Know Your Neighbors: Understanding Montana’s Indigenous People with Misty Kuhl

More than 8 percent of Montanans are Native – the 5th highest ratio in the U.S. And Indigenous young people are a cornerstone of our future workforce. About 14 percent of Montana’s school-age population is Native American compared to about 1 percent nationally.

Montana’s diverse tribal communities play a vital role in Montana’s history, culture, and economy. And yet, many non-native tech leaders know little about their Indigenous neighbors.

Misty Kuhl, Aaniiih Member of the Fort Belknap Indian Community, will address common areas of confusion like:

Distinguishing between a tribe and a reservation
How tribal membership is determined and how Native people prefer to be addressed
How tribal communities are funded and managed
Legal and policy issues impacting Indian country
Specific ways anti-racism, equity and inclusion apply to Indigenous people

Speaker Bio:

Misty Kuhl was born in Havre and is a member of the Fort Belknap Indian Community. As a first-generation college graduate, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Human Services (Cum Laude) from Montana State University-Billings.

Misty spent several years working with tribal communities in New Mexico as a probation officer, and then nationally as a Director with the Native American Alliance Foundation. Following her work with NAAF, she lived out her love for the outdoors and was an outdoor guide for several years, eventually taking over Outdoor Programs for Kirtland Air Force Base. She especially loves paddling whitewater and trail running. Misty is a champion for diversity in outdoor recreation and loves helping people get outside. Entrepreneurship opportunities in outdoor technology brought her “home” to Montana.

Being back in Montana ignited a renewed passion for serving Indian Country. Currently Misty is the Coordinator for Native American Programming and Outreach at Rocky Mountain College, and before that she served as Tribal Liaison and Field Representative for Montana’s At-Large Congressman, Greg Gianforte.

Misty’s suggested reading:

“Mean Spirit”, Linda Hogan
“Counting Coup”, Larry Colton
“I am a Man”, Joe Starita
“A Poverty of Nations”, Barry Asmus and Wayne Grudem
Dr. Terry Anderson, Hoover Institution

PolicyEd videos shared during the presentation:

Full transcript:

Christina: Hello everyone. I'm Christina Henderson, Executive Director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. Welcome to our webinar: Know Your Neighbors: Understanding Montana's Indigenous People with Misty Kuhl. This event is part of a series The Alliance is hosting with resources to help our communities deal with the impacts of current events. You can find details of these sessions at mthightech.org/events. Our presenter today, Misty Kuhl, is a member of the Fort Belknap Indian community and currently serves as Director of Native American Outreach at Rocky Mountain College in Billings. After Misty's presentation, we will open the floor for Q&A with the audience. We would ask the audience to mute your microphones until you have something to say. And if you have a question or comment to share during the meeting, you can either type it in the chat box, or turn on your microphone to speak. Today's presentation will be recorded and shared afterwards. And with that, I'd like to turn the floor over to Misty to get us started.

Misty: Thank you so much for the opportunity to present to you today. Like Christina said, I am an Aaniiih member of Fort Belknap community. I was born and raised on the Highline. And I'm just really excited to share what knowledge I have about Montana's Indigenous people. I will say we are extremely unique. And this is a field of study in higher education. So we have a lot to get through, and I will do my very, very best. I know that there will be time at the end of my presentation for questions. So there's a lot of content that I'm just going to sort of breeze through, we've got a couple of videos, and I'm going to go ahead and get started. The other thing I'll say is, this is my second zoom presentation. So I'm just asking for your forgiveness in advance as I'm still figuring things out, but here we go. This is called Know Your Neighbors: Understanding Montana's Indigenous People. I am the Director of Native American Outreach at Rocky Mountain College. And it's a job that I love. I do have probably over 20 years of experience working with tribes all over the United States from the bottom of Florida to the top of Alaska. But obviously, my passion is tribal communities in Montana. So we're going to dive in.

What's in a name, right? I often get asked, is it Indian? Is it Native American, Indigenous, American Indian? I wish I had a perfect answer. My best answer is it's really up to the individual. Um, personally, I don't have a preference, but some do and so in my opinion, when you're speaking personally with a native, it might be important to just ask how would you like to be referred as. So, yeah, I think that's probably the best answer I could give to a kind of a complicated question.

I also want you to know that Montana has eight tribes, or excuse me, eight reservations. And we have 12 tribes. So the difference between a reservation and a tribe is the reservation is the geographic boundary, including the tribes and the tribe is the people so as you can see, we've got Blackfeet, Crow, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Fort Belknap (woohoo!), Fort Peck, Little Shell, Northern Cheyenne and Rocky Boys. And then when you see in the other column, I've got the names of the tribes. So when you see the Pikuni and in quotes is Blackfeet, the difference there is a lot of our tribes in Montana are asking people to acknowledge us by our ancestral names versus the European names that were sort of bestowed upon us after colonization. So for example, I am Aaniiih, but we have been historically known in Montana as Gros Ventre. Crow is, they're Apsaalooke people, there's Salish, Kootenai, CSKT is really trying to move away from "Flathead" because there are two distinct tribes on that geographic boundary. And if you forgive me, there's no way I'm going to try and pronounce Northern Cheyenne's ancestral name, I would not do them justice. So yeah, that's the definition between a reservation and a tribe. Very proud to say that Little Shell was recognized as a tribe last year after, I'd say about 40 years of fighting for recognition.

We're gonna quickly go through land and sovereignty. We've been living successfully in North America for thousands of years and reservations were a construct of the federal government to be used exclusively for tribes as their permanent homelands. There is a lot of history behind that, that literally would take hours to dive into. But some of these reservations were created through treaties, others were created by statutes, executive orders, some were literally created through fights in tribal court just to be recognized and that we're on the land that was granted to us, literally in the late 1800s. I think what's important to note is the principle that land should be acquired from tribes only through ... treaties involve three assumptions that both parties to treaties were sovereign powers--that means that native nations are sovereign powers, and the federal government is a sovereign power. The other thing is Indian Tribes had some form of transferable title to the land. So through the judicial process going back 250 years, the federal government has recognized that Native Americans had some form of title to the land that they occupied before colonization and the acquisition of Indian lands solely a government matter. It was not left to individual colonists or states. Here's a map of what Montana did recognize as Indian land pre-colonization, and as you can see, it's a lot and it's complicated. And so through various federal policies, these lands were reduced to what you see now in orange, Fort Peck, Fort Belknap, Rocky Boys, Little Shell has a little bit of land. And so, I hope that helps explain the reduction of land in Montana to where the reservation boundaries line now. I also wanted to address Tribal sovereignty under the American legal system, we have sovereign powers that are separate and independent from federal and state governments. It is true though, and it's really complicated, that the power that individual reservations and Tribes have can vary. It's not the same for each one. So I think a good analogy is, you know, in Europe, for example, with Brexit, right, Britain can make decisions about Britain. And the same kind of holds true for, you know, CSKT, formerly known as Flathead, Crow, Fort Belknap, we can make our own decisions about the extent and breadth of tribal sovereignty, however, that does require cooperation from the federal government. And those are issues that have that are still today being pounded out in the Supreme Court. I am going to play a little video, so I'm going to stop sharing my PowerPoint. I'm going to go to YouTube. And these videos were produced through the Hoover Institution at policyed.org. This is a Montana High Tech Business Alliance presentation, and I think it's important to help underscore the economic realities in Indian nations. So if you'll bear with me, I'm going to figure this out. Here we go.

Original Indigenous Economies | The Renewing Indigenous Economies Project

Thank you for watching that. So, we're going to talk in just a second about citizen citizenship and voting. American Indians were recognized as actual people by the Supreme Court in 1879, Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca people in Nebraska sued the general of the United States Army. And there was an argument made that Habeas Corpus didn't apply because we weren't humans. And so this was landmark legislation that happened. We were granted the right to vote in 1924. And, excuse me, we became citizens of the United States in 1924. And also citizens in the states in which we reside. We were recognized with the right to vote in 1948. But it wasn't until 1962 that we had the right to vote in every state, it was Utah that was the last holdout. And so what I kind of like to underscore there is when my mom was born, she did not have the right to vote. So that's a very important issue for us that we don't take for granted. Both tribes and individual Native Americans do pay taxes, that tends to be sometimes a common misunderstanding. I've got one more video or another video for you in a series of three. So let's see. We're going to stop that.

Colonialism: Then and Now | The Renewing Indigenous Economies Project

So you read that quote at the end of that video by Ernest Suki and I would like to talk about him in a few slides. But before that we're going to move on to treaty money. In Montana, when I was growing up, there was this perception that we received free money. And that wasn't normally presented to us in a very positive way. So just to explain treaty money a little bit, we receive a distribution of funds based on leases on income on property that we have that's actually held in trust by the United States government. And how that works is, for example, I have about 500 acres of land on Fort Belknap. I can't build--I maybe could build a house, but I couldn't drill, I can't develop it. I literally can't do anything with it without the federal government's approval. If I did choose to, for example, lease it to a cattle farmer for grazing that has to be all handled through the BIA. And what happens is the rancher pays the federal government and then the federal government pays the individual whose name is on the trust. So we do have a unique situation where we navigate at least one or two layers of federal bureaucracy in order to be able to profit from the land that we rightly hold. We also receive compensation for lands taken in connection with government projects, for example, if there were a hospital or an airstrip built, some tribes receive benefits from the federal government to fulfill treaties, which were contractual obligations between the federal government and the individual Native nation. So the perception that it's free money is actually a myth and it's untrue. There are definite stipulations on how we benefit from holding land in trust.

Okay, Federal Indian Trust Responsibility. This is a very complicated relationship. According to the federal government, it's a government-to-government relationship. And again, like I mentioned, this is a sovereign nation dealing with a sovereign nation according to the federal government, and this has been established through judicial process. The United States has charged itself with a moral obligation of the highest responsibility and trust and again, that was established in the courts. It's legally enforceable. And the federal government does have a fiduciary obligation to protect our treaty rights, our lands, our assets and resources, as well as a duty to carry out the mandates of federal law. And so, by that, I mean, we receive health care, the administration of our public schools through the treaty agreements. So again, it's not--this is a construct of the federal government to protect our tribal lands, resources and self governance. And, again, what makes that so complicated in Montana is this perception that we receive free everything. And what you're going to hear me say a lot is, these are the results of, in my opinion, bad federal policy. That's debatable but it is determined by federal policy. Speaking of American policy, we've been through many eras, colonization, termination, so getting back to termination, as you can see, it's twice in my little timeline of American policy. After colonization, there was a movement to kill the Indian, save the man. And then we went back to reorganization, where and that's really where the reduction of Indian land took place and Native Americans were forced under reservations. And then you'll see the other termination and back to Ernest Suki. He is a prominent member of the Coushatta Tribe in Louisiana. During this termination period, which occurred in the late 1950s, the federal government had a policy of literally saying, you don't exist anymore, the federal government will no longer recognize you as a tribe. And so Ernest Suki fought in Vietnam. And when he returned, he fought for his people to be re-recognized, which is actually, to sort of bring that home, happened with Little Shell, that it was these people exist, they are still racially identified in their tribe. In surviving, and all that we have asked the federal government is, can you just please re-acknowledge that we exist, and that has been happening. Under the most recent executive administration, I would submit that around seven tribes all over the United States have been re-recognized. And they were terminated. Those tribes were terminated, as a result of this federal government policy of termination, and, you know, most people have heard of the boarding school eras of Native American students, so I don't feel like it's necessary to go into that. Self-determination happened under actually Nixon's administration, where they decided both as you can see in the quote, as a matter of justice and a matter of enlightened social policy, we must begin to act on the basis of what the Indians themselves have long been telling us and that is, we want to be recognized. We would like to exercise our sovereignty. If you ask, I would say most Native people really like not to have to go through the layers of bureaucracy that are necessary under the current federal policy with Native American people. And I've got one last video.

A New Path Forward | The Renewing Indigenous Economies Project

We're going to bring this back to Montana a little bit. It's really good news that there are tribes all over the United States that are accessing, taking unconventional methods to have access to a free market system that non-Natives enjoy. One of the things that's happening in Montana is well, one of the biggest barriers here is that our Native nations are so rural. And so, what you saw at Ho-Chunk in the Southern Ute, they have a great advantage. And that is, that there is a little bit more urban. So workforce is not typically an issue. And here, as you can see, I wanted to make this relevant for the CEOs and business people here in Montana, when Native Americans have similar or same professional experience as non-Natives, their odds of being employed are still 31% lower than whites. And the other thing about the employment statistics is the lowest white employment rate, which is Alabama's 73.9% is still higher than the Native Americans' highest rate of employment. And in Montana there is consistently--and I've looked at statistics going back 50 years--there is considered consistently a 20% disparity in employment rates of whites versus Native Americans. So for example, currently, with COVID, numbers are all over the place but pre-COVID the employment rate in Montana for whites was around between 70 and 80%. And it was still between 50 and 60% for Native Americans. Another reason why workforce is a challenge is 70% of Native American high school graduates attend college and those who attend college typically have around a 37% graduation rate. I am going to plug Rocky here for a minute. I am proud to say that this Fall, we are going to have a record number of Native American students starting their freshman year. And where tech is involved, connectivity and access to technology is still a big issue. For example, there are many areas on Fort Belknap, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, definitely Fort Peck, where they simply don't have access to the internet and therefore also the technology to be able to train in STEM and tech. So I'm wrapping things up.

I know this has been at a breakneck pace. But again, we want to make sure there's room for questions. This might be a little uncomfortable for some people, but I just wanted to bring up some frequently asked questions. Is the Washington Redskins really offensive? You know, that really depends on who you ask. I'll weigh in with my personal opinion. Yes and no. Does it offend me personally? No, it does not. And in my opinion, pouring the resources to get a name changed could be better used to confront some of the social issues that we face on reservations, drug use, alcoholism, broken families, the lack of quality education. That's my position. However, I have brilliant, amazing, educated Native American friends who this is an issue that's extremely important to them. So again, it really depends on the individual that you're engaging with. This is a question that comes up a lot in Billings, where I live, what's the deal with the folks downtown? We have a large homeless population and they're extremely visible downtown. And I hope that this presentation has helped some of you all of you understand the extremely complicated social issues behind the people who are steeped in unhealthy ways of surviving. So, you know, alcoholism is an issue, I'll just confront that. But again, you know, we're looking at a population of people who have been subjected to federal policy that does not encourage our ability to participate in a free market system, get a quality education, go to college--I'm a first generation college graduate. And so, you know, it is true that there tends to be a very visible homeless population with mental health and substance abuse issues. However, I just ask that when people are seeing that, that they have an open mind. And you know, one of the things that Christina knows we talk about all the time is and again, this is my personal opinion. This isn't about blame, or looking back and going well, this is why I am now, I feel that we should all acknowledge the past and we need our non-Native allies to walk alongside us as we gain the economic freedom and the freedoms that non-Natives enjoy. And being good neighbors. Once we can do that. I think we'll start seeing real change versus this mindset of us and them. We are a we, we share Montana. We all love the state. And so another question that I've been asked my entire life, why can't Native Americans just pick themselves up by the bootstraps? Well, again, like you saw in my presentation, we can pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, we absolutely can. However, our boots are weighed down by bad federal policy, bureaucracy, poor health care, all the obligations that the federal government through contractual obligations promised us has resulted in substandard situations that a lot of non-Natives don't necessarily understand. And I am, someone asked a question about how some tribes seem to be more successful than others in regard to economic development. Are tribes willing to share their success examples with other tribes. For example, SK Technology. Not really. And that's something that I am extremely passionate about and try to work with various tribes or, for example, if I'm in Browning at Blackfeet, and they say we want to start a bottled water plant, but we have some issues with transportation and railroad. And I'll suggest, well, why don't you pick up the phone and call SKT and find out what they did to make some of their industry so successful, and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I encourage you to remember that each Native nation all over the United States, but especially Montana, we are our own Native nations. So, you know, that would be the same thing as expecting Germany to call Spain and that's really up to them. I would like to see more cooperation and collaboration between Native nations in Montana. It's undeniable that Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes have experienced incredible success. I will underscore that, however, what a lot of people don't see is that their people still suffer from the same social issues that every other tribe in Montana experiences. I hope you find that helpful. And when we do open it up for questions, I encourage you to ask me anything. I don't feel like if we try and stay politically correct, then questions won't get answered. And I'm absolutely willing to have uncomfortable conversations and in my opinion, you don't know what you don't know. And I'm so happy to help provide more understanding.

Got some suggested reading here. And like Christina said, this will be recorded in perpetuity, which I'm really excited about. And I'm so happy to provide other readings. So Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan, depicts Oklahoma natives in the 1920s during the oil boom. I, in my opinion, I feel like everyone should read that. Counting Coup is a book based on the Crow reservation. I don't want to spoil it for you. It's very, very good. I am a Man by Justin Starita is a biography of Chief Standing Bear who, like I mentioned, his was the landmark case that helped Native Americans be identified as actual human beings. And it is a fascinating read. A Poverty of Nations I feel is such an important read because it talks about the economic barriers that third world countries all over the world face. They also use Native American tribes in Montana as examples of that. And they present solutions. And I think that it's really important. It really helped me change my mindset when I looked at my people and Native people and our barriers to economic freedom. Dr. Terry Anderson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has dedicated almost his entire academic life to researching Native economic issues. And so if you give him a quick Google, his papers come up and they're so good. Finally, a big thank you to the Montana High Tech Business Alliance, policyed.org, and the Hoover Institution. Some of the content that I provided today came from the Montana Office of Public Instruction and I also want to thank the Alliance for Renewing Indigenous Economies, through them and policyed.org we were able to produce those videos that I think are, are really important and great illustrations of where we're at and where we're going.

Christina: Awesome job, Misty. Thank you. So now we're going to open it up for questions. So if folks who have been listening in have a question, you're welcome to unmute your mic and speak and share your question or you can also type your questions in the chat. We did have another question submitted in advance, which maybe can start out with, um, the question was regarding climate. How is climate change impacting your community, and what solutions are you considering to mitigate it? Have you heard of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act?

Yes, I have heard of that act. And thank you for your question. From my perspective, climate change in Montana isn't ... it's a big issue, but it's sort of not in the top five of the issues that we really care about. It's scooting up the scale simply because of the pipeline. Some tribes are for it, some aren't. And I'm sure that you've all heard, you know, Glacier National Park is extremely important economically to the Blackfeet people. And it's undeniable that the glaciers they're shrinking. And so, you know, Blackfeet are very concerned about the amount of tourists that come through the park. And, you know, the diminishing of that. Actually that's a tough one because some tribes really depend economically on tourism. But also understanding that climate change is affecting the way tourists are coming. And so it's a balance, but overall, I would say, I'm hearing outside of Keystone Pipeline Development, climate change isn't a huge issue in Indian Country in Montana for now.

Christina: Okay, we'll allow a minute for other questions that people might have.

Michelle: Hi, can you hear me? This is Michelle Holiday.

Misty: Hi, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi, Misty. Hi, Christina. I'm not in Montana, but I do work with Montana Tribes in energy and infrastructure. And I wanted to just commend you for having this webinar. And I think that Misty and I, I have my own consulting company. I'm a member of the Iowa tribe of Oklahoma. But I've worked with a couple of the Tribes in the state of Montana, and one of the members of the Montana High Tech Alliance, Misty and I worked to encourage them to be a member and I think some of you have met Alvin Windy Boy, with iResponse, which is a technology company but it's really focused on you know, cultural reviews and cultural management. And so I think that being a trailblazer like Misty in Montana and Alvin, I think the individuals that are at least on this webinar or who will listen is the next step is you understand that you're building these partnerships, business relationships. And how you do that is to understand the context. But I think Misty can agree that how do you build a business relationship in a partnership with alliances with respect to technology? And I think that the beginning of this starts to begin that discussion, a broader, perhaps discussion with the membership, because ultimately, infrastructures needed for broadband, but some of the services that the the association the members provide can certainly be helpful on the reservations and sort of that next discussion, I think, is really one that fits in the economic development. And, of course, I've heard about the SNK technology, but there are these emerging opportunities, niches that are beginning to develop. So I think Montana really has it smart in terms of other states that have Tribes. And the willingness for you to sort of take that to the next level is really exciting. And I encourage you, and I don't know if Misty has a comment to that, but I think that the individuals who are on this, I'm sure, there's probably more discussions about that, because I think, as business people, and understanding the cultural perspectives and the history, really do help you to position yourself to have some meaningful relationships, and building those bridges of commonality than differences. So I just wanted to make that comment and thank you for the session today.

Misty: Thank you, Michelle. Yes, actually, I do have a couple of comments about that. So Michelle referred to Alvin Windy Boy's company. And what is amazing about that is Alvin, it's on Rocky Boy's reservation, Alvin built it with no tribal dollars. And so what I love about that is it's a Native-owned business. And he's proud of it as well. And he will tell anyone he built it on Rocky Boy's with no federal dollars, no help from the Tribe. And it was really a bootstrapped situation that he just found a problem in a private sector and came up with the solution. What they do is they have automated and streamlined the process of, and Michelle, you can weigh in on this if I get it wrong. They've automated and streamlined the process of cultural preservation sites. If a company like Verizon or Northwestern wanted to build, the government requires it designated as not being a cultural preservation site. And prior to what Alvin built, the process to do that required a stack of paper, literally, I mean, he's got photos, it's this high. And so now it's a seamless process. And he has employees all over the United States, like Michelle, and has actually brought people from outside the reservation to move to Montana, Box Elder, so that they can work for iResponse. And it's just an amazing success story. The other company that's coming to mind, not in Montana, but it's such a great idea. In New Mexico, there's an organization called Cultivating Coders and it's a nonprofit, but what they do is they go into native communities mobily and they teach a coding school. It's typically about five weeks, each participant gets a laptop and instruction from expert coders. And by the time they're done, they are proficient in a couple of different languages. And one of the things that they're finding, especially when they go into communities where English is not their first language, is that they are adapting rapidly to being able to learn coding language and it's been incredibly successful. Last year, they received a grant from Microsoft for I want to say about a million and a half dollars. And so we do have like just these amazing success stories. It's really cool. And thank you so much, Michelle, for mentioning that.

Okay, so we have a question. If the current federal policies towards sovereignty are restricting economic development, how can the laws be changed? Second, your comment on tribes not necessarily sharing business success stories does that also apply to cooperating to change federal law? Thank you so much. Those are really important questions. The laws can be changed through the legislative process, which, in my opinion, Native Americans should be encouraged to participate in more than we do. I don't think that we recognize what a voice we do have. We send delegations to Congress constantly. However, those are really short trips and sometimes don't seem to gain much ground. So my short answer to that is the laws can be changed. And this is to your second question as well, if we did unite more, and come together and collaborate and reach out to our federal delegations to ask for, you know, restrictions on what the BIA can do on our behalf. There are forms that still exist. If you want to do something through the BIA, you have to be declared competent first. And that would take a small federal policy change. So thank you for your question. I hope I answered it. And I want to add, we're getting there. We really are.

Christina: Misty, I have a question. You know, you'd mentioned earlier, that climate might not be in your top five issues of things that are really at the top of the list, what do you think are the top things that would either remove barriers that exist for sovereignty and entrepreneurship to thrive on reservations and for Native people to thrive on reservations? What are the top maybe three to five issues that you think we should really be focusing on and paying attention to make the biggest difference?

Misty: So you asked what I think so I'm going to tell you what I think. A lot of tribes in Montana are still operating off of constitutions that were adopted 60 to 100 years ago. So I think I think one of the first efforts that would open the gates to economic freedom would be to change our constitutions or legislative processes so that we fulfill ... like you saw in the last video so that many tribes have already done this where they it's constitutional, that they fulfill their contractual obligations, that we hopefully the federal government would cooperate with us so that we could present more opportunities for outside business to come in and develop. So I would say that's number one, legislative change within the government of the Tribe. I would say number two is education. educated people are more healthy, they make better choices. They have better opportunities. That's just a reality in the United States, and our public school systems on reservations, which is administered by the BIA's Department of Education is substandard. It I mean, it truly is. And so if we could improve education for our students, those generations could come up and start asking these questions. Why is our government a mess? Why? Why are we operating off of a constitution that was drafted 60 years ago? I think education is a huge deal. And then I would say number three, health. Addressing rampant diabetes, alcoholism, substance abuse. Just poor health in general, heart disease. I mean, we are number one in pretty much every one of those categories for fatalities in Indian country. Our Native American male life expectancy is 20 years less than for non-Natives. And so obviously, because what if we brought an industry that needs 300 workers does a Native nation have 300 healthy people to have those jobs? And I submit not every reservation in Montana has a healthy workforce. So I would say health and I think number five would be to address broken families. I work often with young Native people that have raised themselves, have overcome extreme obstacles to get to college. They're first generation graduates in their particular culture and I'm painting a broad brush. This isn't true for every Native nation, but in a lot of Native American cultures, leaving the reservation to get an education is not supported. So I think, you know, helping to support that, I think would be really important as well.

Christina: Misty, will you provide an email address to contact?

Misty: Yes, actually. So I will. I'm going to enter my cell phone number and my email address on the chat. Please save it. And you are more than welcome to call me, reach out, email me anytime with any question.

Christina: Maybe one final question I would have in these last three minutes of our time together. So currently nationally, there's a lot of conversation around Black Lives Matter and equity and justice. We're having these conversations in Montana and in our high tech community. Do you have any final thoughts for us on how we can support or how these issues of equity and justice you see them applying to our tribal communities?

Misty: Well, you know this Christina, my main ask of non-Native people in Montana is to please have an open mind and be willing to take a look at the social history behind where we are now. My presentation isn't to change anybody's mind. It's not to lecture anyone on how you should treat people. It's really to give a perspective of what we've been through, and I barely scratched the surface. I think that really is the most important thing. And then, the other thing is, you know, when my native professional colleagues are asked, what can we do to help meet the Native American situation? The answer is always, always hire us, give us jobs, be willing to reach out to a Native community. I'm often surprised at how many urban populations have never traveled the 20 or 10 miles to a reservation to go to a powwow or anybody can sit in on a council meeting, yeah, it would be maybe weird or a little uncomfortable, but that would start blowing people's minds and so that's ... just just be willing to have an open mind and be a good neighbor.

Suzie: Hey, Misty, This is Suzie. I'm with Foundant Technologies here in Bozeman. Would you have resources on where we can post jobs or recruit to to broaden that pool so that we could hire?

Misty: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for asking. So you've got my contact information, please email me and I will help. If you've got a job posting, I will help get it to where it needs to go. Or even find a person that can do what you're posting.

Suzie: Great, excellent. I will put a recruiter in touch with you and help you connect and be awesome.

Christina: Awesome, well, we're to the end of our time. Misty, thank you so much for educating us and sharing this today. And I want to remind everyone who's participating that a recording and a transcript of today's presentation and related materials, including some of the resources Misty has shared and her contact information will be made available, we'll email them out to everyone who registered. And we'll also have them posted on our website. So if you want to share all of these resources in this video with your friends and colleagues, you'll be able to do that. So thank you, everyone, and have a great day.

Misty: Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for your time today. I really appreciate it. And please don't hesitate to reach out, that is an invitation for everyone. Take care.