No Place to Stay

The pandemic is pushing people
into Montana — and others out

Intro by Mazana Boerboom

Story by Gerald Beeks

Photos by Collin Kuehn

Story by Asa Thomas Metcalfe

Walking the streets of Missoula, Montana, someone might notice the quirky variety of homes and apartments:  Crumbling brick buildings, historic homes with  ancient trees in their front yards ­— architecture influenced by a multitude of locations and time periods. It’s an enchanting place to live. But it’s also becoming increasingly difficult for the people of Missoula to acquire and afford housing, especially after the pandemic pushed people out of big cities and toward Big Sky country. Missoula isn’t the only place in Montana suffering from this housing crisis. 

People are flocking to Montana like geese migrating north for the summer, but these people aren’t leaving in the winters. And they’re bringing the rising cost of living with them. The Bozeman Real Estate Group said the housing price index across the state increased by 10% in 2020, with the highest numbers in Missoula and Bozeman. According to the Missoula Organization of Realtors, the median price for a home in Missoula rose by about 35% since 2020, reaching almost $490,000 in September, 2021. The Montana rental vacancy rate stood at just over 4%, down 17% since last year, according to a nationwide study by iProperty Management. 

The roller coaster that is this pandemic has added a layer of complexity to this issue. There’s a need in the state for doctors and nurses to help in the hospitals more than ever, yet there’s less and less space for them. Also, there’s a need for those with solution-based mindsets to combat the skyrocketing cost of living and resulting homelessness.

These stories by no means cover the extent of the housing crisis in Montana. There are hundreds more narratives to tell, from the ripple effect of the housing crisis into other parts of the economy, to the trials faced by real estate agents in an oversaturated market, to rising homelessness in the wake of COVID-19. 

So, how have nonprofits and local governments been working to ease the rising costs of homes and provide affordable housing? And could this spike in the housing market bring more attention to the issue and give the fixers the boost they need?

They didn’t bring any houses with them

Story by Gerald Beeks

Polson is a small western Montana resort town on the south shore of Flathead Lake, halfway between Missoula and Kalispell. Being right on the lake, it’s a popular destination in the summer. The population doubles from approximately 5,000 people to 10,000 during the tourist season, which starts in late spring and ends in early fall. 

On a recent September day, the lakefront empties out as boats are dry-docked for winter. A brisk wind blows and the smell of burning leaves hangs in the air — which is normal — but something has changed. This year, not all the visitors are going back home. A lot of them stayed here.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of people migrating to Montana from the rest of the country since the start of the pandemic. In an Aug. 19, 2021 meeting in Polson, discussing the housing shortage, Bill Barron, a Lake County Commissioner, reported 3,100 people moved into Lake County since April 2021.  

They didn’t bring any houses with them. 

This pandemic migration is causing a reduction of available housing due to new people buying and renting homes. The shortage is impacting workers in all parts of the economy. Some workers are moving out of the area as rentals are bought. The rent is raised by the new owners and tenants are priced out of affordable options. This causes a small but significant migration of workers out of the area. And now, like so many towns across the country, Polson is full of main street shops with “help wanted” or “now hiring” signs in the windows. 

Some of the more serious impacts are at hospitals and health clinics.

Housing for health care workers is quickly moving from a normal staffing problem to a crisis. The amount of housing that would normally be available in Montana for incoming and traveling doctors, nurses and other professionals has been reduced or has vanished altogether.  

Devin Huntley, Chief Operating Officer of St. Joseph hospital in Polson, said there is a serious housing shortage for his staff. St. Joseph is a 250-position hospital. 

“I currently have 40 staff positions open with no applicants, due to the lack of housing,” Huntley said. “One traveling nurse brought her own camper and parked in the parking lot during her stay.”

St. Joseph purchased four rental units for housing that “are filled up all the time.”  

Steve Todd, the CEO of St. Luke Hospital in Ronan, 11 miles south of Polson, also acknowledged that there is an ongoing housing shortage which has only gotten worse since the start of the pandemic. St. Luke has two residences on long-term lease for contingencies, one occupied by a traveling nurse and another by a new physician the hospital recently hired. 

Another new St. Luke physician is living in a remodeled basement that was placed for rent by a local homeowner. 

“We couldn’t find anything else, and we had to help him find even that,” Todd said. The doctor is still looking for a permanent place to live. 

Ed Meese, the Polson City Manager, and Juan Escano, the planning manager, have been looking for solutions since the Aug. 19, 2021 meeting. They are sending staff to Boise, Idaho, to meet with two manufacturers of prefabricated homes to look at pricing, quality of construction and speed of installation. This will help the city to assess the requirements needed for bids to bring in affordable housing. Meese said this addresses only part of the problem, but might help to pre-qualify bidders in the overall process of procuring affordable homes. Finding developers and providing incentives for them to build affordable housing and work out the infrastructure are other pieces of the puzzle.

The Polson City administration had two meetings with Kim Morisaki, the Executive Director of the Northwest Montana Community Land Trust, who created a formula and process to sell property as affordable housing and keeping it as affordable housing. It has worked with the City of Kalispell for over a decade providing low-income housing.  It also works with the City of Polson to offer more information on its process and work out a partnership. 

According to Meese, the meetings “went very well.” He said the city’s trust fund would buy the property, redevelop the houses and keep the land. “Just the house would be sold, not the property.”

Community land trusts (CLT) are not new. Versions of land trusts have been used in communities since the late 1800s. Some are still in operation today. The idea is based on community ownership of the land and individual ownership of the improvements. There are three organizational characteristics that define a community land trust:

1. The landowner is a private, nonprofit corporation with a corporate membership that is open to anyone living within the CLT’s geographically defined “community.”

2. A majority of the governing board is elected by the CLT’s membership.

3. There is a balance of interests on the governing board, where seats are allocated equally among directors representing the CLT’s leaseholders, directors representing residents from the CLT’s service area who are not CLT leaseholders and directors representing the public interest.

Some money can be applied for by a city or county government on behalf of the land trust. The land trust can use the money as directed by the organization that grants the funds, like buying existing houses, building houses, buying land, and rehabilitating houses.  Some grants allow for homes to be sold to people with up to 120% of area median income and others only allow for the homes to be sold to people with up to 80% of area median income.  

“Each grant has its own set of rules and we have to agree to use the money accordingly,” Morisaki said.

In some cases, the houses are already there and need renovation. Either way, the new or remodeled housing will be ready for sale at an “attainable” price. 

A contract between the trust and the new owner stipulates a 75-year lease on the land, where the owner buys the home only, through a mortgage with a local bank. Ownership of the land remains with the city through the trust. The agreement allows for the owner to sell the home back to the trust with the caveat that the selling price cannot be more than the price the owner paid plus up to 25% of any increase to the appraised value at the time of the sale. This keeps the home attainable for future buyers at an affordable price. This program creates “a one-time investment of grant or donor money to make the housing permanently attainable,” Morisaki said.

She said the Kalispell trust started in 2009 and resulted in 52 homes. Morisaki had four houses out of the 52 come back on the market last year, which resold for between $110,000 and $185,000.  This was just last year, during the wild pricing increases. She estimated that the annual turnover rate out of the 52 is around four or five homes. 

No one knows when the housing shortage and resulting upward spiral in pricing will start to back down. In the meantime, Montana residents not only have to deal with the upward spike in the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the same time try to find housing for those who have been displaced.

As Missoula affordable housing shrinks, land trusts offer refuge

Story by Asa Thomas Metcalfe

The Burns Street Commons is composed of a block of 17 multi-colored townhouses and commercial space that cap the post-industrial edge of Missoula’s Westside. Pressed against the railroad tracks and a trailer court, the townhouses encircle a fenced communal lawn. Balconies overlook practical private gardens of flowers and kale. A blueberry vine winds up the corner light post. 

Across the lawn is the commercial space, Burns Street Center, which is occupied by three businesses: Western Montana Growers Co-op, Plant Perks and Burns Street Bistro, a popular place for brunch. Burns Street looks like a lot of old Missoula streets in the area — a combination of trailers, craftsman homes and historic railroad houses. But the Burns Street Commons, which was built in 2008 in response to public concern about affordability and homelessness, stands out.

The Commons is a community land trust project of the North Missoula Community Development Corporation (NMCDC). The nonprofit organization aims to provide affordable housing by holding land in trust and enforcing a resale restriction to keep those homes affordable in perpetuity. At a time when housing prices have skyrocketed and priced many working residents out of the market, land trust developments could be one of the few options for home security and ownership that residents have left.

Missoula saw a 35% increase in home costs in the first year of the pandemic as the demand for housing increased.

“There’s no room for regular people here anymore,” said Bob Oaks, executive director of NMCDC. “When I say regular people, I mean, people that have the jobs that Missoula provides.” 

NMCDC has three other properties in Missoula, some with single-family developments and some townhouses. In all, NMCDC has created 53 affordable homes, plus the Burns business space, and according to the organization, it has made housing affordable for more than 100 families.

“We have housing that is de-commodified,” Oaks said. “That is not subject to market increase and competitive bidding for purchase.”

Homeowners in land trusts pay a mortgage, which tends to be a lower monthly expense than an average rent. The home also appreciates 1.5% on the original value for each year the owner lives there. If they do eventually choose to sell the home, they recoup their original investment plus the accrued equity. 

“They’re not paying the landlord, they’re paying into their own equity,” said Brittany Palmer, the Community Land Trust Program Manager and Community Organizer at NMCDC.

Land trusts account for a relatively small amount of land in Missoula. They exist as islands in a tumultuous storm of real estate prices. Often, there are no land trust properties available for purchase and the waitlists for interested buyers are long. 

“Everybody knows somebody who needs housing,” Palmer said.

In limited-equity agreements, homeowners don’t stand to make as large of a return as they would on unprotected property. The land is owned by the trust. The buyers only own improvements to the land, not the land itself. Improvements to the land are sold to buyers who are income-qualified at specific income levels, which vary depending on the project. But unlike current housing market prices, the low prices of land trust homes are maintained at prices reflective of median income and within a bracket that is affordable to average Montanans.

“The only way we can preserve affordability in that way is by owning the land underneath,” said Hermina Harold, executive director of Trust Montana.

Trust Montana is another Missoula-based nonprofit working on land trust projects. Its focus is statewide, in collaboration with community leaders and housing advocates in Red Lodge, Livingston, Missoula, Belgrade and Helena. Its goal is to promote workforce housing and farmland affordability, among other assets across urban and rural places. 

According to the Pew Research Center, the annual income bracket for a middle-class single-person household in Montana is between $24,000 and $74,000. But in places where prices aren’t set to Montana’s median income, the housing costs are often too high for the Montana middle class.

In Bozeman, the average price for a single-family home is just under $780,000. Missoula reached more than $440,000 in fall 2021.

“There’s an inherent contradiction in housing being an investment commodity, and considering housing as a basic human right,” Oaks said. “Those two perspectives don’t meet somewhere.” 

Until 2020, many Montana cities were securing affordable housing with mandatory inclusionary zone policies, which required new developments to sell a small percentage of new homes for under market price. 

Inclusionary zoning ensured at least some housing would always be affordable, so no matter how the population grew there would always be an affordable percentage to match.

But in 2021, Rep. Sue Vinton (R-Billings) introduced House Bill 259, which banned inclusionary zoning across the state. Both Bozeman and Whitefish were forced to end current programs and look for new solutions.

“I went to people in Missoula. I asked the Chamber of Commerce Committee to oppose the legislation saying, you know, you’re not going to have any places for workers if you don’t create places for them,” Oaks said.

Labor shortages across the state have been linked to corresponding housing issues.

According to Oaks and Harold, the land trusts run mostly on donated land and funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is sometimes a shallow reservoir.

A 2007 bill sponsored by Sen. Ron Erickson (D-Montana) proposed a tax on sales and inheritances over $500,000, but it was voted down.

According to Harold, the proposed tax would not affect most Montanans, and the collected revenue could have been used to increase U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding.

“That’s how a lot of other states in the country fund housing, and we don’t have that option,” Harold said.

In 2010, a citizen ballot spearheaded by the Montana Association of Realtors amended the state constitution to ban real estate taxes across the state.

Harold said the current situation is finally turning heads and support for land trusts is increasing. 

“It’s supported because people who would normally be able to step up the ladder from rental to homeownership are stuck in the market,” Harold said. “That clogs up the rental market for people who aren’t looking to buy homes as well. It just kind of makes everybody stagnant.”

“I know that it had to get worse in order for that to happen,” she added. “And that’s kind of how things work.”

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Public Health Exodus
​

Local healers leave after divisive legislative session

Story by Addie Slanger

Photos by Joseph Evans

Illustration by MaKayla O’Neil

Matt Kelley was finishing dressing the turkey on Thanksgiving, 2020, when his wife called him into the other room. Peering out the window, he saw a small group of men on the sidewalk outside his home holding signs, a Weber grill and a live, white turkey on a leash.

The signs labeled Kelley a “tyrant,” and called for him to resign as lead health officer of the Gallatin City-County Health Department in Bozeman, Montana. The protestors weren’t happy Kelley had enacted a county-wide recommendation for families to have smaller holiday gatherings. Kelley found out the grill was for burning face masks. He still isn’t sure what the leashed turkey signified. 

Perhaps some holiday spirit. 

At the time, the COVID-19 pandemic was worsening in Bozeman. Dozens of people filled the hospitals and health officials were hoping Montana was experiencing the worst wave of the pandemic it would ever have to face. 

The small Thanksgiving protest marked the first of consecutive weeks of picketing in front of Kelley’s house from the same group of people. It was a hard time for him and his family.

“My kids were both under the age of 12,” Kelley said. “It’s hard for them to understand why there’s someone on the front sidewalk calling daddy a tyrant and demanding his resignation.”

Seven months later, Kelley left his role as top health officer in Gallatin County to join the Montana Public Health Institute as its first chief executive officer. He’s not the only Montana public health official to have left his position since the pandemic arrived on the shores of the United States. 

In the last year, more than a dozen Montana counties have lost their top health official, according to data from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS). This includes four of the state’s seven most populous counties: Missoula, Gallatin, Flathead and Butte-Silverbow. And this exodus hurts public health efforts in Montana, where important health action occurs at the local level, said Ellen Leahy, former director of the Missoula City-County Health Department for more than 30 years. The loss of established top health officials means the loss of important institutional knowledge.

At least 17 of Montana’s 56 counties — more than 30% — have seen the transition of their top health official; a trend occurring across the United States, labeled by ABC News as the largest exodus of public health officials the nation has ever experienced.

In Montana, much of the health officers’ frustration comes from the legislation passed in the 67th Montana Legislature, on the heels of a red wave in the 2020 election, said Jim Murphy, former bureau chief of the Communicable Disease Bureau for DPHHS. Legislators worked to strip the authority from local public health departments in the form of legislation like House Bills 257, 121 and 702. HB 257, now law, prohibits local health boards and officers from creating policies that “restrict the ability of a private business to conduct business.” HB 121 allows a government body to amend local health regulations and revises penalties allowed for the violation of a local health rule.

But of most concern to Leahy, Murphy and health officials around the state is House Bill 702, legislation that significantly impedes health officers’ abilities to regulate, mandate and keep track of vaccinations. The bill, which passed in April, during the final hours of the 2021 Legislative Session, prohibits public and private employers from “discriminating” based on vaccine status. It is the only legislation of its kind in the U.S., according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

In a state where public health success is dependent on local authority, Leahy said, state legislation is working to limit the power of public health officials. Montana can’t afford more public health staff cuts or transitions, Murphy said.

“You lose a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said. “You know, when [top health officials leave], it’s a bad time to lose institutional knowledge during an event [like the pandemic].”

“There’s been political differences my entire career, but they have never been as divisive as they are now. We have pushed at the state level at every session. And this year we couldn’t stop it,” Leahy said of HB 702. “Again, you see that magnification of that divide. And that symbolism shows contempt for any type of public health.”

Eventually, Murphy said, top public health officers just got tired of the political war. 

“I think between the Legislature, between the perception … that public health is the enemy and not the virus, has led a lot of people to re-evaluate their options,” Murphy said. “You don’t need people threatening your family. You don’t need people protesting outside your house like Gallatin County had.”

Top health officials left their positions in Blaine, Butte-Silverbow, Carbon, Carter, Dawson, Flathead, Gallatin, Granite, Meagher, Madison, Missoula, Park, Pondera, Powell, Powder River, Ravalli and Sanders counties. An in-depth analysis of this trend points to a delegitimization of public health, and the steady stripping of its power.

The Pandemic and the Legislature

Over the last year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has wracked Montana. The state has seen more than 2,000 deaths and more than 150,000 cases total. September and early October 2021 saw case peaks matching Montana’s highest-ever numbers from last winter.

In addition, the state has experienced a tidal shift in politics. In November 2020, Greg Gianforte was elected the first Republican governor of Montana in 16 years, and not a single statewide Democratic candidate won election.

The following legislative session saw a tsunami of conservative legislation passed that had previously been blocked by Democratic governors for years. Gun deregulation, anti-abortion measures and anti-transgender laws surged through the House and Senate for an expected Gianforte signature. Now, many of these new laws sit suspended in court as opposition groups challenge their constitutionality. 

Rep. David Bedey, a state legislator from Hamilton, sponsored HB 121, the legislation that requires local government officials to approve any public health regulations. He worked closely with public health officers to draft the bill.

The impetus for his legislation, Bedey said, was to ensure rules are actually implemented by those who are publicly elected. That is, since public health officers are appointed to their positions and not democratically elected, they should not be in charge of enforcing public regulations. 

Bedey agreed he saw a connection between Montana’s public health trend and the 67th Legislature’s impact. But he said he thought public health officials would be facing the same delegitimization regardless of any bills put forth by the Legislature.

“I suspect that there is some truth to the fact that there’s a legislative tie [to public health officials’ exodus],” Bedey said. “But I think that public health officials would be facing the same sort of dilemma right now, even in the absence of any legislation during the last session.”

For example, Bedey said, he had been working on his bill before the pandemic began. COVID-19 just provided a more dramatic environment. Now, with the hyper-partisan nature of the nation, he said he thought the state could be poised for something like this to happen.

In fact, he said, he wrote HB 121 in an effort to fight the concerning trends he’d been seeing.

“My primary motivation for writing 121 was not to neuter public health, but rather, provide them the legitimacy so that they could do the work they must do,” he said. “And the way I thought that legitimacy would be established, would be that any regulations that are promulgated in a county or jurisdictional setting would be approved by people that were elected.”

Still, perhaps no legislation was more difficult to reconcile, especially for public health officials, than HB 702, Leahy said.  She and the heads of other Montana public health offices had successfully fought legislation that rolled back immunization requirements, like HB 702, for over 15 years. But this year, amid widespread vaccine skepticism and public health under increased scrutiny, the bill passed. 

On Wednesday, Sept. 22, a lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Montana Medical Association and various other clinics and patients, challenged the legality of HB 702. And on Oct. 6, a law firm in Sidney, Montana filed a second lawsuit against the bill.

Checked or Checkmated: Health
Officers’ Frustration

Nick Lawyer became the top health official of Sanders County in January 2021. He focused on his clinical work and enrolled in a class at the University of Montana to further improve his abilities as a public health leader.

But soon, Lawyer noticed legislation creeping through the Legislature that considerably impacted his ability to perform his job.

“In March, April, there were some bills that came through the Legislature that were very much presented as, ‘We are going to give control back to the community away from the tyrant officers across the state,’” Lawyer said. “And those bills had a pretty negative impact on our ability to do the job. And so you know, by April, by May, I found very quickly I had minimal ability to enact anything.”

That wasn’t a problem at first, Lawyer said. School was wrapping up, the vaccine had been made available to everyone, summer was on the horizon. In many ways, it felt like the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then things started changing.

Lawyer watched his position turn into a purely advisory role after the legislative session as the pandemic began to gain more steam. He wrote letters to the schools in his county and attended fair board meetings urging mitigation measures. He spread as many educational resources as he could. But he was met with mixed responses, hesitancy and disregard.

“Telling the schools, ‘you should consider masking because we know masking will reduce the spread of disease and will keep kids in school’ — simply telling the schools that caused consternation and irritation,” Lawyer said.

“So again, it’s very frustrating to be asked to fill this job, to be told this is an advisory role by the Legislature. And then when you give advice, it’s met with hostility from the community,” he continued.

In a meeting in July, four women began questioning the Sanders County public health nurse about vaccine efficacy and credibility. Lawyer marked this as an important shift in his time as public health officer. After the July meeting, people started coming more frequently, asking the board to call for Lawyer’s resignation.

Then, a woman he had never met died from COVID-19 in his county. The woman’s family blamed Lawyer for her death, claiming his policies prohibited her from receiving unproven treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

“They asked the commissioners for a special meeting,” Lawyer said. “And the commissioners called that meeting and her widower stepped forward and said ‘Nick Lawyer killed my wife, because his policies and protocols wouldn’t let the doctors give my wife ivermectin.’”

From that moment, he was ready to be done, he said. His position had become political, not medical. He felt his hands were tied to begin with and the time he spent at the health department took away from the time he could spend at his own clinic. 

When the county commissioners requested he resign, he did so. 

“The job has become a political post,” Lawyer said. “It’s become an advisory political post, and you can’t really do anything, or enact public health measures. From a medical perspective, you are politicians.”

Lawyer’s experience is a microcosmic example of what many public health officials across Montana have faced. Lawyer, Kelley and other officers who have resigned or transitioned out of their positions, including the entire health department of Pondera County, were tasked with protecting their communities’ welfare while handcuffed by the legislation enacted in March, said Murphy, the retired DPHHS officer. It is a daunting assignment.

Each experienced nuanced challenges — and it’s impossible to point to one specific catalyst that prompted the exodus.  

“I think some of [the health officers] just, you know, came to the point where they felt like, whatever they would do, or whatever they could do, was going to be either checked or checkmated. And it was futile to try to keep doing the same thing,” Murphy said.

The vilification of the health officers didn’t help either, Murphy said. In the legislative session, public health officials were compared to brown shirts and Nazis. Lawmakers perpetuated myths about microchips in the vaccine, he said. 

The rhetoric was as bad as the actual legislation, Murphy said, and at a certain point, that became tough to navigate.

Public Health’s Prognosis

So what does this mean for the future of Montana public health? Each public health officer agreed the loss of institutional knowledge will be damaging for the state. Many of the public health practices are complicated, and require time to learn and improve.

And even more than that, legislation is much harder to reverse than public opinion. Murphy said the laws undermine the entire effort of local health officials. Once the bills become law, they’re hard to overturn.

Not only that, the anti-public health rhetoric has worked to slowly strip away the credibility of local health departments and officers. Once that happens, it’s hard to get that credibility back.

It’s the kind of thing an election and a new wave of politicians may not be able to fix, Murphy said.

“It takes a long time for that pendulum to swing back when you’ve codified some of this in statute,” he said. “So, even if the legislative body changes, or the governor’s party changes again, I’m not sure that’ll be enough.”

“We definitely lost past expertise. Definitely,” Leahy said.

“The consequences [of this politicization of public health] to medicine and to public health is a deep legitimization and a vilification of experts,” Lawyer added. “Not just in medicine, but in lots of things.”

However, many like Kelley are able to see past the difficulties to a Montana still full of health officials who care and work hard, despite the roadblocks, name-calling and dangerous rhetoric.

“What happened to me last November was really hard,” Kelley said. “But, you know, I had a lot of support. I can tell you I speak to elite health officials all over Montana … we’ll continue to work around [the challenges]. We’ll find ways to keep working for the benefit of our community.”

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More than Superstition
​

A haunted prison fosters connection during COVID-19

Story by Luke Seymour

Photos by Aston Kinsella

Photos by Collin Kuehn

Illustration by Mariah Karis

Out of the many feelings a person might experience when they lie in the well-maintained grass at the center of an abandoned courtyard of a supposedly haunted prison, one is a surprising sense of elation. 

There’s an enormous calming sense at the heart of the Old Montana Prison. It is not an empty calm, but a calm heavy with time — an atmosphere that swells with memory. 

The basketball court is bleach white, accessorized with skeletal hoops absent of netting. The vacant guard towers look like empty nests that once housed terrible birds of prey. In contrast, a square of pavement for hopscotch looks cared for, the numbers and shapes newly painted with vibrant pastel colors. An older couple walks slowly around the walls as they whisper to each other in a hush.

As 2021 comes to a close, a year defined by the anxiety that comes from COVID-19 politics — there’s something therapeutic about an escape into the past — to lie at the center of a prison of lost souls. 

The Old Montana Prison was established in 1871 in an effort described in the tour handbook as “an attempt to tame the wild west.” In 1959, a vicious prison riot broke out and shook the state of Montana with reports of violence, chaos and murder. 

The riot led to the destruction of one of the prison’s cell towers after a member of the National Guard fired a bazooka at the building to stun the prisoners. Three people were reported dead after the riot, including the Deputy Warden, Theodore Rothe. It is believed that the core reason for the riot was due to overcrowding, which was a problem that continued to be unaddressed until the prison’s closure in 1979. 

Since then, the prison has been converted into a museum and is a well known northwestern Montana tourist destination, and one of the main sources of revenue for the City of Deer Lodge, Montana. The museum hosts birthdays, car raffles and even performances from touring bands. The Hell’s Belles, an all-female AC/DC cover band from Seattle, performed on the concrete block in the middle of the prison courtyard in 2018 to an enthusiastic crowd.

However, there is one attraction that has earned the Old Montana Prison a reputation for being one of the spookiest destinations in the West. For decades now, it has gained steady notoriety for being a haunted hotspot, and as a result it has attracted attention from ghost   hunters all over the country. After being visited in 2012 by the hit  SYFY Channel TV show “Haunted Collector,” the prison started holding annual ghost tours. For a handful of nights each year, guests are treated to a tour through some of the prison’s alleged haunted facilities. Over the years, guests have reported feeling touched on their neck and shoulders and experiencing nausea.

The prison proved its lasting power in early 2020 after a brief three-month period where it shut down to clean and sanitize the facility in compliance with government mandates. It was one of the few businesses in Deer Lodge and in all of Montana that remained open during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It seemed like people just wanted to get out,” said Lisa Garcia, a longtime prison events coordinator and paranormal investigator. “We had people showing up right off the bat and people calling us when we were closed asking us ‘are you open? Are you open?’ I think people just needed to get out because they were already so tired of being cooped up for so long.” 

There’s a tempting observation to be made about the prison being as successful as it was during the middle of a pandemic: People rushing to embrace a timeworn prison to escape a prison of pandemic crisis. The image of guests pacing old, dilapidated hallways just because it beats endlessly pacing around their own living rooms, is both provocative and amusing. 

“Obviously you’re going to get a lot of people who are in it just for the adrenaline rush, right?” said Jennifer Keintz, a 25-year high school journalism teacher and one of the Old Montana Prison’s newest paranormal investigators and historic tour guide. “But I think outside of the thrill of dealing with the paranormal and seeing for yourself whether it’s real or not, the whole experience is really about stories: Both the ones that we write for ourselves and the one that we get to write with and interact with others. That kind of interactive experience can be really therapeutic.” 

On a cold and clear Saturday night in October, more than 20 strangers squeezed into a small wooden room to live the experience Keintz talks about. It was the very last tour of the season. After everyone was accounted for, Keintz addressed those gathered and announced that the room they were in was the administration offices. It was the room they usually saved for last because she considered it to be the most haunted part of the prison. The last time she’d brought a group here she said she heard a growl.

Keintz passed around electro-magnetic field detectors that could “sense spiritual activity” and would glow red and beep if there was a spirit nearby. She then asked for a volunteer to participate in what she called “The Human Pendulum.” The purpose of the activity was to have the volunteer who acted as the “medium” stand perfectly still between two other volunteers who would act as “spotters.” She would ask the spirits a series of yes or no questions.

If the ghosts answered “yes,” the spirits were instructed to push the volunteer forward. If they answered “no,” they would push them backward. 

The first volunteer was a young college student named Jeremy Jacobs who was there with a friend. Keintz asked the spirits if they wanted the group to be there or to leave— there was no response. But, when she  asked if the spirit was human or not, Jacobs lost his balance. Keintz rushed to thank the spirits and dismissed Jacobs. 

“I’m a big history buff, so that’s mostly the reason I’m here,” Jacobs said as he shrugged his shoulders. “This was really the first night I ever felt like I was connecting to something beyond what was here,” he said as he knocked his hiking boots against the ground. “Like — here — here.” 

The next volunteer, Deidra Beacom, was more shaken than Jacobs. She was holding her own hands to keep them from shaking. Keintz again asked if the spirit was pleased the group was there; Beacom let out a squeal and fell back. After she regained her composure, she remained shaking. Keintz said Beacom could opt out of the exercise, but Beacom insisted on continuing. After a few more questions that produced little effect, Keintz dismissed Beacom.

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“I’ve always believed in the supernatural and I think that’s why it scared me so much,” Beacom said. “It was also a very powerful and humbling experience, that’s for sure.” 

Beyond the pendulum, the supernatural interaction was minimal. At one point, the group lined up against the jail cells and sang along to “Sweet Caroline” to “provoke the spirits into singing or whistling along,” Keintz said. Then the group moved on to the chapel to listen to a series of ‘80s radio hits in the dark while the tour guides set up sensory-activated music boxes to play whenever spirits were present. Other than a singular music box that played continuously, there was no apparent interaction. In the shower area of the prison, a group member claimed he felt cold water drip on his head when there was no source of water to be seen. Another said she felt the touch of fingers on the back of her neck. 

While each of these moments were captivating, whether truly supernatural or not, the most moving moment of the tour came at the end. Keintz ended the tour in the gift shop. She thanked everyone for coming and invited them to continue to explore the property and bid all of them a good rest of the year. The crowd dispersed into the parking lot to talk amongst themselves. A young college student asked Beacom about her Pendulum experience while Jacobs talked with his friend about his spooky showdown. Two men, one from Deer Lodge and one from Kalispell, exchanged photos they believed caught a glimpse of a
spirit. 

“People just want to feel connected with other people,” Keintz said. “Even if some of those people are, you know, not alive.” 

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The Extra Mile

The food bank network sets tables in rural Montana

Story by Caleb Brinton

Photos by Joseph Evans

On a chilly Tuesday morning, a black BMW pulls up to the Missoula Food Bank and a well-dressed woman in her mid-30s steps out. She enters the food bank and a few moments later she returns to her car with a box filled with canned soup, boxed pasta, bread and other items. Over the course of the next hour, more cars pull in. Some look like they just came off the showroom floor. Others are dirty and well-traveled, packed to the brim with the owner’s belongings.

The Missoula Food Bank is one of 346 programs across Montana that addresses food insecurity, an issue that reaches a wide range of people across the state. It works with the Montana Food Bank Network (MFBN), an organization established in 1983 that distributes food across the state. According to a report by MFBN, one in 10 Montanans are food insecure, including one in every six children.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to closures and supply shortages, compounds the issue. In rural areas, residents can live between 50 and 100 miles from a supermarket. In these food deserts, gas stations have become the most reliable source of food, and in a pandemic, even these sources have faced threats.

With the pandemic taking its toll on food insecure Montanans, MFBN has increased its output and education across all 56 counties. It has increased distribution by 40% statewide through partnerships with local businesses and major corporations.

“In 2019, we had distributed over 16 million pounds of food,” said Bill Mathews, chief development officer for the MFBN. “In 2020, we routed just shy of 24 million pounds of food. That’s distribution to food banks, food pantries, senior centers, shelters and in schools.”

It’s not an easy feat — in cities where there are distribution centers and services, food can get into the hands of people much easier, but food deserts in rural parts of the state require more creative approaches.

One example of a new approach is an MFBN program that mails boxes of food directly to houses in isolated areas. This program has an abbreviated application that does not require proof of need. Those who apply can receive a box of shelf-stable food every six weeks. It’s a pre-emptive effort, rather than a reactive one, allowing the MFBN to get out in front of food insecurity problems.

The school backpack program is another MFBN effort to combat food insecurity of children. According to Stephanie Staley, MFBN chief programs officer, the program started when a school nurse noticed students were coming to school hungry and unable to focus. Though many students were receiving free breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks at school, many were going home to nothing.

With the program, food is put into student backpacks for the night and often over the weekend. Food becomes one less thing to worry about in an environment that can be challenging and stressful in other ways. Since the program’s inception in 2019, 161 Montana schools have adopted it.

“Each backpack bag contains two breakfasts, two lunches, two entrees and two snacks as well as shelf-stable milk for kids so that they have breakfast, lunch and meals on Saturdays and Sundays,” Staley said.

MFBN’s main challenge has been getting food donations and money to make these meals. The organization’s solution was to partner with major food brands such as Campbell and Kellogg, as well as the University of Montana Entertainment Management program in the College of Business that provided marketing for the campaign.

Another challenge for MFBN is one everyone is facing: Ongoing fluctuations in product availability and distribution. Because of the pandemic, there have been delays in the supply chain.

“It’s kind of to a point where we never know when we place an order for backpack food or a truckload of canned chili, if we’re going to get it next week — or if it’s going to be three, four months from now,” Staley said.

MFBN isn’t focused only on healing Montana’s food system — the organization also works on a national level in partnership with Feeding America, a nationwide hunger-fighting organization.

“Montana Food Bank Network works at the state level and a national level in Washington, D.C., to work on moving hunger issues forward and making it so there’s more opportunities for people to acquire food,” Mathews said. “Whether it’s through us or a local food bank or food pantry in their area.”

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Welcoming Them Home

The return of native species is healing the land
of the Aaniiih and Nakoda

Story and photos by Sarah Mosquera

On a cloudy night in September, a single spotlight cuts through the darkness. Jessica Alexander, a 38-year-old field biologist, drives her gray Toyota Tundra across the Snake Butte pasture. Her dog, Kouva, sits silently in the back while Alexander scans the horizon beyond the truck.  

“Sometimes I think I left her behind because she’s so quiet back there,” Alexander says laughing.

With the driver’s side window down, her left hand controls the spotlight suction-cupped to the roof of her truck. She sweeps the light back and forth, searching. Within the darkness, the spotlight catches the gleam of two emerald eyes. A long rectangular metal trap protrudes from a prairie dog hole. Inside the trap, a small ferret hisses. 

“Black-footed ferrets live in prairie dog holes after they eat them,” Alexander explains. “They run from hole to hole and as they stick their little heads out, it’s easy to spot their bright green eyes.”

Within the darkness, Alexander searches the ferret for a microchip, then quickly takes him to base camp, an old camper near the entry gate. She anesthetizes him on the fold-out dinner table and adds a chip to the base of his  neck. This allows her and other scientists to monitor the animal and document which vaccines it has received and when. Alexander administers the F1-V vaccine to protect the ferret from the plague. F1-V is only made in Colorado and has a two-week shelf life, so she must estimate how much she needs before going into the field.

Alexander is the owner of Little Dog Wildlife LLC. She works closely with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Fort Belknap Indian Tribes to help monitor and protect the prairie ecosystem. 

“The sylvatic plague was introduced by rats who came over on ships in the 1900s,” Alexander explains. “It’s transferred through fleas and will quickly wipe out an entire prairie dog colony.” 

Since black-footed ferrets are dependent on prairie dogs as a food source and for shelter, a bout of the plague would be detrimental to the highly endangered species. 

Once found throughout the Great Plains, the black-footed ferret population steadily declined since the beginning of the 20th century due to agricultural expansion, government-led poisoning campaigns and the sylvatic plague. After 30 years of reintroduction programs, the population is slowly increasing, but still less than 400 black-footed ferrets live in the wild. 

In 2013, the local tribes of Fort Belknap partnered with the WWF to reintroduce the endangered species back to Snake Butte, but it wasn’t their first attempt. In 1997, the ferrets were introduced to the same pasture, but were soon wiped out by the sylvatic plague. Beyond administering vaccinations, Fort Belknap Fish and Wildlife department dust the prairie dog holes to protect them from fleas. 

“Prairie dogs are a keystone species,” Alexander explains. “Without them this habitat couldn’t exist. In order to protect the ferrets, we must protect the prairie dogs.” 

Rising from the prairie, Snake Butte stands prominently within a sea of gold. The northern face of the butte is scarred and damaged from past extractive activity. Nearly a century ago, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) quarried the butte and hauled away columns of granite to construct the legendary Fort Peck dam. Along the butte’s southern face, the grunts of more than 800 buffalo can be heard as they wallow on prairie dog mounds: the tribes’ first reintroduction success story. Buffalo, scientifically called bison, returned to the Snake Butte pasture in 1974 thanks to the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribal members who live on the land.  

In partnership with organizations like WWF, the Fort Belknap tribes have pioneered the way for wildlife reintroductions within the Great Plains ecosystem. Beginning with buffalo and moving on to black-footed ferrets and swift foxes, each native species is a necessary puzzle piece for a healthy prairie. The Aaniiih and Nakoda people are healing their land by bringing back the animals that belong there. 

On a windy autumn day in late September, George Horse Capture Jr. drives his white Ford F-150 through the Snake Butte pasture. As the truck creeps along the butte’s eastern perimeter, prairie dog whistles fill the cab.  

“You drive through this particular area and there’s so much life,” Horse Capture says. “The prairie dogs singing around, the buffalo grunting, the antelope and the coyotes running.”

The Aaniiih elder looks stylish in Wrangler blue jeans and a decorative Pendleton overcoat. Considered a “knowledge keeper,” the importance of the butte and its inhabitants is deeply ingrained in him. “Our knowledge is there’s a big rattlesnake that lives here. That lives inside [of the butte],” Horse Capture says.  

According to local legend, Snake Butte is home to a monstrous snake that has made its home deep within the crevice of the butte. 

“[The snake’s] got a lot of powers,” Horse Capture says. “Both tribes believe. My people say, stay away … It is not to be trifled with. Even good power. Good power, bad power, they’re not to be trifled with.”

Both the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes have local legends about the snake who inhabits the depths of the butte. Tribal members approach the landmark with respect and caution. The butte has long been a sacred area used by many Indian tribes for prayer, fasting and gathering medicinal plants. 

“The butte is a landmark,” Horse Capture says. “It could be spotted by Indians while they were traveling throughout the plains…They would stop here to pray or to fast. Many tribes respect this place.”

In the 1930s, the USACE began plans for one of Montana’s biggest construction projects, the Fort Peck dam. To construct the highest dam along the Missouri river, the engineers needed extremely durable rock. By 1931, they had spotted the impressive landmark. The massive granite columns of Snake Butte were exactly what the USACE needed for the dam being built over 100 miles away. They blasted the northern face of the butte, causing the prominent columns to crumble. A temporary railroad snaked through the prairie to haul away the riprap. Five years later, a black and white image of the dam’s spillway by photographer Margaret Bourke-White served as the first cover of Life magazine for a story about the dam’s construction.

Snake Butte is never mentioned in the story.

After construction of the dam finished, the world celebrated the marvelous new structure along the Missouri and the success of Roosevelt’s New Deal. There was a definite irony in the festivities. Bourke-White’s powerful images show men and women celebrating the project’s success in front of a sign that reads, “No Beer Sold to Indians.” Snake Butte still stood boldly, now with a prominent scar and surrounded by the rubble left behind by the USACE.  The blasts left the butte in a damaged state and the rail line — cutting through the otherwise pristine grasslands — was abandoned.

Remnants from the extraction remained on the Snake Butte prairie until 2003 when the tribes created the Fort Belknap Brownfields Program. They partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency and Technical Outreach Services for Native American Communities (TOSNAC) to remove the rubble and any potential toxins left behind at the quarry site. According to official documentation, “The highest priority was to return [Snake Butte] to a natural state.”

The Fort Belknap Brownfields Program offered environmental training at the Aaniiih Nakoda College, helping the locals get jobs at the clean-up site. The program trained locals from Fort Belknap in environmental clean-up to protect workers from any hazardous waste left behind at the quarry site. Slowly the team removed rubble and riprap from the quarry site and then began deconstructing the metal rail lines from the prairie. Now, nearly a century later, the Snake Butte pasture is no longer covered in remnants of the collapsed columns. Water from a spring near the northwestern face runs clear, and many locals visit the site regularly to gather drinking water. 

“It seems to be okay again now,” Horse Capture said. “The water is tested regularly, and they haven’t found any toxins in there for a long time now.”

As Horse Capture turns his truck along the southern face of the butte, he sees more than 50 buffalo grazing in the pasture. The whistles of the prairie dogs are drowned out by grunts and snorts. A cloud of dust fills the air as a young female buffalo flops onto her back and rolls around on a prairie dog mound.

“I never get tired of this,” Aaniiih Councilman Mike Fox says while watching a swift fox through a pair of binoculars. “Every time we have one of these reintroductions, it’s like a family member is returning home. How could you get tired of that?” 

Fox has been involved in many reintroduction projects on Fort Belknap, from the buffalo to the ferret to the swift fox. 

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” he says. “This is where these animals belong. If we have an opportunity to bring them home, we should.” 

In 2020 the tribes began a five-year conservation partnership with the Smithsonian Biology Conservation Institute to reintroduce swift foxes to their land. The goal of the partnership is to create a self-sustaining population on the reservation. Fox says it’s been more than 51 years since the swift fox lived on their prairie. 

Swift foxes were declared extinct in Montana in 1969 and the remaining species in North America were divided into the northern population and the southern. As agriculture became more of a way of life in the state, grassland habitat was destroyed along with biodiversity. The beautiful chaos of the Great Plains ecosystem was replaced with militant rows of agricultural crops. As the habitat morphed outside of the invisible boundaries of Fort Belknap, species connectivity became more difficult to maintain. The foxes are far-ranging and by returning them to the Fort Belknap prairie, it will help to bridge population gaps. Species connectivity is essential to create a healthy swift fox population and ensure survival. 

Beyond the ecological importance of each reintroduction, the animals help tribal members maintain a connection to the past. “Our people have always had a kit [swift] fox society,” Fox said. “The swift fox has important cultural significance for us. That society was created by our ancestors who lived on this land with the foxes.” By bringing the animals back to the Great Plains, tribal members are reconnecting to the land and healing alongside the ecosystem.

 Fox spent 10 years working for the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council, where he helped tribes across the country bring buffalo herds back to their lands. In 1974, 27 buffalo were reintroduced to the Snake Butte pasture, now the herd is over 800 head. The Snake Butte herd is one of two on the reservation. The other, introduced in 2012, is further south and on the other side of the highway — those are genetically pure Yellowstone bison. 

“I never cared about the DNA testing for the buffalo,” Fox said. “They’re not genetically pure but that’s not an important factor. It’s like the blood quantum. I’m 9/16th Indian, I’m still an Indian. It’s the same for those buffalo.”

Cristina Eisenberg, an Indigenous ecologist from Oregon State University, explains that bison evolved with the grasslands. 

“Their hooves have formed in a way that prevents trampling of the grasses,” she said. “And they help make the grasslands more resilient to climate change by increasing biodiversity.” 

Buffalo and prairie dogs are essential for healthy grasslands and are both considered keystone species because they change the ecosystem and create habitat for other animals. The prairie dogs trim down the prairie grasses, which encourages new growth and makes it easier for bison to digest. Though swift fox and black-footed ferrets are not considered keystone species, they are indicators of grassland health.  Both species are important components of the Great Plains ecosystem. “The swift foxes are now back where they belong,” Harold “Jiggs” Main, director of the Fort Belknap Fish and Wildlife department said. “Along with the buffalo and [black-footed] ferrets.” 

Main has been director of Fort Belknap Fish and Wildlife for over 14 years. He has been involved in every animal reintroduction on the reservation. Lately, Main has been receiving a lot of phone calls from conservation groups interested in working with them. In April, the tribes won the Parker/Gentry award for their rewilding efforts. The award is given out every year by the Chicago Field Museum to honor excellence in conservation biology. Main, much like Fox, is honored, but sees their efforts as doing what’s right. 

“People keep wanting to talk to me, but I’m not the one doing all the work. The researchers from the Smithsonian are out there studying the foxes,” Main said. “Those scientists and the biologists here. They are the ones doing the hard work to protect these animals.” 

Main hopes bringing the animals back to their land will inspire the younger generations to develop an appreciation for nature and the wildlife. With so much pristine wilderness within reservation boundaries, the opportunities for young people to become involved with conservation efforts are becoming more abundant. With field technician training available through a grassland restoration program and a specialized ecology degree available at the Aaniiih Nakoda college, young people are taking more of an interest in conservation and in protecting their land. 

On a warm autumn day, beneath the shadow of Snake Butte, Fort Belknap tribal members gathered in the tall prairie grasses as WWF scientists prepared to release the black-footed ferrets. Among the crowd was a group of young children from the local White Clay Immersion School. As the cage door opened, the ferret tentatively poked its head out. It peered around at the onlookers before sprinting to a nearby prairie dog hole. The children cheered and raced after the ferret, eventually encircling the hole. Leaning forward, with their heads nearly touching, the children gazed into the dark tunnel searching for its new resident. Suddenly, the ferret sprang from the hole and barked a warning at the curious children. 

“They all screamed and fell back like a blooming flower in fast motion,” Main laughs, while throwing his hands into the air. “It was good to see something like that for our youth because they’ll probably remember it forever. And then they might take the time to understand a little bit more about the ferrets.”

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Giving a Hoot

MPG Ranch is tracking owls to unlock their migration secrets

Story and photos
by Michael Martello

On an October evening at the MPG ranch, just before dusk, a northern saw-whet owl mating call, composed of sharp hoots, plays over a loudspeaker. The goal is to capture saw-whet owls in large mesh nets, which have been placed in a triangular pattern, tangled between thin trees next to a riverbank. Every 20 minutes the nets are checked. If an owl is present, it is safely removed and placed in a cotton sack to be weighed. The larger goal: To understand where these owls are going and what their future holds.

MPG ranch, established in 2009, is a 15,000-acre property in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana. It focuses on restoration and conservation. Since 1881, the property has been primarily used for raising livestock and other agricultural practices, which displaced and removed native flora and fauna from the area. Now the ranch is run by wildlife biologists and ecological experts who focus on projects to restore and conserve the landscape. They study everything from the microscopic fungi in soils that promote plant health, to the migration of large game, such as elk and mountain lions. 

The ranch has around 30 full-time employees and is privately funded. They don’t rely on federal grants and don’t profit directly from natural resources extracted during the process. 

Studying bird migration is an ongoing project at the ranch. Researchers look at which bird species are using the Bitterroot corridor as a passage of migration. They do so using radio and GPS transmitting devices, which locate species’ travel and settling patterns over multiple years. 

MPG researchers have tracked common nighthawks migrating to South America — mainly Argentina — Lewis’s woodpeckers migrating to the mountains of Oregon, and western osprey migrating to Southern Mexico. Their studies aim to understand where these species travel and breed during different periods of their life cycles. 

A current study is focusing on the movement of the northern saw-whet owl. The saw-whet owl moves in large numbers and is relatively easy to capture due to its small size, averaging a body length of 20 cm. 

This project is helping avian wildlife biologists at the ranch understand migration from a broader lens. They track migration through time, climate shifts and other environmental variables that affect flight patterns and where different species choose to breed. 

“A larger part of the migration study is to understand the migration corridor. That’s the path that they take to get to their wintering grounds,” said Mary Scofield, a researcher at the ranch, as she measured the wing length of a first-year saw-whet owl. They are trying to understand which landscapes the owls use as they move from their summer grounds to their wintering grounds.

The employees who handle the owls have years of training on how to capture the birds safely and avoid injuring the birds and themselves. They have received federal and state permits to equip the birds with number identification bands and tracking devices. 

After she weighs it, Scofield clamps a metal band with a unique number onto its leg and records a series of measurements into an online database, including the approximate age of the species, wear of feather, visible injuries and total body part measurements. A MOTUS tag, that is a small lightweight radio transmitter that sends out pulses every few seconds, is tied onto the owl and will be detected by receivers spread out internationally.

“A large part of landscape connectivity or conservation is understanding how animals use a landscape,” Scofield said. “We are more interested in the [Bitterroot Valley] corridor. Where do they go, and how did they get there? Long-term, this project may not be able to answer these questions. But other long-term migration studies can look at how that might change with climate change or the spreading of cities and how forests and landscapes are managed?”

When the tagging of the saw-whet owl is complete, the owl is gently placed on a nearby river birch branch, where it is given time to readjust to its natural environment and, in time, fly back into the night.

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Where Religion and Science Collide

Faith, health and conspiracy in the time of COVID-19

Story, photos and illustrations by Olivia Swant-Johnson

Rolland Karlin, mayor of Big Timber, Montana, describes his community as “Christian,” a characteristic shared by many small towns in the West.

“I mean, we have a Catholic church, two Baptist churches, a congregational church, a regular Lutheran church and a Missouri Synod Lutheran church, a Mormon church, an evangelical church, a church of God and a church of Christ,” he said counting them off on his fingers. “Oh, and an Episcopal church, too … Lots of churches — we’ve got more churches than bars!”

An impressive feat in Montana.

Like much of the rural West, Big Timber’s strong Christian foundation coincides with conservative politics and a “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” attitude, ever prepared to square up against any perceived government overreach.

Now in his final stretch of a four-year term as mayor of Big Timber, Karlin doesn’t plan to throw his hat in the ring again. He hadn’t anticipated becoming a liaison between his community and political leaders during a highly politicized global pandemic.

Describing the lockdown in 2020, Karlin recalls closing down the library and putting yellow tape around the dugouts at the baseball field and parks. He sounds frustrated when he tells me he still saw people chatting in the post office lobby despite signs advising otherwise, and crossing his yellow tape to sit shoulder to shoulder in the dugouts.

“I wanted six feet,” he said.

Ultimately, Karlin had to toe the line between setting guidelines and allowing Big Timber’s residents to make their own decisions, knowing they would do that anyway.

After all, Karlin got the COVID-19 vaccine, but it wasn’t because he was told to.

Karlin was 4 years old in 1953, when he contracted polio. He remembers flu-like symptoms, his mom cradling him in her lap on the drive from Columbus to the hospital in Billings, and the needles in his back that put him “out like a light” for weeks before he woke in an iron lung. A precursor to modern breathing machines, the iron lung was a large pressurized capsule that held the body inside with just the head sticking out, and pushed air in and out of the lungs by force.

Describing the mechanism, Karlin took the opportunity to explain the physiology of the lungs and diaphragm. “We don’t suck air in. It’s pushed.”

Karlin spent two weeks in the iron lung — his lifeboat — before he was moved to a crib. With the right side of his body paralyzed from the virus, he laid in a hospital room only accompanied by a “crabby” nurse who would get frustrated when he would ask her to wind up his little metal car so he could watch it roll across the bed.

He remembers his parents and his grandmother speaking to him through a door 20 feet away.

“I wanted a hug so bad,” Karlin said, and for a moment I thought his eyes were misty behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “That was social distancing.”

Karlin considers himself blessed to have survived. He turned 5 in the hospital, and recovered before the vaccine was available. By the time he was released, he had regained function of his right side, apart from his right arm. Rested on the conference table of the Big Timber Town Hall, fingers splayed flat, he lifts it with his left hand and drops it limp at his side to demonstrate.

For as many emails as have been sent citing “these unprecedented times,” Karlin draws a lot of parallels between our current pandemic and polio’s terror in the ‘50s.

“People were crying out for a vaccine, aching, and as soon as it came out they got it and their kids got it,” Karlin said.

Although he had already recovered from one strain of polio, Karlin recalls being vaccinated against other variants of the disease. He remembers kids lining up at school to receive a pink liquid, administered orally on a sugar cube.

Karlin grew up to be a capable and resilient young man. “My dad never let me claim my handicap, God bless him for that,” he said, recalling the time that he came home from the third grade, crying to his father that he wanted to be a Cub Scout, but couldn’t climb a rope.

“He swore at me and he said ‘you want to be a Cub Scout then blankety-blank, you go be a Cub Scout.’ So I went all the way through and became [an] Eagle.”

Karlin went on to become an award-winning science teacher, honored by former president Bill Clinton as the Middle School Science Teacher of the Year in 1999. He also led a wildly successful Science Olympiad team, which competed nationally 19 out of the 25 years he led it. Karlin said their success was because the kids “wanted to win,” but that doesn’t seem to be the independent variable.

All four of Karlin’s children found their careers in the Science Olympiad, he said. So did countless others whom he lists o by name, current location and occupation, beaming. Geneticists, engineers, biologists, physicists.

“Jesus is important in my life because I think I was spared to do something for him,” Karlin said, before launching into a story about another student who he cared about deeply.

In recent centuries, science and religion have largely been reduced to political adversaries. Many religious leaders have pointed to science as a threat to the foundations of their traditions, placing religion itself squarely in opposition to many scientific advancements.

Members of the scientific community have returned the same hostile notion: our ideals cannot exist peacefully, your magic is dumb. So we’ve created a binary that gives Christians a long list of questions like, “Can I be a Christian and believe in the Big Bang? In evolution? In climate change?” and most recently, “Can I trust God and get a COVID vaccine?”

While many groups have been skeptical of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, few have been as vocal in their opposition as the conservative Christian church. Christianity makes up just over 70% of the adult population of the U.S., according to Pew Research. A separate Pew Research study conducted in March 2021 found that 36% of all Protestants planned to refuse the shot, with 45% of Evangelicals taking the same stance.

With lines like these drawn in the proverbial sand, it’s easy to forget the roots of many modern sciences grew out of churches, synagogues and mosques, borne of thinkers who sought to understand the laws of nature established by their God. Ideally, the goal of both science and religion is ultimately to steward a healthy, just world, and perhaps if we remembered, then our conversation could begin to change.

A 1997 survey by the University of Georgia found that about 40% of responding biologists, physicists and mathematicians believed in a God who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray “in expectation of receiving an answer.’’ These results were nearly identical to those of the same survey conducted in 1916. If those numbers hadn’t moved in 81 years, it would be interesting to know how much they’ve changed in 24. It’s possible that this war of ideologies isn’t such a war at all.

Karlin gets excited, leaning over the table in the town hall to explain to me the ways the events described poetically in the Book of Genesis coincide with what science has also informed us about the history of the universe. Light, then water and then creatures crawling from the water — “Science!” he exclaims.

“And in the Bible it said God created the heavens and the earth in six days. Now how do we know how long a day was for God? . . . No one was around keeping track of time.”

In his book “The Language of God,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project describes his experience of sequencing the human genome as “both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.” Dr. Collins wrote he believes in a loving God who established natural laws. In supporting that belief, Collins points to the simplicity and elegance of mathematics, the precise tunings of universal properties which made life possible against unimaginable odds, and altruism — the compulsion to help others at our own expense — which he said is present in humans despite evolutionary explanation. Collins concludes that while science offers us a set of natural laws: whens, wheres, whats and hows that govern our natural world, it does little to answer questions of
why.

Concluding his book, Dr. Collins proposes a synthesis, coined “BioLogos” or “Theistic Evolution.” Using lengthier words, it essentially sums up Karlin’s ideology as well: God chose the “elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants and animals.” Some of those animals would have “intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will and a desire to seek fellowshipwithHim.”They would also “ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.”

In 2009, Dr. Collins was appointed Director of the National Institute of Health by former President Barack Obama, a decision unanimously confirmed by the Senate. There, the Human Genome research became foundational to the development of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, which Dr. Collins was intimately involved in. Dr. Collins, like Karlin, feels called by God to his profession. Describing the development of the vaccine as “an answer to many prayers,” it was developed in record time, and with an efficacy rate nearly twice the goal. The FDA had set a threshold for approval at 50% efficacy, roughly that of the flu vaccine. Collins told the Atlantic, he cried when the efficacy rate of the Pfizer vaccine came back at 95%, describing the experience as “breathtaking.”

In an email, Dr. Collins told me that to feel such a call, and to feel as though God had partnered in the endeavor, only to have it criticized so strongly by the loudest of those who profess his own faith has been, “to be honest, very disheartening.”

“To have this kind of remarkably safe and effective scientific solution emerge to a pandemic that has already taken 670,000 [as of Sept. 23, 2021] lives in the U.S., and then to have many believers turn their backs, is not something that I as an evangelical Christian would have anticipated,” Dr. Collins wrote. “This is a “love your neighbor” moment, when believers would normally be first in line.”

Considering his history with lifesaving vaccines and science, Karlin did not allow party lines to weigh in on his decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine. “We beat polio with a vaccine. We can beat COVID too,” he said.

But the problem many of the “vaccine hesitant” seem to have with it isn’t rooted in the science, but in a perceived view of medical tyranny and mistrust of the government. Karlin said that while he is pro-vaccine, he still believes people should be able to decide what gets “stuck in their arm,” without their livelihood being threatened.

“But I would encourage anybody that would ask me to get the vaccine, for the sake of the others,” Karlin said.

Collins said he wishes he and other public health offucials had done a better job of explaining why the decision to become vaccinated is not just an individual one, but about protecting others, too. While Karlin supports the “Don’t Tread On Me” attitude of the rural West, Dr. Collins has less patience.

“Those who complain loudly about infringement of freedoms neglect the understanding that our founders made clear — freedom is not just about rights, it’s also about responsibilities,” Collins said. “I don’t have a right to get sick with a preventable disease if I might then pass it on to my neighbor with a kidney transplant, for whom the vaccine doesn’t work so she might well die.”

It’s worth noting that George Washington mandated smallpox inoculations — an early, much riskier form of vaccine that involved scraping the skin and then rubbing it with live virus — among troops. He also once wrote to his brother, frustrated about a Virginia law that restricted inoculations, saying if he had a say in the matter, he would rather “a Law to compel Masters of Families to inoculate every Child born within a certain limited amount of time under severe Penalties.”

But for many Christians, that fear of tyranny is exacerbated by apocalyptic ideology and the ever looming “end times.”

Enter Revelation 13.

It’s difficult to wade through any online Christian forums without finding an onslaught of references to the chapter, be it posted by someone’s middle-aged aunt on Facebook captioned, “WAKE UP AMERICA!” or by anonymous Reddit users in a panicked font.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Revelation 13 can be interpreted to prophesize a dystopian future with one world government, one world currency, the rise of the Antichrist and the “Mark of the Beast” without which people can’t “buy or sell in the marketplace.” Used in many QAnon conspiracies, the chapter has taken a new angle: COVID-19 Vaccines are the new “Mark of the Beast.”

In August 2021, Peter Feaman, a top Republican National Committee ocial from Florida, took to his blog to spread the theory. And the emergence of vaccine mandates and passports has added new fuel to the fire.

The chaos of the past two years has created somewhat of an incubator for paranoia. For the 70% of Americans who identify as Christian, it can be dicult or impossible to untangle that paranoia from their beliefs, adding a whole new set of fears wielding eternal ramifications.

An anonymous Reddit user asked the forum r/TrueChristian for prayers for their soul. Noting that they’re fully vaccinated, they wrote, “I’m feeling the fear of eternal death regarding this issue … again … might need prayers for my anxiety and spiritual brokenness to go away in regards to the vaccine being the [Mark of the Beast] again … I don’t want to suer the seven last plagues and be eternally destroyed by hellfire.”

In that email, Dr. Collins wrote “It breaks my heart to see how many church members have been manipulated by lies and conspiracies that are propagated on social media, and have missed the chance to take care of themselves and their families and friends.”

This is not the first time a technology has been charged the “Mark of the Beast.” It’s been Social Security numbers, credit cards and smartphones as well. John Nelson Darby, considered the father of Dispensationalism and Futurism, made the first popular claim, concluding it was the telegraph in 1830.

Darby was a proponent of modern dispensationalism, fundamentalism, pre- millennialism, futurism and pre-tribulation rapture theory. A real mouthful. In other words, he believed sometime before the end of the millennium, as the world continued to descend into the depths of moral decay, believers’ faiths would be tested by their refusal to accept some sort of technology presented by the Antichrist. When they had passed their test, Jesus would snatch up all of his true believers to heaven without warning. There they would get to sit out of a series of extremely unfortunate events to be spilled out on the rest of humanity. Finally, Christ would return along with his Saints and they would rule a perfect new earth.

That Reddit user could trace their paranoia straight back to Darby and, in a just world, he’d be footing a lot of bills for therapy and Xanax.

Darby’s theological theory of dispensationalism was proposed about 200 years ago. Formalized during the mid-19th century, it grew in popularity in the U.S. after the Civil War. Cyrus I. Scofield, a Bible editor and self-proclaimed prophet, published the first edition of Scofield’s Reference Bible in 1909, which contained dispensationalist assumptions inserted into the margin notes and sold more than 2 million copies to readers, who were apt to take them as the literal Word of God, before the end of World War II. Still in print today, it’s widely circulated and available in eight languages.

The Scofield Reference Bible was the first of its kind, offering insight into the text. And while it popularized the ideas it contained to people who actually read it, they remained niche for 60 years.

Then came the New York Times best-selling nonfiction title of the entire 1970s — the dispensationalist book “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey. It introduced a generation to phrases like “The Rapture,” “The Tribulations,” “The Antichrist,” “False Prophet” and “The Mark of the Beast” — all while prophesying their imminence.

In the ‘90s, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins launched their multimedia franchise “Left Behind,” which told the tale of those who were “left behind” after the rapture — finding their loved ones missing from crumpled trousers and steaming cups of coffee.

It depicts an Antichrist named “Nicolae Carpathia” who rises to power as a secretary general of the United Nations, and whose followers are marked with a visible symbol of their loyalty: 666. Those marked are to be eternally damned at Christ’s final return.

Beginning with a series of 16 books for adults with titles like “Tribulation Force” and “The Mark,” the “Left Behind” franchise published another 40 volumes for children, a 2000s graphic novel series, a computer game and four motion pictures, the last of which was released in 2014 and starred then it-boy Chad Micheal Murray and Nicholas Cage.

The 2014 movie depicted the rapture from the perspective of passengers aboard a flight to London. When all of the children and a few other blessed souls disappeared, the “left behind” spiral into confusion, devastation and violence. After a collision with another 747 whose pilot has been raptured, Cage barely lands the flaming plane into a fiery landscape. Looking out at the burning horizon, Murray observes what looks like the end of the world.

“I’m afraid it’s just the beginning,” he’s told as the camera pans out to more desolation and the credits roll. Ominous.

But dispensationalist futurism hasn’t always been the most prominent interpretation of Revelation. Another story, existing in stark contrast to the “Left Behind” series that provided many American Christian youth with fodder for panic attacks, is held by many biblical scholars.

Preterism, a much older scholarly school of thought, holds that the events described in Revelation already happened nearly 2,000 years ago in 70 A.D. Preterists don’t believe in a rapture at all.

Revelation was a letter written by an early Christian leader, to an early Christian church that was brutally persecuted by both the Jews and the Romans, and so it was written in a coded text to protect those who possessed copies of it.

Seventy A.D. is significant because that is when the Roman Empire invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, which contained the Arc of the Covenant, genealogical records of the Levitical priesthood and the Most Holy Place, which was believed to be where heaven and earth met. Because of the vital roles of the temple and the genealogical records in the beliefs and traditions of ancient Jews, their destruction effectively ended the age of Mosaic Judaism. (Now we have Rabbinic Judaism.) Preterism holds that Revelation’s references to the end of the age and the passing away of heaven and earth, are actually in reference to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman Empire, not a future destruction of the universe.

Preterists further point to the Roman imperial cult as the entity behind the Mark of the Beast and “that abomination that causes desolation.” A long succession of Roman emperors claimed divinity and demanded to be worshiped. They had their images etched into the currency — marked, if you will — along with their claims to be divine. So when early Christians bought or sold in the marketplace, they would be using a currency that betrayed their beliefs. When Christians refused to worship them or their other gods, they became scapegoats, begging for the wrath of Roman gods to be poured out on everyone.

Nero Caesar, NRON QSR in Hebrew, was one of the most brutal emperors, infamous for acts like having Christians dipped in tar and then set on fire to light his yard. Gematria was a common form of code during this time period that translated Hebrew text into numbers. NRON QSR, coded in gematria, comes to 666.

I once heard a pastor tell an anecdote about a man who was treading water in the middle of the ocean. He’s crying out to God to help him when a man in a rowboat shows up and offers to pick him up. The man, sputtering, declines.

“No thanks,” said the drowning man. “God will save me.”

So the man in the boat rows away, confused, and the drowning man goes on drowning, screaming to God, “Save me, save me! I know you will!”

After a few hours, the drowning man is exhausted, his skin beginning to peel away, raw from the salt that burns his throat when he chokes on it. Still, when a cruise ship comes sailing by, and then a rescue helicopter, the drowning man again sends them both on their way, assuring them through cracked, bleeding lips that he is waiting for God to save him.

Then the drowning man dies. When he gets to heaven he’s angry, marching up to God.

“You didn’t save me!” He yells, pointing his finger. “With all of your power and might you didn’t save me!”

And God said to him, “I sent you a rowboat, I sent you a cruise liner and then I sent you a rescue helicopter. You didn’t save you.”

Polio’s terror in the ‘50s came 20 years before Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which would take America by storm, selling over 15.5 million copies and proclaiming prophecies of doom that would seep deep into the American psyche. And perhaps that’s got something to do with the public acceptance of the polio vaccine — how it was taken at face value: An incredible scientific accomplishment that saved the lives of an unknowable number of children.

Had those ideas already taken root then, and grown into the paranoia that we see manifesting itself today, it’s likely that we would have been much less successful in eradicating polio.

I recently received this text message from my uncle, who often reads his Bible while sitting on the toilet: “Well, if you trust God, then why get the jab?”

I’ve been thinking about the drowning man a lot these last two years.

Chapter 10 of Dr. Collin’s book ends, “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful — and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans start such battles. And only we can end them.”

It’s unlikely science or religion are going anywhere. They are both going to continue to shape our world for the rest of humanity’s existence.

In an email, Dr. Collins wrote, “Jesus’ words come to mind ( John 8:32) “The truth will set you free.” But there is so much misinformation and disinformation out there now. I pray that the church will rededicate themselves to finding the truth in all things.”

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Misrepresented
and Misunderstood

Why media needs to listen to autistics

Essay by Ella Musgrove

Illustration by MaKayla O’Neil

The hardest thing about being autistic is not the actual autism. It’s the way we’re expected to live in a world not built for us.

A lot of the traits most associated with autistic people, things like being nonspeaking, or stimming — a behavior meant to provide more or less stimulation — or even not making eye contact, are things non autistic people in media and organizations like Autism Speaks have tried to erase. This is part of the reason why autism is so misrepresented in the media.

There are bad examples of autism representation, such as characters who are either offensive because of the obvious lack of time that went into including the autistic community in media representation about themselves, or the generic autistic savants who set an unrealistic standard. Recently though, there has been some better representation of those on the spectrum which included more variety in what autism looks like. But why does good representation matter in the first place?

Tiffany Hammond, the face behind the popular @fidgets.and.fries Instagram account, understands that it is important to be included. Her account, which has a focus on activism for the autistic community, goes in depth about her personal feelings as a Black autistic woman, but also her experience as a mother to her two autistic sons. However, as opposed to just focusing on educating non-autistic viewers, she also speaks to those on the spectrum. She and other BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) creators must represent themselves because they are often ignored or excluded from sharing their point of view. 

After Hammond started her Instagram account, she said she felt disheartened from all the hate she got about broaching intersectionality.

“Every time you said something there was all this pushback and anger and all this hate,” Hammond said. “And now, I still get the hate, still get the anger, it’s just not as big.”

Intersectionality is all about the layers of discrimination someone may face. A person could be Black and speaking-autistic or white and nonspeaking-autistic, and their experiences are fundamentally different. Hammond cites having lower economic status, having mental health issues and identifying as LGBTQIA+ as additional layers of oppression along with being autistic.

 Intersectionality is all about the layers of discrimination someone may face. A person could be Black and speaking-autistic or white and nonspeaking-autistic, and their experiences are fundamentally different. Hammond cites having lower economic status, having mental health issues and identifying as LGBTQIA+ as additional layers of oppression along with being autistic.

Hammond started posting regular content about autism and intersectionality in June 2020 and she’s only gotten more vocal since then. She discusses race and how people in the autistic community ignore those who try to incorporate other identities within autism.

“There needs to be some specific attention drawn toward those who are Black, those who are aged, those who are trans, those who are nonspeaking, so there’s a lot of different layers [within the autistic community],” she said.

Tim Boykin, a Black autistic influencer by the handle of @blackautisticking on TikTok, agreed and said he wants to see more BIPOC autistics, and everything in between on the screen.

Boykin started posting about autism and advocacy in 2019, sharing everything on his platform from singing videos to how he sees the world as a Black autistic man.

“I wish media could stop portraying autistic people as deadpan, and also white, and usually straight,” he said. “And I also want to see autistic people who are not always that smart.”

Autistic people want to see authentic representation of our struggles. However, we also want to show the good parts of ourselves too. Sometimes the media focuses too much on how we have meltdowns, but doesn’t include, for example, being detail-oriented or our excitement for our special interests.

“The bad about autism has been shown too many times. They should promote more of the good about autism, just as much as the bad,” Boykin said. “It is very beautiful to see good representation toward people like me because it’s something to look up to, something to admire. We’re not just something bad that people see, we are something more than that.”

Boykin and Hammond argue part of the issue is that autism advocates, who are largely white, speaking-autistic people, are not listening to the intersectionality argument. 

“Even when we’re sitting at these tables with everyone else, it still involves society listening, it still involves other autistic people listening,” Hammond said. 

Boykin echoed that sentiment and said, “I feel like I’m excluded out of the picture because I don’t see that many autistic Black people.” 

A lack of Black autistic representation leads to an imbalance in how the world views autism. Just like showing only smart, autistic, white men in the media leads to an incomplete view of the autistic community. Showing only white autistic people and not BIPOC, or only men and not women affects outsiders’ view on what autism is and who has it.

Jennifer Closson, assistant clinical professor in the speech and language school and director of the University of Montana’s MOSSAIC (Mentoring, Organization, and Social Support for Autism/All Inclusion on Campus) program, is also an advocate for autistic people. Instead of a social media platform though, she uses her professor status to educate people on autism and provide safe spaces on campus for students on the spectrum through her program.

“If people on the spectrum can have a safe space, and the support that they need to be successful … we’re gonna have more people achieve their dreams,” she said.

Closson also gives a presentation every year at DiverseU, a campus wide event that promotes diversity and discussion on social issues. 

Closson said part of her reasoning behind wanting an inclusive space, having discussions surrounding diversity and wanting to see more accurate media portrayal, is because it promotes awareness and acceptance.

Despite the large strides Hammond, Boykin and Closson have taken for inclusion and representation for autistic people, there are some people who misrepresent autism by favoring one perspective — their own. 

Autism Speaks, an organization that appears to help all on the spectrum, provides one of the most damaging representations of autism yet, and they’ve been doing so since 2005. Starting as a nonprofit made by Bob and Suzanne Wright, it quickly became one of the country’s most widely used resources for information about autism, helping parents find therapies and other services for their kids.

John Elder Robison was one of the few autistic people formerly on staff of Autism Speaks. He was a member of the Science and Treatment boards. He wrote in a blog post on November 13, 2013 that he was resigning after two years, because he could no longer continue to support an organization with ideas so different from his own. As an autistic advocate, Robison tried to change the Autism Speaks organization from the inside, but found that it was more deeply rooted in ableist ideals than he previously thought.

“No one says the Cancer Society does not speak for them,” Robison said, referencing, “Autism Speaks does not speak for me,” a saying people on the spectrum use to indicate they would prefer Autism Speaks stop speaking over them.“Autism Speaks is honestly not the best company,” Boykin echoed. “They promote themselves as like this wonderful and loving place, but if you actually look into them you can see that they have a crooked past.”

Although it may be in the company’s past, they have never formally apologized for videos like, “I am Autism.” Released in September 2009, it starts with, “I am autism. I’m visible in your children, but if I can help it, I am invisible to you until it’s too late.” The video demonizes and fearmongers autism, treating it like a disease that ruins our life like cancer. Actually, that’s not fair to cancer. People with cancer are still treated like human beings.

Their current goals for research enforce this idea that autism is a disease. MSSNG, a research program focused on genome sequencing, provides researchers with sequenced genomes from those on the spectrum. As stated on the website, their goal is “to speed the development of more effective and personalized interventions for autism and its associated health conditions.”

This would all be fine and dandy, but this research about the genetic cause of autism could only lead to eugenics, or the practice of selective reproduction by means of picking more “desirable” children, i.e. parents who get pre-screened may find out their child is autistic and decide not to have the baby. It’s worse than a cure, its eradication. 

This idea that autism is somehow a disease has never, and likely will never, leave the roots of Autism Speaks, and that is why those on the spectrum tend to distrust this organization. But there are two sides to every story. 

While being an autistic advocate for herself, Hammond is also a mother of two autistic sons, one of whom is nonspeaking. She felt conflicted about Autism Speaks since they were the only ones, back in the early 2000s, who had the resources available to help her and her family. 

“I feel like they do a lot of things that are harmful to autistic people,” she said. “They have a lot of positions that are not helpful, [but] they do help a lot of parents in some ways.”

“I feel for a lot of parents who are like us,” Hammond said. She said as a parent of an autistic child, she was looking for the right answers, like many parents. Autism Speaks seemed to have all the answers, but we’ve come a long way since then.

Not everyone chooses to educate themselves on what can cause harm to autistic people.

As a child, you probably saw characters like you on the screen all the time. You turn on the TV — maybe the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon — and you’re immersed in a world of characters who look like you, act like you and think like you.

However, if you’re on the autism spectrum like me, all you know is that these characters are not meant to be you. 

Recent shows have tried to provide representation like that — and failed. “Music” is a movie directed by Australian singer-songwriter Sia. It is about a non-speaking autistic girl named Music, played by Maddie Ziegler, whose older sister, played by Kate Hudson, comes home to take care of Music after their grandmother dies.

In case you’re about to look up the answer to the question you’re surely asking yourself, no, Ziegler is not autistic. Neither is Keir Gilchrist, an actor who plays the autistic main lead in the hit Netflix original series “Atypical.”

This trend of neurotypical actors playing neurodivergent roles is offensive, especially considering that when the work day is over, they can take off those neurodivergent traits and go back to their lives. Neurodivergent people should always play those roles, just like how any other minority should always be played by a member of that minority — or any other discriminated group of people for that matter.

However, the faults of some of these horrific pieces of autistic representation don’t stop at just the actors not being autistic. Sia reportedly used Autism Speaks as a source for much of the movie and even used some controversial therapy tools in some of the scenes — the scenes which were later removed from the final picture.

The scenes included restraining, a tactic that is highly controversial within the autistic community. Prone restraint, the type used upon the autistic character in the movie, has actually been linked to many cases of abuse and death, due to its characteristics of holding someone down against the floor and sometimes even suffocating them.

How could “Music” have better represented the autistic community though?

Sia should have consulted the autistic community, maybe even hired an autistic consultant who would have helped her not reinforce harmful stereotypes. She also should have hired an autistic actress to play the supporting female lead because autistic characters should, and need to, be played by autistic people. 

However, there are some examples of good representation in media. “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” created by Noelle Stevenson, is one of them. While it has been hailed for its exceptional LGBTQIA+ representation, it’s how the character Entrapta is depicted in the show that has been healing for many on the spectrum.

Entrapta, voiced by Christine Woods, is a lovable character for many reasons: She’s endearing, a tech-genius extraordinaire and even though she has trouble relating to the other princesses, she still cares a heck of a lot. While it wasn’t ever explicitly said in the show, Stevenson confirmed after the show ended in May 2020 that Entrapta is autistic and an autistic member of the crew, board artist Sam Szymanski, was a point of reference for the character.

One of the scenes in particular that was well done was in Season 5, Episode 2, “Launch,” where the other princesses must work together to solve a problem. However, Entrapta and the other princesses have an obvious lack of communication and things eventually go haywire.

When one of the princesses shouts at her for her apparent lack of concern about people, Entrapta apologizes, saying she’s not “good at people, but I am good at tech. I thought maybe if I could use tech to help you, you’d like me.”

After watching this, at age 18, I burst into tears. I had to pause the show and cry because this moment right here — this was the first time I felt seen on screen. It makes me cry just thinking about it.

This is great to see in a children’s show and I can only wish I was a child right now, seeing Entrapta’s adventures growing up instead of character after character who kind of sort of acts like me, but isn’t me.

Another example of exemplary representation of the spectrum is a short Pixar Animation Studios film called “Loop” featured on Disney+. This time, with a nonverbal autistic voice actress playing the role of nonverbal autistic character Renee.

This short film is centered on Renee, voiced by Madison Bandy, and Marcus, voiced by Christiano Delgado, and Marcus’ attempt to help Renee after he inadvertently causes Renee to have a meltdown. What I like about this portrayal is that Marcus isn’t made out to be a hero. I also greatly appreciate the discourse he has with Renee. He apologizes for scaring her and allows her time to regulate her emotions.

This film garnered attention from outside the autistic community and helped show an honest side to someone with different needs and behaviors, without making her struggles out to be a disease.

But this is still not enough. We need to continue to see good representation like this, especially with more explorations into intersectionality. We want to see gay autistic people, Black transgender autistic people and autistic people who are dealing with financial hardships. How do they navigate all these layers of discrimination and which ones affect them more? 

The autistic community certainly isn’t asking for much, are we? We want strong autistic characters who act like us and feel like us without having to apologize. We want to see those representing us actually care about the process and be willing to learn. And we want people to stop assuming they know what we look like and how we feel. Those on the spectrum are talking, it’s time for everyone else to start listening.

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