Stating you are a (third, fourth) generation Montanan is a way of saying you are aware of and have participated in the unique characteristics of a way of life here, things like hunting, fishing, working in a hayfield, tending livestock, fighting a forest fire, understanding the Indian people, knowing whether or not you're a 'cowboy' and accepting the realization you aren't a cowboy but that it's OK to wear a cowboy hat and boots anyway. It's like a suited up attorney from Delaware saying he graduated from Harvard Law School. It defines him/her as something. It's when that identity is disregarded and disrespected as something insignificant and meaningful that we Montanans buck a little. We want you here only if you like it here as it currently exists. If you want to change things dramatically, frankly, stay away. I took history from the great K.Ross Toole whose final exhortation to his 300-plus class of history freshmen was to fight against the powers that would strip our state of its character in a relentless reach for wealth. The show 'Yellowstone" is the current iteration of the Anaconda Mining Company that stripped the wealth from the Berkeley Pit in Butte and left us the tailings, the putrid water in the gaping pit and countless deaths from the careless mining of the area by hideous disease and pounding poverty. Thanks Kevin Costner. For nothing at all. You can take the money and leave now. But please, don't come back here.
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