Mark Johnson, a fellow with the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, examines connections between Butte’s Chinese community and their relatives in southern China, a region beset by natural disasters and political upheavals that caused many to seek opportunities abroad. With these pressures from home combined with restrictions in Montana from certain professions, life was not easy for these Chinese Montanans.

Greg LeDonne—winner of Montana The Magazine of Western History’s 2021 emerging scholar contest—reviews how the Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association, a group of Idaho ranchers, employed neoliberal rhetoric in advocating for their use of public lands around and during the Rangeland Reform ’94 debate. LeDonne focuses on the way in which a national discourse filtered down to the community level and became adapted to reflect local needs and economic interests.

Diana Di Stefano, MHS editor and publications manager, looks at how five generations of ranchers in Wyoming have adapted to changing economic and environmental circumstances. She uses oral histories to explore themes of belonging, thoughts on tourism, real estate development, and the cattle industry.

Scott Rosenthal, mining department head, and Shannon Panisko, Montana Tech Foundation director of annual giving, share stories of Clara Clark of Butte and Isabel Little of Baltimore, Maryland. In 1904, Clark and Little were among the first class of students to receive degrees from Tech’s new mining engineering department. Today, 25 percent of the department’s students are women.

The Miss Indian America Pageant was held from 1953 to 1984 as part of Sheridan, Wyoming’s annual All-American Indian Days. In More Than “Indian Princesses,” recent Montana State University graduate Dr. Andi Powers explores the ways in which contestants served as important cultural ambassadors, participating in presidential inaugurations, appearing on popular television and radio broadcasts, and working on important projects on both local and national levels, such as the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indian People.

Jeff Malcomson takes the audience on a guided introduction to the MHS Photograph Archives by reviewing the repository’s development over the years and surveying several of its major collections. He shares dozens of photographs from these collections and also reveals current and future projects for the Photo Archives.

Beginning in 1870, supplies, trade goods, immigrants, adventurers—and whiskey—traveled the now-legendary Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton to the eponymous Alberta trading post. In Tales of Whoop-Up Country, Great Falls historian and author Ken Robison relates how the absence of law and order forced the Canadian government to create the North-West Mounted Police to close down the whiskey trade and force traders back across the border into Montana.

Montana State University professor Dr. Mary Murphy details the story of Montana artist Elizabeth Davey Lochrie. From her home on Butte’s West Side, Lochrie crafted a life as artist, mother, clubwoman, and ally to Montana’s native peoples. A Western painter in the tradition of Charlie Russell, Lochrie is best known for her portraits of Native Americans, but she was a prolific artist who also painted landscapes of urban Butte and rural Montana.

MHS senior curator Jennifer Bottomly-O’looney shares images and stories of artist Voldemar Podder. Podder—a physician who was displaced from his native Estonia during World War II—spent twelve years in various European refugee camps where he learned to paint. Always continuing his artwork, he immigrated to the United States in 1956, landing first in Warm Springs, Montana, then, in 1963, relocating to Butte. Podder was a prolific artist whose unique and enigmatic style reflects the life he lived and the people he knew.

University of Montana environmental studies professor Dr. Rosalyn LaPier shares photographs by Ella Mad Plume Yellow Wolf. Yellow Wolf—who was LaPier’s great-aunt and whose images are now in MHS’s collection—documented life on the Blackfeet Reservation in the early 1940s, providing an intimate look at children and community, employment and work life, military involvement, and religious practice, both Christian and Native.