Thicket. This is not a big grove. Not a bunch of yards from end to end. It is still pretty important for moving through a cultivated landscape. It is one of the few wild places that remain here in the valley floor. Time, bears here all the particularly in the fall when they are out looking for wild and mastic fruit. Actually, we have a willow tree back here, where a black bear was bedding for about a month and a half. A pretty gnarly willow, it has been used extensively by bears for a bedding. One bear was here for about a month last year. I will show you whats behind. If you come through here, you can see on the trunk of this tree, the way the bear has worn the bark from climbing up. Call marks, the spark here. You can see this pile of bear in the crook of this branch, just above here, they left a pile this big, which is pretty impressive. You can see the place where the bear was. This is all very close to our house. From where i lay my head at night. It is a good illustration of the ways that bears and humans use the same resources in this landscape. We are just northeast of montana, on the edge of an agricultural valley and behind me, you can see the southern edge of the mission range, these large peaks sticking up. The Rattlesnake Mountain range in this direction. Of theat the edge domesticated area, on the edge of wilderness. The book i have written is called down from the mountain. Workook is largely about that i was doing as a conservationist. I am the field director for a small nonprofit. Work that i was doing for them in Mission Valley just north of here, at the base of the mountains that you can see behind me, it is also the story of a grizzly bear named billy. Storyry and that bears converge and what that says about the state of things in the American West, in terms of the way that we interact with wild animals. Of the mainout one characters, one of the protagonists because of this work i was doing at the Mission Valley. I was here working on an experimental lecture electric fence that i thought could keep bears out of a 100 acre cornfield. It was a short fence, no more than two or three feet tall. It had shown promise in smaller scale test. I was here trying to use the fence for the first time in a small area, and it was important, because if we could do that, it was cheaper and easier to build in historic air fences. Corn,ld keep bears out of which is dangerous for them. They bring into contact with people and it does things physiologically to them, it makes them chronically obese, beyond a point that is good for a bear. I was working on that project and as part of that, i had a series of trail cameras set up around the court that monitored how bears interact and what i saw on one of those cameras one day was a deeply injured, damaged bear. Skin and bones, had a face that was just torn up by some kind of infection. The moment i saw it, i thought i felt a tremendous amount of concern and compassion that anybody would seeing an animal in that much pain. It was on deaths doorstep. She was inside my fence. She had somehow managed to cross, so our stories were entangled, because we were so close to each other and because i began to wonder about what had done that damage to her. What had torn her up so badly that she couldnt live even this food rich environment . So, the book is largely about trying to figure out what happened to her, and what her story was, which is a small story about a single animal. What that says about the way we treat bears and the way the future looks for them and for us. Me that ined to finding stories like millies, there is a lot going on here. We talk about the endangered species act. We are making a slow, steady steps in the lower 48. Moment, at this crucial because we have a population that has grown from 750 bears to a minimum count of 1850 bears now. We are seeing that growth and that is a good thing. We are seeing bears expand outward from the places where they historically have held on. Beings beginuman to use this landscape more intensively. People are coming in here all the time, there is more subdivision and fragmentation of habitat and that is a crucial problem. It is at this crucial moment where we have to decide how much space we are going to make for these wild animals, particularly likely grizzly. When you look at a landscape like the one behind me, you can see that human beings are in it, you can see the buildings, you can see that the fields have been tended, rock has been picked out of the fields. You dont see houses all over. You dont see such a density of people that it is unusual for a wild animal. We have to maintain that. There are ways we can do that. Showing collective restraint, which is a hard thing for people to do. We have not done with well well with that. If there is a place you can put a house and you run for generations of people through a landscape, they often put a house here. We have to break that. We have to be the first generation to leave the American West less settled and therefore more intact. That is what this book is about and what i hope to achieve in some small measure here. When i feel despair, it is because i look at the past. Every generation for the last couple hundred years out here has left it last intact, less whole than they found it. If we keep doing that, there is not going to be anything left, or rather, what is left will be these islands that are too rough to build upon and all of the corridor is that link places like that, where grizzly bears now survive and where they could thrive again, like to the south of here, they are filled up with people, so the animals cant move. We have to break that mold. When i feel hope about the future, it is because i think about the good work that is starting to be done. Easements protect part of private land from development. There is one on our farm. That is a great tool. It protects in perpetuity. It travels with the property. That is a profound thing we can do to make sure these landscapes stay open. Zoning has long been a dirty word in our part of the world, but we need to embrace it or the things we love about this, which is its willingness, as people bothractice agriculture, wild animals and ranchers depend on open lands for their living. Nugget that i want people to understand. , it is set up as this contest or conflict between people who want to practice agriculture in people who appreciate the value of wild animals. That is a completely false divide. There are places where there is friction between them and it will not always be a perfect anationship, but unfragmented landscape is common to both, and i want people to know that that is Common Ground that we have to stand and fight on, or we will lose conductivity in the west with wild animals and we will lose land for the purpose of agriculture. So, the bear at the heart of this book, her story is a sad one. She died as a result of her wounds, she wasted away in the cornfield until the tribal ,iologist had to put her down and that was one of the biggest acts of mercy ive ever been party to. She left two cubs and those cubs are now in the zoo in baltimore, and that is a really complicated thing for me. Cubs i see cubs like them in the wild and the way a bear behaves, what their life is like in the wild between the zoo, there is no comparison, often i think, is it better for cubs like that to be dead or in a zoo, and that, timmy, is an open question from their perspective. From our perspective, as a species that is more and more urbanized and that lacks connections to animals, it is a good thing for us. Having those cubs they are allows people to see them and connect with them who would otherwise have no idea about the species. We need that. I remember going to see these , sitting on ao railing looking into their exhibit and i was feeling really low and sad, and a woman came and sat next to me and we got to talking about the cubs. She said, i bring my children here. She had kids with her. Becausemy children here the next generation has to love animals. They have to know animals and i wish we could go to yellowstone and see them in that context, but we cant. This is what we have, and this is enough to form a connection. That is what happened to those cubs and i feel bad every time i think about them being there, because i know way bears life is like out here, and i know the distance they dropped. Go halfway up this mountain you can see behind me. But i also know what the cubs are doing there. They are being ambassadors for their species, and i hope they are helping people realize that there is true value in having these animals on the landscape, and we need to do things, even difficult things, to make sure they stay. Announcer 1 the cspan cities tour is exploring the american story. Up next, local author beth judy on her book, old women in montana history. Today, we are at Fort Missoula, in the western part of the valley. Is a beloved place for many millions. We come here to walk our dogs and we attend presentations here. The Forest Service is often here in the Historical Museum is here. There is a lot of history here. There used to be more buildings from different eras. There is an old cemetery i like to go to and visit. Here, the sweat lodge native students at the university of montana, the river is right over there, and it is a beautiful spot. The bold women series started at Mountain Crest publisher several years ago, over 10 years ago. It is a statebystate series that focuses on women who have made a difference, who have great stories, who may not be known or who may be very well known. Each book is a collection of chapters that takes the womans life as a subject. I love all of these women, and you kind of have to to write about them. You learn about what happened to them and what motivated them to do things. Sometimes that takes research. Love all of them, but eloise was so persistent and dedicated to righting a wrong that had been going on for over 100 years. Starting in 1887, the United States government divvied up some indian reservations from communal ownership to individual ownership. At that time, they said you dont really know how to use banks, you dont know about money, we will be your bank. For bothe the bank tribes and individual people. And so, when they divvied up the landvations, people had that could make them money. For of it was good agriculture, some had oil on it. These were all sources of income, and the government said, we will make sure we get that making money for you, and they did, but it turned out that there were many problems with this system, people would have five oil rigs on their land, but get 60 per year. We are talking some of the poorest people in the United States. There was also great trouble in getting their money out. Say, igo to a bank and want 25, goodbye. Wantwould go and say, i 25, and they would say, we cant give that to you today. There was all kinds of trouble in getting money when they needed it. Eloise is like a joan of arc, because she grew up hearing about this problem, because her parents were tribal leaders. She studied accounting in college and then was hired in the 1980s, in her early 30s, to become the treasurer of the blackfeet nation. As an accountant, she was flummoxed. They were just a mess. They didnt make any sense. The hero ofed indian affairs, the department of treasury and said, can you help, i dont understand this. She never really got good answers. She reached out to other tribal treasures, they said, we know exactly what you are talking about. It is our problem also. She went to congress. A lot of people were not interested in helping her figure this out, but a representative from oklahoma had many native constituents and he said, i will help you figure this out. They did a congressional investigation and found terrible malfeasance in dealing with records and dealing with peoples money. Amazingly, even though the department of the treasury, department of the interior or issued warnings, told they had to change this, they had to write this wrong, nothing changed. So, eloise couldnt believe it, but she went to another meeting in washington with all of these officials, and i think they saw her as a complainer and said, sue us. She said, ok, i will. 1996 that she and a native American Rights Organization and one of the foremost banking lawyers in the country all brought suits on behalf of eloise as they lead plaintiff, but over 300,000 other native people around the country, who were individual account holders. It took 16 years. It didnt matter whether the president was democrat or republican, it was a tough cattle. The government again and again she was proven right, but the government would appeal. They had hundreds of lawyers working on it. Finally, i think it was after 13 years, there was a settlement. It was the largest Class Action Settlement that anyone has ever won against the government. Yearsll took three more and unfortunately, she died andre she got any money, before the case was absolutely picture but there is a of her shaking hands with president obama. That is when it was mostly and she had and victory. Is the onlykin native missourian in my book and she is of national importance, because she was the first woman to go to congress. She went in 1917, she was elected in 1916. This is before women had the vote, but jeanette had worked really hard to get womens suffrage passed in montana. Driven crisscross our very large state trying to get everyone to support womens doing, shend in so kind of unwittingly laid the groundwork for her own election to congress, which she believed was important so that people in the United States could see that a woman could handle that job, and she felt that would help the whole country support suffrage. She was not just important to in montana. She worked hard across the country for suffrage. Starting in washington state, but she worked in california, in the south, in the midwest. Effective, because she had studied public speaking, even though she had been shy, and she became a mesmerizing speaker. She worked hard at whatever she fixand she really wanted to the ills that affected our country. , she went torson new york and boston and saw the slums and poverty there. The problems immigrants had. She decided she had to do something about it. She was part of the progressive era. Women in American History, there are so many cool, wonderful, amazing women who have contributed so much. It is fun sometimes to think, how are these women specific to montana . Does montana add into the mix of wife they were so bold . Think there is hardship in montana, especially in the olden days, but even now, there is. That makes people appreciate these women so much. When there is hardship, you learn to become selfsufficient and you learn that no one else may help you. You have to help yourself. That gives you a certain kind of freedom. All of these women grew up with that kind of freedom and they also grew up with economic hardship, and therefore, the roles that women were assigned in parts of the United States that were older and had more money, those rules didnt apply here. Girl children had to work, just like weight children. To break horses just like boys did. Jeannette rankin built a sidewalk for her fathers hotel, because she could. There are many examples like that. Inspired in my own life by the example of other women and men, and i know what it feels like to be inspired, to ask for help and to get it, and what a huge difference that makes in our lives. Some younge it if woman or young man reads my book and says, ok, i want to do x, i am going to go for it, or i am having a hard time right now, but Jeanette Rankin overcame having a mentally ill mother and a hard childhood, i can, too. Koval made a huge difference for indian people across the country, grew up poor. I can do that, too. Our visit tomissoula continues with the visit with a former senator talking about his book political hellraiser. Wheeleror burton k represented in the United States senate from 1943 until 1947. He was nominally a democrat for most of his career but an extremely independent politician. He was controversial and consequential. In that 24 years that he served , there are very few things domestically or internationally that he did not have his hands on in one way or another. Wheeler was a progressive democrat. There were republican progressives, people like william bohr from idaho. Shared certain common. Haracteristics a real independence for one thing. All opposed tot concentrated power. Big banks, wall street, utility companies. Certainly the anaconda mining was an adversary of wheelers. It really dominated montana politics. There are several big accomplishments that wheeler deserves credit for. The biggest thing he did came in 1937. He had been a big supporter of innklin roosevelt election 1932. Pretty quickly after the election he soured on parts of the new deal. While hes a worded most of the legislation, he came to have some different opinions on the direction the new deal was headed. He was concerned about the growing power of the federal government and presidency. Wins anafter roosevelt in normas reelection in a landslide his words were he was going to reform this in court. Really, it amounted to packing the court. He wanted to add six new justices the court, taking the size from nine members to 15. A democrat andgh had been supportive of the Roosevelt Program resisted that. Not just from the sidelines but he became a senate leader. Splintered their personal and political relationship. He deserves a great deal of credit for saving the supreme court, the independence of the court. When roosevelt had the make itity to subservient to the federal branch of government and wheeler stop that. That among other things ranks high on his accomplishments. 1935 he sponsored what was then act,d the wheelerrayburn the Public Utilities holding act. 1935, the american elected Utility Industry had been dominated by 13 huge Utility Holding companies. Believed these Holding Companies were in essence a scheme to enrich a few very wealthy people at the top end of the Holding Company pyramid. Roosevelts help he set about to dismantle the big Holding Companies. They succeeded. I think it was the biggest fight of roosevelt presidency in many ways. In terms of legisl