Economic Disparity in the Treasure State
Montana’s history is packed with exploitation. Its moniker, The Treasure State, originally denoted the presence of Montana’s precious commodities, especially gold, silver, copper, platinum, garnets, and sapphires. The official state motto is Oro y Plata, which means “gold and silver” in Spanish. The state is also replete with saleable timber, vast stretches of farm and ranch land, and places to recreate. Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and fifty-five state parks attract millions of visitors to Montana each year. Those visitors spend billions.
All this wealth and yet many of Montana’s citizens (just over one million at last count) struggle, mightily, to earn a decent living. In 2022, per capita income in the state was $57,719, a ranking of thirty-fifth place among the fifty states. Unfortunately, that’s cause for celebration. It used to be much lower. And more unfortunately still, that statistic is skewed by Gallatin County (where the town of Bozeman is the county seat), which, because of wealthy pandemic immigrants, reported nearly twice the per capita income gains as the rest of the state during 2020-21.
The disparity began long ago, back in the 1860s—the gold rush decade—when wealthy individuals and business entities extracted Montana’s valuable resources and then exported them and the profits—often destroying the environment, and sometimes people, in the process. The discovery of precious minerals wreaked devastation on the lives, cultures, and lands of native people. Their ancestors had inhabited territories inside what eventually became Montana’s state boundaries for thousands of years. Those tribes, as they were named by the colonizers and as they call themselves, are:
1. Salish / Sélish
2. Pend d’Oreille / Ql̓ispé
3. Kootenai / Ksanka
4. Blackfeet / Niitsitapi (Pikuni)
5. Chippewa (Ojibwe) / Annishinabe
6. Plains Cree / Ne-i-yah-wahk
7. Gros Ventre / A’aninin
8. Assiniboine / Nokado, Nakona
9. Sioux / Lakota, Dakota
10. Northern Cheyenne / Tsetsêhesêstâhase and So'taa'eo'o
11. Crow / Apsáalooke
12. Little Shell Chippewa / Annishinabe and Métis
These days, Montana’s treasure is defined less by mineral content and more by lifestyle: access to outdoor recreation, small-town living, safe schools, and wide-open spaces. Once again, however, the environment is taking a beating and the economic inequality that began more than one hundred and fifty years ago continues to grow.
In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed Bozeman’s transformation from a small college town to a small city. Lately, however, the growth has accelerated. It’s been difficult to watch huge machines eviscerate fertile farmland and wildlife habitat. The rate at which pastures and wheat fields have disappeared under houses, apartment buildings, restaurants, stores, and entertainment venues has been shocking. But new people need places to live, of course, and a larger airport.
Most of Montana’s silver and gold is gone now, exported, the money spent elsewhere. How, I wonder, can we protect the rest of our treasure? How can we preserve the natural beauty of this land with its trouty rivers, hiking trails, ski slopes, wildlife habitats, and big sky vistas? How can we create a quality of life that includes financial stability for humans as well as healthy ecosystems for our mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and native plants?
Chérie Newman, September 2023
This is the “Author’s Note” from my book, Other People’s Pets: Critters, Careers, and Capitalism in Yellowstone Country
