathan Jones: Jeanie’s family came up for the grasslands and the water. It’s why they’re still here today. She worries about the impact that coal has on the land. Toxic waste from the mine and the power plant has already harmed the water, the springs, wells, and creeks that ranchers and farmers depend on.
Jeanie Alderson: When you mine coal and you process it through the power plants, what’s left is the ash. So what they’ve done is to store this ash, they’ve been stored in these ponds, and it is getting into the groundwater. I mean the ranchers that are around Colstrip, it’s very scary for them.
Jonathan Jones: According to the State Department of Environmental Quality, the coal ash ponds associated with the power plant have been leaking since their inception. Elevated levels of toxic chemicals have been found in the groundwater. Colstrip residents have to get their drinking water pumped in from the Yellowstone River 30 miles away.
Jeanie Alderson: Ranching right now is hard enough, really hard to make enough money to stay in business. Since 1980, something like 40% of ranchers in this country have gone out of business and no one is really talking about that. Any other industry had we had that kind of loss, you would see it in the news more. And so we already are stressed to try and keep our ranches together.
Jonathan Jones: The Alderson Family Ranch has had to adapt to the changing market. Faced with relentless pressure from large scale beef packers offering lower prices, Jeanie and her family got creative. They invested in a herd of Wagyu cattle, a Japanese cow that produces one of the most expensive cuts of beef.
Jeanie Alderson: They don’t look like the kind of animals that most ranchers are used to, especially most ranchers in this part of the country.
Jonathan Jones: Other ranchers in the area have also adapted, but Jeanie’s worried that most people in southeastern Montana aren’t planning for a future that doesn’t rely on coal.
Jeanie Alderson: There’s so much potential here, but the leadership in the community, the mayor, the others, they’re so tied to the energy company, and I kind of feel like our leaders are just still thinking that they’re going to just keep going with coal.
Jonathan Jones: And in Helena, state lawmakers say their intention is to do just that.
Al Letson: Coming up.
Jason Small: Coal in Montana’s no different than potatoes in Ireland. I mean, that’s something we got and we’ve got it in spades and that’s our great equalizer, right?
Al Letson: Jonathan heads to Montana’s capital to meet with lawmakers behind the state’s coal expansion. That’s next on Reveal. From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.
Wally McRae: My family’s been in this corner of southeastern Montana for over a hundred years. We celebrated our centennial year in 1986.
Al Letson: Wally McRae is a third generation rancher. His family has raised cattle and sheep in the Colstrip area since the 1800s. He’s a cowboy poet known for his writing about life in rural Montana.
Wally McRae: Cowboys have probably always been kind of popular, kind of a hero figure and maybe we fit in that. And so if people can get inside of that life through meter and rhyme, it’s got a combination of appeals.
Al Letson: This tape is from a 1988 film by Kim Shelton called Cowboy Poets. The film is from another time, but echoes many of the issues Montana ranching communities still wrestle with today. Here, Wally is describing a major theme of his poetry.
Wally McRae: Because one of the largest strip mines in the United States is in my backyard, I have written several poems about the effect that coal oriented industrialization has upon the cowboy culture.
Al Letson: One of his poems is called The Lease Hound. It describes a coal mining agent visiting a local ranch.
Wally McRae: I’ve come to lease your land for coal was how he launched his spiel. He’d been given an authority, the grand generous deal. The nation needs the coal, he said, as I am sure you know. We need more power every year to make our nation grow. And it’s the patriotic duty of each American to help to get the coal mine and expedite our plan. Now, you may not like strip mining and tearing up the earth, but it’s your duty, isn’t it?
Jeanie Alderson: Land men would go to people in that big boom time in the early seventies, the way my mom described it, and they would say, “Everybody else around you has sold out, why don’t you sign here? There’s nothing you can do.”
Al Letson: Rancher, Jeanie Alderson’s mom, Caroline was a contemporary of Wally’s. She was also hearing from speculators in the mid seventies.
Jeanie Alderson: When you’re told that your patriotic duty is to step aside so they can mine this coal underneath you, it’s insulting, it’s infuriating.
Al Letson: The speculators were there because of a report. The North Central power study published by the federal government in 1971. It designated southeast Montana as “a national sacrifice area for energy production.”
Jeanie Alderson: You know, eastern Montana, this kind of dry area anyway, who’s out there anyway, who really cares? Let’s just turn it into the boiler room of the nation.
Al Letson: The plan proposed building 42 coal fire power plants, half of them in and around Colstrip.
Wally McRae: They didn’t treat us well, they lied and they pitted one neighbor against another and it wasn’t a pretty sight and it offended us, it really did.
Al Letson: Montana has a long history of making money by extracting its natural resources, namely copper and coal. But Caroline, Wally, and other local ranchers didn’t want to be part of that legacy.
Jeanie Alderson: And my mom and other ranchers, they could right away see that the cost was going to be their land and water and their communities, and they were trying desperately to hold onto that.
Al Letson: Together, they organized the Northern Plains Resource Council, a grassroots movement to protect the land in rural Montana from industrial development.
Wally McRae: I think a lot of people assume that any sort of opposition to coal oriented industrialization was based purely on environmental grounds. I think that our concerns were more cultural or social and finally, long-term economic. I mean, hell, we’ve been here a hundred years, are we going to be able to be here a hundred years from now?
Al Letson: Other environmental groups followed. They held teach-ins, stage protests, and met with lawmakers. Their actions led the state to rewriting its constitution in 1972, producing what has been called one of the most progressive constitutions in the United States. It includes language to protect the public’s right to a “clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” Today, a group of Montanans say that right is under attack and it’s coming from inside the state house. Reveal’s Jonathan Jones went to the state capitol in Helena to find out why.
Jonathan Jones: In the rotunda of Montana’s state capitol building in Helena, 14 year old Mica Kantor is practicing his speech.
Mica Kantor: I love animals. My favorite animal’s a pika. Unfortunately, they will be one of the first North American animals to go extinct because of climate change. It scares me to think that I will be-
Jonathan Jones: Moments later, Mica is called to join a small group behind a podium.
Interviewees: Let’s get started. Welcome everyone to the people’s house. Welcome everyone.
Jonathan Jones: Hundreds of people are gathered to hear what they have to say.
Interviewees: Welcome everyone to the rally to defend Montana’s constitution.
Jonathan Jones: Mica gets up to speak.
Mica Kantor: I’m not old enough to vote, so sometimes it is hard for me to feel like my voice is being heard.
Jonathan Jones: Mica stands out. Not just because he’s one of the youngest people here, but because he’s one of 16 young people suing the state over its fossil fuel energy policies. They argue state officials are violating their constitutional right to a healthful environment. The clause, put into the state constitution decades ago, thanks to environmental activists like Wally and Jeanie’s mom, Caroline.
Mica Kantor: Despite knowing about climate change and its detrimental effects for decades, the state of Montana has decided to ignore it for profit. But we have to ask ourselves if it is worth it. Is it worth it to lose the things we love? Is it worth it to lose the places that we relish? Is it worth it all in order for more profit?
Jonathan Jones: At age four, Mica started worrying about the future of the world’s glaciers. At nine, wildfire and smoke forced him to stay inside for six weeks and made him sick with headaches and eye irritation. At 11, a forest fire broke out about a mile from his home. Mica wrote letters to elected officials asking them to act on the changing climate. He got back a few automated responses. And so when his mom heard about an environmental lawsuit that needed young people to join and asked Mica if he was interested, it was an easy choice.
Mica Kantor: We’ll be the ones to have to live with the effects of climate change more than anybody else, so it’s really important for me to do this.
Jonathan Jones: The youth-led climate trial is the first of its kind in US history and it’s set to begin this summer on June 12th. Just upstairs from the rally are the offices of the lawmakers whose actions are part of the youth climate lawsuit. Tell me who you are and what you do.
Steve Fitzpatrick: Steve Fitzpatrick, senator from Great Falls, Montana, and I am the Republican senate majority leader.
Jonathan Jones: Senator Fitzpatrick is a lawyer and one of the most powerful political figures in the state. Fossil fuel companies are also some of his biggest campaign contributors. There’s this big rally at the Rotunda noon today over this youth climate lawsuit. What is your reaction to the lawsuit?
Steve Fitzpatrick: [inaudible] I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never read any of the pleadings. I mean, it’s kind of hard for me to offer a comment on a lawsuit where I haven’t even-
Jonathan Jones: But you’re a lawyer and you’re getting sued by the youth of Montana over the state’s climate policy, isn’t it in your interest to know what’s going on?
Steve Fitzpatrick: The state of Montana gets sued all the time, so I don’t… I’m a state legislator, I’m not the attorney general’s office. I don’t go read every lawsuit that gets filed.
Jonathan Jones: Fitzpatrick was elected to the state house in 2010 and then to the senate in 2016. He’s the son of John Fitzpatrick, a former lobbyist for NorthWestern Energy, who is now a state representative. For the past several years, Senator Fitzpatrick has been pushing legislation to make sure the coal fired power plant in Colstrip stays open.
Steve Fitzpatrick: The way I look at that is that we’ve got a resource, we have an asset in the state of Montana, and I don’t think it ought to be destroyed. We need coal and we need energy that’s reliable and useful.
Jonathan Jones: In 2021, when the Colstrip power plant owners based in the Pacific Northwest tried to pull out, Senator Fitzpatrick introduced a series of bills to keep them from leaving. One bill that passed imposed a $100,000 fine for every day they didn’t pay their share of the operating costs.
Steve Fitzpatrick: To have somebody from another state reach into our state and tell us what we’re supposed to do with facilities and plants in our state, yeah, that’s frustrating.
Jonathan Jones: The bills were declared unconstitutional by the courts in October 2022, but that hasn’t discouraged Senator Fitzpatrick and other lawmakers from fighting to ensure the state’s continued reliance on fossil fuels. During the 2023 legislative session, Republicans passed a flurry of these kinds of bills. There was a bill to limit environmental lawsuits over fossil fuel projects, a bill to add a hefty tax for charging electric vehicles, a bill to allow coal mining expansions with limited review, and a bill to weaken water quality protections for coal mines. All of these proposals were signed by the governor and became law.
Jason Small: Mr. Chair, members of the [inaudible] for your consideration.
Jonathan Jones: And then, there was Senate Bill 228.
Jason Small: Basically, this bill preemptively stops any locality from banning fossil fuels and the tools, appliances, or equipment that utilize it.
Jonathan Jones: Senate Bill 228 became law too, making it illegal for local governments to take action to limit fossil fuels in their cities and towns. Senator Jason Small was its primary sponsor.
Jason Small: Coal and Montana is no different than potatoes in Ireland. I mean, that’s something we got and we’ve got it in spades and that’s our great equalizer, right?
Jonathan Jones: Senator Small is from the Colstrip area and a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. When he’s not at the state house, he works at the power plant as a boiler maker.
Jason Small: There’s nothing in the state financially that coal doesn’t touch. That’s something even some of the most remote places in the state, there’s some mines there, and those mines keep everybody living a good lifestyle. They’re educating kids. We sprinkle coal dust all over the state.
Jonathan Jones: He scoffed at the notion that the coal industry’s days are numbered.
Jason Small: Oh hell no, coal’s not dead. There isn’t that much reliable power out there and reliable power you’re going to get is from gas. It’s from propane natural gas, methane, it’s from coal. Those are the ones that are always going to be there when you need them.
Jonathan Jones: If there’s one company that seems to benefit the most from these kinds of policies, it’s NorthWestern Energy, the largest single provider of electricity in Montana. The company finances a small army of lobbyists every legislative session. In 2023, NorthWestern lobbied for bills to weaken oversight of coal mining expansions, bills increasing taxes on electric vehicles, and bills restricting solar energy.
News Anchor: NorthWestern Energy is planning to build a new 250 million natural gas plant in Laurel.
Jonathan Jones: The company also supported a bill that allows state regulators to approve big new capital projects like building a new power plant without having to demonstrate it’s actually the best deal for Montanans. And NorthWestern supported that bill while it was building a brand new methane gas plant. The new plant started construction in 2022 and they built it on the banks of the Yellowstone River in Steve Krum’s family’s backyard.
Steve Krum: We’re just south of Yellowstone River, just south of the plant location currently being built by Northwest Energy. I just don’t understand why you’d build a plant like this here.
Jonathan Jones: Steve is a retired oil refinery worker who’s lived in the area his whole life. He wasn’t the only one upset about the plant. Other local residents and environmental groups opposed it since it was first announced in 2021. They say NorthWestern started building before getting the proper zoning permits.
Steve Krum: This thing was being pushed as quickly and as fast as it can. They had no concern for the people here whatsoever. They had zero community meetings to get the people on board, the neighbors that live right next to them.
Jonathan Jones: The new gas plant is projected to emit more than 769,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly 170,000 cars. Concerned for his community, Steve became part of a lawsuit launched by the Sierra Club and the Montana Environmental Information Center. The suit claims the state unlawfully granted NorthWestern a permit to build the gas plant because it failed to do an adequate environmental review.
Steve Krum: We all know that we got climate issues, we know that. They’re using this as a step to quick money because it’s the most expensive way other than coal to fire a generating plant to get the biggest return they can to their stockholders.
Jonathan Jones: This spring, judge Michael Moses ruled in the plaintiff’s favor. He ordered NorthWestern to halt construction of the gas plant. The plant has been sitting half constructed for months. This win was one of many for environmental groups filing suits against the state for permitting fossil fuel expansions. The judge’s ruling riled Montana’s Republican lawmakers.
Steve Fitzpatrick: So what the judge did, I think was outrageous. It flies in the face of law. It was probably one of the more atrocious pieces of judicial activism I’ve ever seen and we’ve seen a lot of bad decisions out of this judge.
Jonathan Jones: That’s Senator Fitzpatrick again, speaking on the floor of the Montana Senate this April. A few weeks after the ruling, the Republican super majority suspended its own rules to introduce a controversial new bill at the last minute.
Steve Fitzpatrick: This decision by the judge, it threatens every individual project in the state of Montana. This could be refineries, this could be mines, this could be anybody with an air quality permit, and we all know that each individual project is never going to change the temperature of the earth.
Jonathan Jones: The ruling and the lawsuit over the new gas plant were all about how the state failed to assess the environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emissions, so the new bill would prevent state agencies from considering the potential impact of climate change altogether.
Interviewee: Senator Small.
Jason Small: Yes, thank you, Mr. President. House bill 971 makes it clear that unless and until Montana policymakers enact laws to regulate carbon, a procedural review does not include a climate analysis.
Jonathan Jones: In other words, House bill 971 explicitly prohibits all state agencies from considering climate change and greenhouse gas emissions when reviewing projects that could harm the environment.
Jason Small: We’re not going to allow endless litigation to stop projects and industry in the state of Montana.
Jonathan Jones: More than a thousand people submitted comments with the vast majority in opposition to the bill and more than 60 people testified against it.
Steve Krum: My name is Steve Krum, K-R-U-M. I live in Laurel, Montana and I’m opposed to HB 971.
Interviewees: Are we willing to sacrifice our environment to support corporate profits?
I’m an engineer and a parent and I speak for all the children who aren’t born yet and all the ones who don’t have a voice yet. Please oppose this bill.
My future and the generations to come after me will be significantly affected.
Think of the legacy you will be leaving our grandchildren.
Jonathan Jones: Nationally, the bill is considered one of the most extreme legislative actions to keep regulators from addressing climate change. After it passed, largely along party lines, it was signed into law by Republican governor Greg Gianforte. Two days later, attorneys for the state cited it when asking a judge to dismiss the youth-led climate lawsuit. The judge declined and ordered the attorneys to prepare for trial.
Al Letson: Coming up, Jonathan kicks the tires on the idea that there’s nothing more reliable, affordable, or sustainable than coal power.
Anne Hedges: How much does wind cost for fuel? Nothing. How much does solar cost for fuel? Nothing. Coal is not cheaper, not on any calculus that anybody is doing today.
Al Letson: That’s next on Reveal.
From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. While he was in Montana, Reveal’s Jonathan Jones talked to many policymakers who were quick to dismiss clean energy. For a lot of them, the commitment to coal and other fossil fuels comes down to jobs, tax revenue, or a disbelief in climate change. And there’s one more thing.
Gary Parry: The sun’s not always going to shine and the wind’s not always going to blow.
Al Letson: In other words, reliability.
Steve Gunderson: The biggest problem that we have in trying to do this changeover to wind, solar, those two especially, is they’re not an on demand. They are when the wind blows, when the sun shines.
Steve Fitzpatrick: The fact of the matter is in the middle of the dead of winter, when it’s super cold, there is no wind blowing.
Jason Small: When the wind’s not blowing, obviously you’re not getting wind power. There’s no solar energy today because it’s snowing.
Al Letson: That was state representatives Gary Parry and Steve Gunderson and Senators Steve Fitzpatrick and Jason Small. Montana’s largest utility company seems to agree. This spring, NorthWestern Energy unveiled its plans for supplying electricity across the state. That plan included burning more coal at the Colstrip power plant for the next two decades and finishing construction on their new gas plant on the Yellowstone River. Utilities across the west are phasing out their coal fire plants and pivoting to renewable energy. So why is one of Montana’s biggest energy players expanding its fossil fuel footprint? Jonathan went to ask the man behind the decisions at NorthWestern, the CEO.
Jonathan Jones: Brian Bird has worked for NorthWestern Energy for two decades. He became CEO at the beginning of 2023. Before that, he was president and chief operating officer. I asked him what he’s learned in his time at the head of the organization.
Brian Bird: We have a capacity problem at NorthWestern. And what I mean by capacity, we don’t have a sufficient amount of resources to deliver 24/7 power to our customers.
Jonathan Jones: Right now, NorthWestern imports energy from out of state to address that capacity issue. The company has to balance the electricity demands of its customers and the growing population in Montana. But it’s also a publicly traded company that has to make money for its shareholders, big investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard, which manage the retirement funds of millions of Americans. Critics say that NorthWestern is sort of doubling down on outdated, inefficient, and polluting power sources because those are the most profitable and they’re making Montanans pay the bill. What’s your response to that?
Brian Bird: I’m doing that because our customers need that capacity. If I can’t deliver it to them, they’re going to be very angry with us as a utility, so it has nothing to do with profitability.
Jonathan Jones: About 58% of the electricity NorthWestern supplies in Montana generates zero carbon emissions. Some of it comes from wind power, some from hydroelectric dams, a along with a little bit of solar. He says the company is committed to adding more renewable resources.
Brian Bird: So it’s a false narrative to say that we’re not doing anything from a renewable energy perspective.
Jonathan Jones: But you are building the new gas plant.
Brian Bird: I am indeed, and that gas plant was built to offset the intermittency of renewables put on the system. I need to balance reliability, affordability, and sustainability, and I’m doing as quickly as I can to not only serve our customers today, but to serve them with cleaner energy in the future.
Jonathan Jones: Why do you think NorthWestern has been such a target of criticism among environmentalists in Montana?
Brian Bird: That’s a great question. I think the fact that we continue to be in a coal fire plant is probably the primary reason.
Jonathan Jones: Do you worry about climate change?
Brian Bird: I do. But in our own backyards, we need to think about, again, balancing reliability, affordability, and sustainability, and serving our customers today with serving our customers in the future, and to balance all of that.
Jonathan Jones: Should NorthWestern be working to rapidly phase out coal fire power plants?
Brian Bird: Should we be rapidly? I think what we’re doing is we’re doing it in a constructive way. We’re looking at how can we find alternatives that are cost effective and are going to be reliable. It’s going to take some time. We can’t close down all the coal fire plants tomorrow and expect that we’re going to have first world reliability electric system.
Jonathan Jones: NorthWestern critics point to other utilities that are investing in large scale wind and solar projects. They say Montana could be a national leader in green energy. That famous big sky that seems to go on forever can charge up solar panels and that vast almost treeless range brings the wind, which can turn huge propellers to make electricity.
The app of my phone says the wind’s blowing about 15 miles per hour, but I have to say, standing out here, it seems a lot windier than that.
About a two hour drive from the Colstrip power plant is the clear water wind farm. It is the largest wind farm in Montana. They kind of look like giant sort of white toothpicks with three blades spinning around. It’s like a big wind turbine forest. The state isn’t necessarily known for its wind, but it ought to be. It’s the fifth windiest state in the country. Other states in North America’s breezy midsection are charging ahead with wind energy, Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But Montana lags behind. It ranks 20th among states in terms of output from wind energy.
I feel like in some ways standing here we’re really at sort of the epicenter of the battle between fossil fuels and clean energy.
And it’s a battle experts say that clean energy could easily win in Montana.
Chris Clack: You are in a state where you’ve got abundant capacity to produce way more energy than you need.
Jonathan Jones: Chris Clack is a renewable energy expert and a mathematician who has studied energy sources in Montana. I asked him about the argument that renewables can’t replace coal and other fossil fuels because they’re just not reliable.
Chris Clack: It’s demonstrably not true, no. I mean, wind and solar are reliable. The sun is always shining, it’s just it’s not overhead all the time. We’d have bigger problems if the sun wasn’t always shining, and the wind is always blowing, always somewhere the wind is blowing.
Jonathan Jones: So why do they use that argument?
Chris Clack: The truth in that argument is that it is variable. It’ll sometimes be windy, it’ll sometimes be cloudy, and so there is truth in the fact that it is variable, but it’s predictable. We have weather forecast, we have climatologies, we have long-term data series now of seeing what the wind and solar does over time.
Jonathan Jones: In other words, you can plan for when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining in one part of the US and draw from other areas when it’s not. In 2021, Chris analyzed sources of electricity in the state on behalf of the environmental group, 350Montana. The first page of the executive summary reads in all caps, THIS IS THE YEAR MONTANA DECIDES HOW TO REPLACE COAL. For this study, Chris created a model showing how the state could drastically reduce carbon emissions in its energy system. He found that Montana could retire its coal plants, never build another gas plant, and still meet people’s energy needs at no additional cost to the consumer. How would Montana do that?
Chris Clack: In a nutshell, it’s really building more wind and solar. You could do it at low cost whilst producing twice as much electricity.
Jonathan Jones: But the inconvenient political and social truth is that wind farms and solar panels, at least right now, don’t help the economy like coal does. Renewables don’t create the same number of long-term well-paying jobs as a strip mine or a coal fire power plant, and renewables don’t replace the tax revenue that a town like Colstrip, Montana depends on. I posed this problem to Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, who advocates phasing out coal in this state. How do you replace those good paying jobs?
Anne Hedges: You probably don’t, let’s be real. I’m, I’m not going to lie, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, those are really good jobs. They pay a lot, they pay way above average, those people are super fortunate to have had those jobs for as long as they have, which is why we need to plan for that transition.
Jonathan Jones: And eventually, even without an energy transition, the coal will run out. Anne says pretending that coal fire power plants can operate forever is a disservice to the workers, their communities, and the planet at large.
Anne Hedges: We can’t just say we’re going to ignore the climate crisis, we’re going to say that these jobs are more important than people’s health, than people’s wellbeing. Let’s go talk to people after hurricanes in this country and say how they feel about it. They’d like to have jobs too and their jobs are disrupted.
Jonathan Jones: Renewables won’t immediately replace jobs and they don’t satisfy the people who are skeptical of climate change, but Anne says there’s another incentive. Switching to renewable energy will dramatically lower the cost of producing electricity.
Anne Hedges: How much does wind cost for fuel? Nothing. How much does solar cost for fuel? Nothing. Coal is not cheaper, not on any calculus that anybody is doing today.
Jonathan Jones: And she says Montanans would see the difference every month.
Anne Hedges: And that is their utility bills and how much are they paying and is there a way for them to pay less.
Jonathan Jones: The short term jobs, the tax revenue right now are a political deal breaker in Montana, but other states are modeling a different approach. In 2019, Colorado created an office of just transition to help communities and workers shift away from the mining and burning of coal. That includes working with utilities and mining companies to bridge the gap of lost jobs and revenue. Colorado’s largest utility plans to stop burning coal altogether by 2030. And about 20 miles down the road from Colstrip, the community college on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation recently got a 1.8 million federal grant for workforce development and training in renewable energy. Rancher, Jeanie Alderson wishes Montana’s political leaders would follow suit and pivot away from coal too.
Jeanie Alderson: This one might be a double band.
Jonathan Jones: It’s branding day on the ranch for the calves born this spring. One by one, the ranchers lift each animal onto a special table. It closes to cradle the cow while a hot brand is pressed against its hide. A meadowlark sings from a fence post and spring grass is greening on the hill.
Jeanie Alderson: The land itself, it’s so much more than just home. I feel really lucky to just have this space and to get to live with my family, to have my boys grow up working with their dad and their granddad. Everything that I am, that my family has been, that will be seems all tied up in this place.
Jonathan Jones: Jeanie told me earlier that she and her husband changed the way they ranch in order to stay in business, to stay on the land, and she says it’s time for the power companies and legislators tied to coal to adapt too.
Jeanie Alderson: We have to recognize that these coal jobs were good jobs, and losing that is devastating, and we’ve got to come up with the way so workers aren’t left without a way to take care of their families. But we also have to realize that we’ve got to find a way to take care of the land and water first because it is what’s going to be here long past us.
Al Letson: Our lead producer for this week’s show is Stephen Smith. Today’s story was reported in partnership with Montana Free Press. Their reporter, Amanda Eggert contributed reporting and research. Jenny Casas edited the show with help from Kate Howard. Special thanks to reporter Mara Silvers and editor Brad Tyer of Montana Free Press and Yellowstone Public Radio.
And some exciting news, our new documentary Victim/Suspect is now streaming on Netflix. The doc follows reporter Rachel de Leon’s investigation into a troubling trend, young women who report sexual assaults to the police then end up as suspects. Victim/Suspect, stream it now on Netflix.
Nikki Frick is our fact checker, Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel, our production manager is Steven Rascon, score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda. They had helped this week from Claire C-Note Mullen. Our CEO is Robert Rosenthal, our COO is Maria Feldman, our interim executive producers are Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers. Our theme music is by [inaudible] Lightning.
Support for Reveal’s provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Reveal is a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson. And remember, there is always more to the story.
The Mississippi River flowed lazily under the Centennial Bridge, which connects Illinois and Iowa in the Quad Cities. Cars cruised past on a Saturday afternoon in early May, waving and occasionally honking at a long line of environmentalists who say the river is alive.
Glenda Guster was among the roughly 80 people to join the Great Plains Action Society’s Walk for River Rights — the centerpiece of a three-day summit earlier this month for Black and Indigenous organizers from across the Mississippi River basin, who, among other things, want to grant the river legal standing.
Like many making the march across the river, Guster, who held a sign saying “water is life” over her head, said the river needs more protection.
“The river has rights, just like human rights,” said Guster. “Nature has rights and it’s up to us to preserve these rights.”
According to Sikowis Nobis, the founder of the indigenous rights organization, the goal of the summit was to build a riverwide coalition to rethink the legal framework they believe imperils life on and in the Mississippi River. The way she sees it, the existing legal system cannot confront the types of environmental disasters that are increasingly imminent – but “Rights of Nature” might.
The idea is that natural entities like rivers, trees and wildlife have the same rights as humans and thus have legal standing in a court of law. Natural entities, the legal principle holds, constitute living beings with legally enforceable rights to exist that transcend the category of property.
“The Earth is really suffering, and rights of nature would basically give personhood to the river,” Nobis said. “It would allow us to have more power to keep it safe.”
The legal movement to grant natural entities like forests and rivers the same legal rights as humans has won meaningful success abroad, and has in recent years picked up steam in the United States. Largely Indigenous-led campaigns to recognize the legal rights of natural entities like wild rice in Minnesota, salmon in Washington, and the Klamath River in northern California are setting the stage for a nascent movement for the Mississippi River.
The implications of rights of nature as a legal instrument are far reaching. Companies could be taken to court for damaging ecosystems, and construction projects with the potential to cause environmental damage could be stopped.
That’s exactly what happened in Tamaqua, a small town in Pennsylvania. Thomas Linzey is a senior attorney at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights and drafted the document to grant the small borough rights.
“It may be a radical concept, or it was 20 years ago, but we’re rapidly coming to a place where without this kind of new system of environmental law, we’re all kind of done, we’re kind of cooked,” said Linzey.
Ultimately, locals were able to stop sewage sludge from being dumped in Tamaqua using the new ordinance.
Linzey said that before the rights of nature movement made its way into the mainstream, it was born from the cosmologies of indigenous people that recognized the natural world as made up of living beings – not just resources or commodities.
In 2008, Linzey consulted the Ecuadorian government while it drafted its new constitution, the first in the world to ratify the Rights of Nature. In 2021, an Ecuadorian municipality appealed to the constitutional protections to overturn mining permits that they said violated the rights of nature of the endangered Los Cedros rainforest.
“The work has spread to other countries, and in the U.S. to about over three dozen municipalities at this point,” said Linzey.
Ecuador remains the only country in the world to enshrine the rights of nature in its constitution. A similar proposal was considered in Chile last year, and the island nation of Aruba is currently reviewing its own amendment addressing the inherent rights of nature. Court decisions in countries like Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda have successfully held up the rights of nature. Local laws and treaty agreements recognizing the rights of nature are emerging across the globe, particularly in the U.S.
Lance Foster, a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and a speaker at the Mississippi River Summit, said that a couple years ago, the success of rights of nature in South America got his and other tribes thinking, why not us?
“And we wondered why haven’t the big rivers, like the Missouri River, and the Mississippi River, gotten those rights?” said Foster.
He said his tribe and others have created an inter-tribal resolution for the rights of the Missouri River. They hope to use it to fight industrial scale agriculture and deep mining operations.
“If the Mississippi had those rights recognized… it would be able to have standing in court for an advocate on its behalf to help clean it up,” said Foster.
Two years ago in Minnesota, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe brought a suit against the Enbridge corporation’s Line 3 on behalf of wild rice, called Manoomin. And last month, the city of Seattle settled a case with the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe over the claim that salmon had the right to spawn, among other rights.
Because the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flow through so many states and tribal lands, experts said it would be prohibitively complicated to secure legal standing for them in the courts.
But Foster said if corporations get legal rights in the U.S., why shouldn’t rivers? Afterall, they were here far before humans.
States like Idaho, Florida and Ohio have moved to preemptively ban the possibility that nature or ecosystems can have legal standing. Even so, Foster said the rights of nature isn’t as unthinkable as it once was. After all, children, women, Black and indigenous people were denied rights once too – what’s stopping the river.
“It gives us a chance,” said Foster. “Now, will we take that chance as a society? I’m dubious most days, but we have to keep trying, we have to keep going to the bitter end.”
Tribes call for increased Grand Canyon protections
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, met with tribal leaders representing a dozen Indigenous nations last weekend in a move that could expand protections for land around The Grand Canyon, permanently safeguarding the region from future uranium mining.
The proposed Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument would convert 1.1 million acres of public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park into a National Monument, providing significant protections to tribal water sources, delicate ecosystems, and cultural sites, while curtailing the impacts of uranium mining — a proposal tribes in the area have been fighting for since 1985. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” in the Havasupai language, I’tah Kukveni translates to “our footprints” in Hopi.
The region has high concentrations of uranium and mining has been a feature of the landscape since the 1950s. When mining first began in the area, uranium was used primarily for nuclear weapons. Today, uranium from the Grand Canyon is used for nuclear energy plants and power reactors in submarines and naval ships.
In 2012, then-Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, placed a 20-year ban on uranium mining on more than a million acres of federal lands near the Grand Canyon in order to protect surface water from radioactive dust and mining waste. Without increased federal protections, tribal leaders say mining claims can be made at the end of the 20-year-ban, re-opening the Grand Canyon to uranium exploration.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, mining in the area disturbs underground vertical rock formations called “breccia pipes” — formations that often hold hydrothermal fluid or extremely hot water heated by the earth’s mantle and filled with various gasses, minerals and salts, including uranium. When disturbed, those breccia pipes can release their contents into aquifers and eventually, larger water systems.
The Skywalk hangs over the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai Indian Reservation before its grand opening ceremony on March 20, 2007, at Grand Canyon West, Ariz. Tribal leaders in Arizona said Tuesday, April 11, 2023, that they hope to build on the momentum of President Joe Biden’s recent designation of a national monument in neighboring Nevada to persuade the administration to create similar protections for the entire Grand Canyon area they consider sacred. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
In 2016, the Pinyon Plain Mine pierced an aquifer flooding mineshafts, and draining groundwater supplies. Between 2016 and 2021, the Grand Canyon Trust estimated that more than 48 million gallons of water had flooded Pinyon’s mineshafts, and the National Parks Conservation Association has consistently reported uranium levels in that water exceeding federal toxicity limits by more than 300 percent.
When ingested, uranium can cause bone and liver cancer, damage kidneys, and affect body processes like autoimmune and reproductive functions.
In 2016, tribal leaders brought the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni proposal to the Obama administration, but were rejected. Now, the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition, made up of 12 tribes with ties to the area, hope Secretary Haaland will encourage the Biden administration to protect the region.
“We can’t wait until the accident happens,” said Carletta Tilousi, a Havasupai elder and member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “We are trying to prevent the catastrophe before it happens.”
The Havasupai reservation is an eight mile hike below the rim of the Grand Canyon and one of the most isolated communities in the United States.
But Tillousi says that while stopping uranium mining will be a major goal of the proposal, ongoing contamination issues must be addressed. The Pinyon Plain Mine continues to contaminate the Havasupai’s sole water supply, the Havasu Creek. Pinyon has been operating since 1986, and while the 2012 uranium mining ban stopped the construction of new mines, Pinyon is exempt due to its pre-approval. As of 2020, 30 million gallons of groundwater tainted with high levels of uranium and arsenic have been pumped out of the mines flooded shaft and dumped in an uncovered pond.
“We’re a small tribe, our tribe is made up of 765 people,” said Tillousi. “We need to protect our village and homes.”
After three years of congested trailheads, crowded restaurants and packed hotels, Montana tourism officials say this summer might be a little calmer as the state’s pandemic-fueled travel boom starts to level out into something closer to normal.
While the state remains a popular tourist destination — especially places like Glacier and Yellowstone national parks — advance hotel reservations are slightly down this year in destinations like the Flathead Valley. Officials attribute that to a number of factors, including rising costs and the end of the COVID-19 emergency, which means people have more travel options than they did just a few summers ago.
“I think it’s because the rest of the world is opening up,” said Julie Mullins, executive director of Explore Whitefish. “The pandemic made people want to be outside, and so places like Whitefish and Glacier National Park saw a huge increase in visitation because of that. But now people feel more comfortable going to cities, and they can travel internationally again.”
Mullins said that in the summer of 2019, Whitefish’s hotel occupancy rate (calculated by dividing the total number of occupied rooms by the total number of rooms available) ranged between 75% and 85%. In 2021, the occupancy rate in June, July and August ranged from 80% to 85%. In 2022, it dropped slightly to pre-pandemic levels of 70% to 80%. Mullins said that trend will likely continue this year.
Short-term rental reservations, like Airbnb and Vrbo, are also down slightly, Mullins said. Since the pandemic, the number of homes available for short-term rentals in the 59937 zip code (Whitefish and the immediate surrounding area) has skyrocketed, from 2,100 in 2019 to 3,300 in 2022.
“It’s still going to be a great summer, but I think it will be flat,” she said.
“The pandemic made people want to be outside, and so places like Whitefish and Glacier National Park saw a huge increase in visitation because of that. But now people feel more comfortable going to cities, and they can travel internationally again.”
Daryl Schliem, CEO of the Bozeman Area Chamber of Commerce, said a similar story is developing in Gallatin County. As in the Flathead, Bozeman area hotel occupancy rates spiked in 2021 and 2022 when outdoor recreation remained a major draw for tourism and Montana was high on people’s list of destinations.
Data from Bozeman’s airport reflected that as well. Right before the pandemic, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport saw nearly 800,000 passengers annually. That dropped to below 500,000 once the pandemic hit, but quickly rebounded in 2021 and 2022, hitting well over 1 million boardings. This year, the growth is expected to continue but not at the same rate, with an estimated 1.2 million enplanements for 2023, according to data from the airport.
Schliem said he expects tourism to continue to grow in the state by 4% or 5% annually. That’s not the type of growth that was seen over the last few years, but is on par with what the state experienced before 2020.
In 2022, 12.5 million nonresidents came to the state, spending more than $5.8 billion, according to the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research. Tourism supports 43,900 jobs in the state, and 1 in 13 Montana workers are supported by out-of-state travelers.
The national parks were a big driver of visitation in recent years, with Glacier hitting more than 3 million visitors in 2021 and 2.9 million in 2022. Yellowstone hit 4.8 million in 2021 and 3.2 million in 2022 (despite parts of the park being closed due to flooding).
While American travelers begin to look elsewhere for their vacations, Schliem said he thinks the number of international travelers to Montana will start to increase as travel restrictions are eliminated.
“I don’t think we’ll see a full recovery of international travel this year, but I think it will make up for the Americans who are going elsewhere,” he said.
One part of the state that isn’t expecting a ton of change is Missoula. Barbara Neilan, executive director of Destination Missoula Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the Garden City didn’t see the same spike that places like Bozeman and the Flathead saw over the last few years. Neilan said that’s probably because Missoula isn’t as well tied to iconic outdoor recreation destinations such as Glacier and Yellowstone. In 2018 and 2019, Missoula’s annual average hotel occupancy was at 64%. But in 2022, it was at 61%. During the summer months, that occupancy rate can be between 84% and 88% and Neilan expects similar numbers this year.
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Oklahoma Legislature overrides governor’s veto of tribal regalia bill
The Oklahoma Legislature on Thursday overrode Gov. Kevin Stitt’s veto of a bill that would allow students to wear Native American regalia during high school and college graduations.
The state House and Senate easily cleared the two-thirds threshold needed to uphold the measure, which takes effect July 1 and had strong support from many Oklahoma-based tribes and Native American citizens.
It would allow any student at a public school, including colleges, universities and technology centers, to wear tribal regalia such as traditional garments, jewelry or other adornments during official graduation ceremonies. Weapons such as a bow and arrow, tomahawk or war hammer are specifically prohibited.
“In other words, if schools want to allow their students to wear tribal regalia at graduation, good on them,” Stitt wrote in his veto message. “But if schools prefer for their students to wear only traditional cap and gown, the Legislature shouldn’t stand in their way.”
Stitt also suggested the bill would allow other groups to “demand special favor to wear whatever they please at a formal ceremony.”
Lawmakers also overrode vetoes of several other measures, including one adding experts on Native health to a wellness council and another allowing for the existence of the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, the state’s Public Broadcasting Service affiliate.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. thanked the Legislature on Thursday.
“I hope Governor Stitt hears the message that his blanket hostility to tribes is a dead end,” Hoskin said in a statement. “The majority of Oklahomans believe in respecting the rights of Native Americans and working together with the sovereign tribes who share this land.”
Kamryn Yanchick, a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, was denied the opportunity to wear a decorated cap with a beaded pattern when she graduated from her high school in 2018.
Being able to “unapologetically express yourself and take pride in your culture at a celebration without having to ask a non-Native person for permission to do so is really significant,” said Yanchick, who is now a Native American policy advocate.
A Native former student sued Broken Arrow Public Schools and two employees earlier this month after she was forced to remove an eagle feather from her graduation cap prior to her high school commencement ceremony.
Protecting Children and Healing Families, One Native Auntie at a Time
This story is being co-published withThe Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice.
When two aunties visit parents in need, there is no scolding, shame or surveillance. Instead, they set themselves to the immediate tasks at hand on these southern California reservations — at times simply pitching in to fold a pile of laundry, or patting a baby to sleep with Kumeyaay lullabies.
Then there are the variety of lessons with mom and dad to nurture safe parenting that fold in traditional Indigenous teachings. Establishing family routines and healthy diets are taught alongside lessons in burning sage for cleansing, growing herbal medicines in a family’s backyard, and making basic introductions in a child’s Native language.
“As a home-based program, if both of the aunties come in, it’s not necessarily a reprimand,” said auntie Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lycett. “It’s, ‘Let me take care of the child over here, so you can have your class.’”
Since its formal inception in 2019, My Two Aunties has assisted hundreds of Indigenous families in California’s San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties. From its base on the Rincon Indian Reservation, the small program with a staff of three is among the many ongoing efforts in Indian Country to keep children out of foster care and ensure Indigenous families remain safe and intact.
Beyond parenting support, the aunties seek to repair intergenerational trauma that can result in substance abuse, domestic violence and unsafe environments for children. They equip parents with cultural tools through “Indigenous Ways Of Knowing” that they may have missed out on due to their own childhoods in foster and adoptive homes. The goals are to reduce family separation, build parents’ trust in social services and help members of tribal communities heal.
Jeremy Braithwaite, Lizzie Lycett, Cori Biggs, Art Martinez, Karan Thorne and Judge Bill Thorne working in collaboration to bring Trauma Informed Care training to the Indian Health Council staff.
, working in collaboration to bring Trauma Informed Care training to the Indian Health Council staff. Photo provided by My Two Aunties
My Two Aunties partners with nine local tribes, the local Indian Health Council and San Diego County, and is funded by California’s Office of Child Abuse Prevention and the Department of Social Services.
The key component is the “aunties,” whose role “builds upon the strengths of family legacies, patterns, and kinship traditions that have endured since time immemorial,” the My Two Aunties’ program guide states. In contrast to thefear instilled by county social workers going into the homes of parents under threat of child removal, Lycett describes her work as an abundance of acceptance and understanding. Some home visits require just one auntie; others, two.
“When you have one auntie, everything is fine and dandy,” Lycett said with a grin. “But if two come into the door, you better duck for cover.”
Lycett, 28 and fellow auntie Cori Biggs, 63, are descended from the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. Lycett has an associate degree in sociology and is studying for a bachelor’s degree in the sociology field. She has been trained in the well-regarded Family Spirit program since 2019. Biggs has a master’s degree in social work.
They aim to build relationships between children, parents and their tribes to combat the cultural erasure that happens when a child is taken from their tribal home. So in addition to training in case management, mandated reporting protocols and developing safety plans, they’re also versed in local languages, legends and Native history, including the impacts of colonization.
Aunties’ responsibilities include supporting parents at risk for abusing substances, working with pregnant moms and guiding families for one year after a child’s birth.
“WHENEVER WE’RE WORKING WITH THESE FAMILIES, THEY HAVE TO BE THE LEADER.”
— LIZZIE LYCETT, MY TWO AUNTIES
Lycett said “our first and foremost priority is the safety of our families,” and she and Biggs are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect. If concerning issues arise that require a call to the child protection hotline, program staff may contact CPS, or encourage direct witnesses to do so. Aunties do not make foster care recommendations, however — that determination is made following an investigation by a tribal or county social worker.
Clients were not interviewed for this article to maintain their privacy, but feedback the program has received shows family members’ appreciation for the guidance and support. “Raising a Native baby to be proud of being Native is a huge thing,” one parent said in a survey response. “That’s something that I really wanted and the main reason I wanted to be in this program.”
Karan Thorne, former director of My Two Aunties
Former director Karan Thorne — a member of the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians — retired last year after a three-decade journey to develop My Two Aunties. Thorne said that unlike the typical approach of social workers, the aunties focus on strengths within the household: “Instead of ‘What’s wrong with you?’ they ask: ‘What’s strong with you?’”
She said generations to come are being positively impacted.
“I’m seeing such great change with these pregnant women, and a lot of the babies have tribal names now,” Thorne said. “To me, that says they’re proud of their culture and where their kids are coming from.”
At a recent National Indian Child Welfare Association conference highlighting noteworthy practices across the country, the nonprofit Indian Health Council described the program as “well received” among the members it serves as a tribal health organization. “In our community it takes trust to build a relationship,” a representative said.“It appears our Aunties are able to make that connection.”
Art Martinez of the Chumash tribe isa consulting psychologist whohas worked on its curriculum and evaluations. He said the strength of My Two Aunties lies in the people it serves.
“In our ways, we never had child removal,” Martinez said. “We never had prisons, we never had jails. Why? Because we worked off a very basic understanding of living an honorable life in the way we were meant to be and the way we were meant to represent our own families.”
Martinez said he sees the program’s current caseload growing and shifting — from parents who are required by the court to participate, to parents who want to participate to reconnect with their cultural and spiritual pasts.
“IF BOTH OF THE AUNTIES COME IN, IT’S NOT NECESSARILY A REPRIMAND. IT’S, ‘LET ME TAKE CARE OF THE CHILD OVER HERE, SO YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CLASS.’”
— LIZZIE LYCETT, MY TWO AUNTIES
The My Two Aunties curriculum begins with lessons structured aroundthe growth of an acorn into an oak tree.
Lessons in the roots that strengthen families and communities involve practicing patience and staying grounded in tradition. The course evolvesthrough teachings about a balanced diet and healthy relationships, and ends in a final class symbolized by a drawing of a towering oak. The tree is surrounded by a forest fed by the knowledge of elders, ancestral medicine and spiritual practice.
The aunties’ caseloads have grown steadily over the past four years, including parents who voluntarily seek their support and services, and those referred by physicians. Clients of the child welfare system arrive at different stages — some parents are under investigation for child maltreatment, some have children placed in foster homes, and others are in the final stages of reunification. Each family receives between one and 12 visits, depending on the level of need.
In 2022, the program served 97 families and held 411 parenting classes. Those numbers have grown from 2021, when the program assisted 73 families and provided 133 parenting classes.
Nancy Spence has been director of My Two Aunties since the former director, Karan Thorne, retired last year.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, families picked up workbooks and other material at outdoor drive-through sites, and dozens of mothers received pre- and post-natal check-ins through video conferencing. But new opportunities were created as well, and the program continues to connect with families through virtual visits.
“It’s an option that has proven to be very convenient for our families and sometimes increases the chances that they will participate in the program,” current director Nancy Spence said.
The work of relying on traditional teachings to reduce the number of tribal families separated by foster care began over 20 years ago in this community. At the time, the consortium of tribes served by the Indian Health Council’s Tribal Family Services had nearly 500 children in local child welfare systems.
Indian Health Council data show there are currently 30 children in out-of-home care among the populations served by the agency serves, who include members of nine federally recognized tribes in San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties.
My Two Aunties is a key contributor to the low numbers in recent years, according to the organization.
After publishing its 2022 evaluation report, the program is now working on its next robust set of findings. The measures that are being examinedby Martinez and Jeremy Braithwaite of the Tribal Law and Policy Institute focus on the program’s ability to strengthen families: “How did families’ participation in various aspects of the program build/enhance/restore cultural resilience and how did they see this contributing to stronger, healthier families?” Braithwaite noted in an email. The evaluation centers on Indigenous Ways of Knowing methods, which the researcher described as “both culturally and scientifically rigorous.”
A final report on outcomes-to-date is forthcoming. But state data already show why the program is urgently needed in these southern California counties.
Native children make up roughly 600 of the more than 52,000 children in foster care in the state, or just 1.3%. But like Black children, they are, relative to their population size, the most likely to be reported as subjects of maltreatment and to enter foster care, according to state data.
“WHEN MY CLIENTS DON’T REUNIFY, I TELL THEM TO GET THAT ROOM READY ANYWAY. BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH HE’S IN FOSTER CARE, HE’S GOING TO AGE OUT AND COME HOME, SO YOU HAVE TO BE READY.”
— KARAN THORNE, FORMER DIRECTOR, MY TWO AUNTIES
The aunties’ care of these children’s families stands in stark contrast with the approach of county child welfare agencies — and it is more broadly defined. Some work is preventive — such as parents who have a family member with substance use disorder and need support “to ensure both the resiliency of the family and the family’s place in a Native community of wellness,” the program’s description states.
Others, even after losing their custody rights to their children, remain in the program — parents who’ve had their rights terminated are still treated as care-worthy.
“When my clients don’t reunify, I tell them to get that room ready anyway,” said former director Thorne. “Because even though he’s in foster care, he’s going to age out and come home so you have to be ready.”
The care is distinct in other ways as well. The aunties address and acknowledge the struggles Indigenous parents face that is a result of colonization, misrepresentation and social worker bias. Thorne said skepticism about Indigenous peoples’ ability to care for themselves and their familiesleads to the disproportionate numbers of child removals in Native communities. That includes conflating child neglect with poverty, in tribal communities, where as many as one-third live below the federal income level.
Group photo of the My Two Aunties Program Development team and the unveiling of the first My Two Aunties Logo, at the Center for Native Child and Family Resilience project gathering in April 2022. Photo provided by My Two Aunties
“You have to get to that root cause of what’s really happening with these families,” Thorne said, noting that too often, children are removed because of “conditions that non-Native social workers didn’t feel were right.”
Under the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and state law in California, child welfare agencies must make extra efforts to avoid the separation of Native families. To address historic injustice, that means making “active” — not simply “reasonable” — efforts to provide services to parents and to avoid placing children away from kin. That work is another central goal of My Two Aunties.
“ICWA says social workers have to use active efforts to help reunify families,” Thorne said. “We’re doing the active efforts to prevent those removals.”
The distrust parents have toward child welfare agencies in low-income and communities of color is not an exceptional experience in California or among tribal members. Lycett has seen it first-hand. In her initial homevisits, she routinely encounters tension that must be overcome before she can earn a family’s trust. Some of her clients have a deep-seated fear of social workers taking away their children,and they’ve been left to feel powerless.
“With historical trauma and generational trauma, these families view social services as the Big Bad Wolf,” Lycett said. “Whenever we’re working with these families, they have to be the leader.”
To counter the mistrust, the My Two Aunties model is anchored in storytelling: “native cosmologies or ways of knowing related to the seasons, nature, familial kinship relations, spirits or trickster figures.” These oral traditions “carry the weight of wisdom passed on through countless generations,” theprogram description states, imparting “important lessons about how one should act in the world.”
“RAISING A NATIVE BABY TO BE PROUD OF BEING NATIVE IS A HUGE THING. THAT’S SOMETHING THAT I REALLY WANTED AND THE MAIN REASON I WANTED TO BE IN THIS PROGRAM.”
— PARENT SURVEY RESPONSE
To that end, the program’s Cultural Family Life Skills Discussion Guide curriculum draws on the storytelling traditions of southern California tribes. Life lessons are taught through an array of human and animal characters. A lesson in humility, for example, involves Turkey Vulture — whose now-bald head was scorched after Coyote tricked it into putting its head in a fire pit.
A version of the widely told Legend of the Three Sisters is another theme. In it, three sisters are going through the forest when they pass a river, and hear infant cries. As they get closer to the river, they see babies in the water.
The first sister jumps in immediately to save them. Thorne said this represents the Indian Health Council’s work with families navigating dependency courts. The second sister jumps in next, helping kids swim ashore. This sister represents foster care preventionskills — the work coaching families to heath and wellness through culturally-relevant lessons and values. The third sister goes upstream to keep any future children from falling into the river, which represents their prevention services.
The Personal Reflection Tool is used for evaluation and a better understanding of what our clients are experiencing in their day to day lives. Photo provided by My Two Aunties
When parents are finishing their My Two Aunties visits,theyfill out a Personal Reflection Tool worksheet.
The document features a giant tree in the shape of a woman’s form, with deep roots beneath her feet and powerful branches for limbs. Around the tree are words for parents to pick from that span the emotional spectrum: Alone. Shame. Uncertain. Supported. Grateful. Rejuvenated. Positive. Stressed. Parents circle four or five primary emotions they are experiencing.
Filling out this worksheet began as a tool for evaluators to gather insights on the program’s impact, tracking any changes over time. But it has since become a routine partofaunties’ visits. Of the dozen parents who participated in the latest evaluation, eight consented to their worksheet responses being used. None circled the words “alone,” “shame,” or “scared.”
One mother describedmoving from initial feelings of insecurity to empowerment. She reported feeling more motivated and happier as visits progressed. And she was learning to look toward the future with optimism.
Reflecting on the Mighty Oak lesson of the day, she acknowledged ongoing struggles, circling: “tired” and “stressed.” But she circled three hopeful words and phrases as well: “okay,” “I got this” and “positive.”
One of the auntie’s responses is noted in the evaluation.
“I was happy there were more positives than negatives,” she stated, “which shows the client is learning how to find hope and look forward to a better future for her and her family.”
This story is the first in an ongoing series by The Imprint examining tribal child welfare best practices and the steps Indigenous communities are taking to heal from and limit the use of foster care.
Native Hawaiians are overrepresented in prisons. Here’s how cultural education could help.
Alisha Kaluhiokalani spent most of her first year at Hawaii’s only women’s prison alone in a 6-by-8 foot cell.
She fought, broke the rules, and lashed out at everyone around her. Because of that, she was frequently sent to “lock” – what everyone at the Women’s Community Correctional Center called solitary confinement.
On a rare afternoon in the prison yard Kaluhiokalani heard a mellow, hollow sound. “What was that?” she whispered to herself.
She looked across the yard and saw a prison staff member playing the ukulele.
“You play?” he asked.
She nodded, taking the instrument and starting to strum. She sang “I Kona,” a traditional Hawaiian song loved by her father.
“You want to continue to play that?” the man asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Stay out of lock.”
So she did.
It was the ukulele, a Hawaiian language class, and her encounter with the man in the yard more than 20 years ago that changed Kaluhiokalani’s educational trajectory.
‘Not Knowing Who You Are’
Native Hawaiians like Kaluhiokalani are disproportionately locked up in the Hawaii criminal justice system, making up only 20% of the general population but 40% of people in prison. Similar imbalances are true for Indigenous people across the country.
Among other states with significant overrepresentation of Indigenous people are Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. Native women in particular have higher incarceration rates than the general population.
Native Hawaiians are more likely to struggle with addiction, drop out of school and go to prison. Many feel alienated from Western education systems, Kaluhiokalani said, and that their cultural identity has been suppressed in the wake of historical losses of land and language.
“They call that the ‘eha … the hurt, and not knowing who you are,” she said.
That was something she has struggled with personally. She has often felt like a screw up given the life she has lived, she said. There have been times in her life when she had a hard time seeing herself as anything other than an addict or a prisoner.
Kaluhiokalani became pregnant with her first child at 17. She finished her GED before the baby was born by taking classes at night. Her boyfriend, Jacob, enlisted in the National Guard, and over the next few years they had three more children. During that time, they both struggled with addiction and cycled in and out of jail. She went to prison for the first time on drug-related charges at the age of 23.
In prison, shortly after that first year in solitary, Kaluhiokalani enrolled in her first college class, Hawaiian 101.
“That was a tipping point,” she said.
Being able to learn her language taught her about her identity, helped her see that there was a place for her in higher education. After that, she started working in the prison’s education department and created informal Hawaiian culture classes for her peers.
“I full-force dedicated myself to my culture, to helping people,” Kaluhiokalani said.
All higher education in prison has been shown to reduce recidivism, but incorporating culture into college programs can empower incarcerated Native Hawaiians in different ways, said Ardis Eschenberg, chancellor of Windward Community College.
“Pushing back on the narratives of colonization and racism through Hawaiian studies,” she said, “fights the very systems that have led to our unjust incarceration outcomes and underscores the agency and value of our students in education, community and society.”
Left: Alisha Kaluhiokalani at the University of Hawaii Manoa graduation on May 13. Photo courtesy of Alisha Kaluhiokalani. Right: Alisha Kaluhiokalani has kept the text book – Ka Lei Ha’aheo: Beginning Hawaiian – from the first college course she took in prison 20 years ago.
A Lack of Programs
Despite the benefits, there are few college programs in the United States that specifically target Indigenous people in prison. Windward Community College’s Pu‘uhonua program is an exception. It’s the only higher education institution in Hawaii offering culturally focused classes in prison, and one of only two offering degree programs.
Last fall, the college started an associate’s degree in Hawaiian studies at Halawa Correctional Facility, a medium-security men’s prison. The college was selected for a federal program known as Second Chance Pell, which has provided federal financial aid to people in prison on a pilot basis since 2015.
Eschenberg said that their focus on cultural education for incarcerated Indigenous students is part of Windward’s mission as a Native Hawaiian-serving institution. Almost 43% of their students on campus are Native Hawaiian, the highest in the University of Hawaii system.
For Native Hawaiians, learning about their culture is “validating them in a society where so much of Hawaiian existence has been invalidated in history,” Eschenberg said. And cultural education, she adds, benefits everyone.
“There’s robust research that shows that even outside of Native Hawaiian studies, ethnic studies courses in general helped to build resilience and success for students.”
Windward has also offered a psycho-social developmental studies certificate with coursework in sociology, psychology, and social work at the women’s prison since 2016. They offer Hawaiian studies classes as electives, and focus on the Hawaiian context for the other coursework, Eschenberg said.
In addition, Windward faculty teach Hawaiian music-related coursework, such as ukulele and slack-key guitar, at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility. The students earn both high school and college credit.
The college’s prison education program has primarily been funded by a five-year U.S. Education Department grant for Native Hawaiian-serving institutions that runs out this year. The expansion of Pell Grant eligibility for people in prison in July will help sustain the Pu‘uhonua program going forward. Eschenberg said that Pell dollars will help pay for instructor salaries for courses taught inside, but there are still costs not covered by federal financial aid.
Eschenberg had hoped that the Hawaii Legislature would approve a bill appropriating state funding for staff positions, such as academic counselors and coordinators, to support the Pu`uhonua program because those positions aren’t covered by Pell Grants. The bill stalled in the Legislature in April. Eschenberg said she’s currently applying for two federal grants to secure the necessary funding to keep the program running.
Elsewhere, other college-in-prison programs also have started to provide more opportunities for people to focus on their own cultures. In California, San Francisco State University last year created an ethnic studies certificate in state juvenile facilities. Portland State University’s prison education program also recently received a national grant to offer humanities courses focused on identity, including Indigenous Nations Studies, at Oregon’s only women’s prison.
While more programs in the United States are offering ethnic studies classes, few of those courses focus on Native people. Full degrees like Windward’s Hawaiian studies program specifically focused on Indigenous language and culture are even rarer, said Mneesha Gellman, political scientist and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, which offers a bachelor’s degree in Massachusetts. Gellman’s research focuses on Indigenous language access and education.
Much of the cultural learning that currently occurs in prisons is informal education offered through community groups, prison arts organizations, or classes organized by incarcerated people. Those are valuable, Gellman said, but more academic programs should incorporate culturally relevant curriculum into traditional degree pathways.
Having culturally relevant content makes higher education in general more relatable to Indigenous students, she added, so they are more likely to go after a degree in the first place. And that in turn helps them get the credentials they need to get jobs when they leave prison.
A Wake-Up Call
While Kaluhiokalani’s path through education has had plenty of detours, a connection to her culture has resonated throughout. When she thinks about her elementary school years, she remembers the kupuna– Native Hawaiian elders – who would visit her school to share their cultural knowledge.
“Everything that I learned, I held on to …I loved to sing, play the ukulele, and dance hula.”
Kaluhiokalani grew up in Honolulu less than a mile from Waikiki beach, where she learned to surf.
She associates Waikiki with her father, Montgomery “Buttons” Kaluhiokalani, who was one of the top young surfers in the United States in the 1970s. As a young teenager, she would hang out with him at the beach and smoke pot. Buttons, too, struggled with addiction throughout his life.
“I was a surfer, party animal, like my dad,” she said.
Kaluhiokalani was in and out of prison for most of her 20s and early 30s. Her father’s death in 2013 was a wake-up call, she said, for her to do things differently when she got out.
The associate in arts degree in Hawaiian Studies that Alisha Kaluhiokalani earned from Windward Community College.
In 2017, Kaluhiokalani was released for the last time. A few years later, she ran into a woman she had been incarcerated with who encouraged her to enroll in college. She immediately signed up at Windward when she found out there was free tuition for Native Hawaiians and she could pursue an associate’s degree in Hawaiian studies. She wanted to use what she learned in her classes to use Native Hawaiian practices to help others in the criminal justice system.
The Hawaiian language class, and the ukulele in the prison yard, started Kaluhiokalani on a 20-year journey. She earned an associate’s degree last year from Windward and then, this month, she crossed the stage to receive her bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Hawaii Manoa.
