Native News Project reports on Montana tribes.
BY THE 2025 NATIVE NEWS HONORS PROJECT
For 34 years, the University of Montana School of Journalism’s Native News Honors Project has trained students to cover news events that affect the 12 tribes in Montana. The program’s work this year explores the uncertainties faced by Montana’s tribes in the first 100 days of a new administration. The stories highlight the unique and direct relationship that Indigenous nations have with the federal government that makes these communities particularly susceptible to the actions of the U.S. president.
President Donald Trump released his 2026 budget proposal on May 2, which included more than $163 billion in cuts, including cuts to programs that directly affect Indigenous nations. Some of the more noteworthy reductions include more than $600 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
This budget proposal will very likely go through months of debate, negotiations and revisions, if not a complete overhaul, before it is ever approved. However, it could be seen as a signal that might further weaken the federal commitment the nation’s leaders made in the treaties it signed with Indigenous nations.
In fact, many tribes have been preparing for the worst-case scenarios since the 2024 election.
The following piece is an amalgamation of abbreviated stories written and photographed by the Native News students at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Full versions of these works can be found at nativenews.jour.umt.edu.
– Jason Begay, Native News Honors Project professor
Owning a Piece of Home
Homeownership has always been complicated on tribal reservations. Even removing the economic factors like high unemployment on many reservations, the unique relationship that tribes have with the federal government make landownership technically impossible, removing any hope of building equity in a home.
That looks only to become more complicated in the coming years. Not only are Trump’s tariffs expected to increase building costs, but his proposed budget cuts would also take more than $28 billion from various housing and urban development programs.
In fact, the American Dream of a white picket fence is 15 percent less likely for American Indians compared to white Americans, according to a 2022 survey by NeighborhoodWorks America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advances opportunities for affordable homes in every state. Now, with the re-election of Trump, the red tape is thicker, the costs are higher and the dream is that much further for many tribal citizens.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs just had a bunch of agency offices shut down. So that’s going to impact the ability for homeownership in a big way,” said Robert Crawford, a contractor for the BIA. “[The BIA] haven’t really released any of that information yet. HUD is definitely being affected, but I don’t know to what extent.”
The entire state of Montana is facing a severe housing crisis with skyrocketing prices and limited housing stock, making the state the least affordable in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors.
After 40 years living in Seattle, Amber McEvers White wanted to move home to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Her mother Wilma North Peigan, an elder, was struggling to get around in the tough winters.
To prepare for this life change, McEvers White lined up everything she thought she needed. The land was purchased. She had, in her hands, construction plans for a home inspired by the Yellowstone TV show on a budget; three-bedrooms, two-levels.
Yet, nothing moved forward. Six years passed, and nothing moved forward.
McEvers White had tried to find anything. She applied first for a lease site, buying land and now looking for other options. She had made a flight home, more than 20 phone calls and sent several email messages. But in March of 2023 the builder was ready to cancel the deal.
“It’s just a frustrating process. I felt like I couldn’t even get anything on my own reservation,” McEvers White said. In Browning, where McEvers White was hoping to build her home, the path to ownership is challenging on a reservation with nearly 10,000 people. There are run-down homes, low-rent apartments and a minimal private rental market.
For McEvers White, moving home was a logical option to take care of her mom and live closer to her family. She took the first steps toward homeownership in 2019.
“I lived away for a number of years and we saved a lot of money to do this because we knew we didn’t want to retire in Washington,” she said. “People that don’t have the money, I don’t even know how they go about getting what they want or getting what they need.”
In the end, McEvers White purchased a home on the Flathead reservation just to be closer to her family and back in Montana.
Flathead Youth Worry for LGBTQ Community
For a lot of Indigenous people, the national conversations about the 2024 election have lingered. Trump ran a campaign that capitalized on criminalizing people of color as well as the transgender community. On the Flathead reservation, the stress from the campaign remained, leaving the LGBTQ community on alert.
It was a Saturday morning earlier this year when 20-year-old Jet DuMontier stood in the vegetable aisle of a Walmart on the Flathead Indian Reservation. DuMontier was wearing black cargo pants and a gray hoodie. Their partner had just moved into a new apartment and needed to buy basic groceries to start the new chapter of their life. DuMontier enjoyed watching the people surrounding them, while their partner was debating what to buy.
Then a teenage boy lifted his shirt toward DuMontier to show the gun on his hip.
“It was very intentional because he didn’t have his shirt up the first time I saw him,” DuMontier said. “I’m sure he was reacting to us.” DuMontier and their partner were both born biologically female and are both nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. They were affectionate in the supermarket. That’s how DuMontier assumed the boy recognized them as a queer couple.
Concentrating on their shopping list, their partner hadn’t seen the gun. But DuMontier became quiet. As a queer person, all the alarm bells were ringing for DuMontier.
“I felt so unsafe,” DuMontier remembered. “The second I saw that, all this horrible s**t just started going through my head. A f*****g Walmart shooting.”
DuMontier’s thoughts ran wild. They went through all the possible scenarios of what could happen next. How could DuMontier save them from the situation? They only knew of one nearby entrance and exit. They thought of all possible escape routes while DuMontier pushed their partner into the next aisle—away from the gun.
It didn’t come to a shooting that Saturday. The boy’s mother told him to put his shirt back down.
“He didn’t look a day older than 17,” DuMontier recalls.
But even though there was no violence that day and no physical signs of racism or queer hostility were left behind, psychological scars remain. DuMontier is now more mindful of where and when they show affection to their partner in public. They don’t feel safe on their reservation anymore.
Nearly half of young voters across the nation, dubbed Gen Z in popular media, voted for Trump in 2024, a significant increase from his previous presidential bid. About 47 percent cast votes for the Republican president last year while about 36 percent did the same in 2020.
At the beginning of March 2025, there were 2,108 enrolled Selis’ Qlispe and Ksanka members aged 23 and younger, according to Robert McDonald, the tribes’ spokesperson. Like most of Montana, the polling places located in the major towns on the Flathead reservation supported Trump, including St. Ignatius and Ronan. Voters in Arlee supported the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, according to results posted by the Montana Secretary of State’s office.
However, since the election, young people have swayed. Many have grown more concerned with the economy, environmental policies, and the overall treatment of diverse communities. Like DuMontier, some feel targeted by policies of the current administration as their rights to climate mitigation, education and diversity are under attack.
In fact, the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School released a report in April showing that only about 15 percent of young people believe the country is moving in the right direction, and less than one-third approve of Trump’s performance.
Young people’s worries are as diverse as they are. Many mentioned school closures, growing racism and the theft of tribal and natural resources as their main concerns. There is also the future. In the face of mass layoffs and an uncertain economy, young people are now worried about job security, especially in nature conservation, which is important to the CSKT tribes.
Political Harassment Pervades Civil Discourse
On the other side of the state is Wolf Point, Montana, a town of around 2,500 people that sits in the middle of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. While a majority of the town’s population is Native American, there is a large number of non-Natives living in Wolf Point as well. While the town itself leaned slightly Democratic in the 2024 election, many votes were cast for Trump.
In February, it was a miserable day for Robert Manning. He’d just spent hours dealing with the “five things” email mandate sent by the Department of Government Efficiency on Feb. 22, in which all government employees were required to report their five professional accomplishments of that week.
As the local chapter representative of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Manning spent much of that day easing the unsettled federal workforce on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. At the time, a cluster of presidential executive orders were causing strife and confusion. They suggested big changes for federal employees, perhaps even layoffs.
On his way home, Manning needed to stop at the local auto parts store for brake pads for his son’s truck.
As Manning was leaving the store, he heard his name in a loud voice that echoed through the building. It was a white man who approached Manning. He flexed his arm in Manning’s face and said, “MAGA Strong!”
The moment was quick, but it ate at Manning. He felt purposely targeted and haunted, so he decided to share his experience and confront the man. About two weeks later on March 3, Manning stood at the end of a long table while the man, Ken Hentges, sat at the other end as a member of the city council.
The small room housed the meeting place for the Wolf Point City Council, which stood at full capacity for the monthly meeting. Those in attendance watched on as Manning read poems and shared handouts, silently listening as his story grew more intense.
“I don’t think you fully understand what your words and your actions really did that day,” Manning told Hentges. “I don’t think you have the empathy to understand that, and it’s not going to be tolerated. It’s not ethical, and today, I’m asking for your resignation.”
Ken Hentges, who quietly listened to Manning’s public comment, finally spoke.
“You literally just took it the wrong way,” Hentges said. “I didn’t mean anything offensive by it.”
A small argument immediately broke out. The councilman dismissed the event. Manning, his voice booming, equated the dismissal of his feelings as “what bullies do.” Then they were interrupted by Wolf Point Mayor Chris Dschaak, who slammed the table with his hand to quiet the room. There would be no screaming match in his chambers.
“There’s been a divide that goes beyond race, creed, color, religion, all of this,” Dschaak said. “Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, that’s on your personal time. I don’t know how we get back to decency. It seems like we’re slipping away from that more and more day by day.”
The divide that Dschaak described was much bigger than what could be felt in the council chambers that night. It was bigger than in the auto parts store on the day Manning spoke about. It’s a divide that permeates throughout the town of Wolf Point, the state of Montana and the United States.
In its 2024 study, “Stress in America,” the American Psychological Association reported that 77 percent of adults said the future of America was a significant source of stress. In addition, 69 percent of people said the presidential election was a source of significant stress, an increase from 2016 when 52 percent of people said the same.
Since President Trump’s 2016 victory, and especially since his re-election in 2024, incidents regarding political harassment and violence have heavily increased. According to a 2016 report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the 10 days following the 2016 election, almost 900 reports of harassment were reported across the nation.
In many incidents, harassers invoked Trump’s name directly. Like Manning’s, many others made ties to the Make America Great Again movement.
Still, Montana’s tribes are working hard to expand their sovereignty to either prepare for the worst or further make themselves more independent from federal policy. The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, for instance, is working to become financially independent by leaning heavily into economic development projects.
Little Shell Seeks Sovereignty Security
In his office in Great Falls, Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray picked up a small framed photo of himself and other tribal leaders standing behind former President Joe Biden. It was 2023, and Biden had just signed an executive order strengthening tribal sovereignty, giving tribes more freedom in allocating federal funds and redesigning programs to reflect trust in tribal decision-making.
“Trump just rescinded it,” Gray said. “A**hole.”
Gifts from other tribes hung on the walls, bestowed to the Little Shell after its recognition. The official document recognizing the tribe, signed by Trump in 2019, hung on an inner wall. The irony of the situation was not lost on Gray— the man who had granted their long-awaited sovereignty now threatens to strip it away.
Having held his office since 2012, Gray is often seen as the face of the tribe. And he’s a businessman, having worked in research and development at media agency G&G Advertising for more than 20 years. Leveraging this experience, he aims to lead the tribe to economic success.
“When our economic stuff takes off, [we’ll] just tell the government we don’t need [funding],” he said. “Thank you, but give it to a tribe that really needs it.”
Trump’s early-term rhetoric, Gray said, put tribal citizens on edge. The first few weeks of the new administration saw a frenzy of executive orders that sowed chaos throughout Indian Country. This included potential layoffs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, as well as cuts, or pauses, to funding of tribal programs. Although a lot of the actions have been pulled back, paused or blocked, the chaos remains, and tribal citizens are still on edge.
For instance, if a proposed federal funding freeze had remained in effect, work on the Little Shell’s first housing development would have ceased. Its health clinic would have shut down. More abstractly, the freeze represented a disregard for tribal sovereignty, setting a dangerous precedent.
“We want to be self-sufficient. But it’s going to take a little bit of time,” Gray said. “We need to still rely a bit on the federal government [and] hold them to the [treaty] obligations they agreed to. And when they don’t do that, it tramples all over [our] sovereignty.”
The Little Shell announced its resort plans in December 2024. Though permitting will take several years, it’s projected to bring in more than $65 million annually and $9 million in annual tax revenue. It will include a casino, bowling alley, indoor waterpark and a 9,700-person capacity arena. The completed project will provide more than 430 permanent jobs.
Gray is confident that the resort will attract tourism to Great Falls and benefit all residents, further legitimizing the tribe in a community he says is still laced with discrimination.
Rebecca Ingham, the executive director of Great Falls, Montana Tourism, said she first heard about the resort through the December press release. She said the project seems to align with the community’s strategic initiatives to grow its travel industry, presenting an opportunity to host entertainment, trade shows and larger conventions in Great Falls.
“There’s a great need in Great Falls for available convention space,” she said. “The resort does open up the opportunity to bring additional people into our community.”
Indeed, the Trump Administration’s eventful return to power has sent shockwaves throughout Indian Country, propagating fractures throughout matters of livelihood, mental wellness, economics, community and sovereignty. But the Little Shell’s economic initiatives prove that for every move, there’s a countermove: young marginalized people sharing their stories, city council testimony, calling out efforts that disobey long-held treaties. While these stories rise to the surface of the mere beginning of a term that makes no promises other than change, they indicate a growing strain between Indigenous nations and the federal government— tensions that refuse to be quiet.
Full versions of the stories can be found at nativenews.jour.umt.edu.
The Montana Native News Honors Project is reported, photographed, edited and designed by students at the University of Montana School of Journalism. The work presented is from the publication’s 34th annual edition.
