Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 119 lain as the murderous cowboy mafia, meth-dealers, and (of course) real-estate developers who fill out its rogue's gallery. In Yellowstone, you know someone's a villain if they mention State or National Parks, or if they so much as suggest that the Dutton Ranch, the mega-sized, billion-dollar Paradise Valley spread at its center, should be public or protected land. That kind of talk'll get you taken to the train station. For my part, I've lived in Montana my whole life, with the exception of second and third grade, when my dad's railroad job took him to (horror of horrors) North Dakota. Aside from that brief sojourn, I've lived here for 35 of my 37 years. But, because I was the kind of Montanan who preferred watch- ing Jeremiah Johnson to actually going camping, I've often been called a not real Montanan. And that's even though I love Westerns, listen to Marty Robbins religiously, and have read A River Runs Through It four times. Nevermind that I've never gone fly-fishing - never even caught a fish, in fact. Recently, a man in a Car- hartt hat and a lip full of snoose shouted at me that my 1992 Ford Crown Victoria, the best I can afford at the paltry sums I make as a freelance writer and retail manager, isn't a real vehicle—"real Montanans drive trucks!" For all that, I'd still like to say I'm a real Montanan. It makes me wonder if peo- ple in New York do the same thing—"WHAT? You've never had a bagel with lox? You're not a real New Yorker!" I understand, of course, that the notion that transplants are somehow evil, or lesser, is a byproduct of the fraught world of Montana real estate—many feel that the state's best plots are being snatched up by out-of-state interests, leaving only the leftovers for the rest of us. And as someone who once lived in Bozeman until I was no longer able to afford the two-room apartment I occupied because the rent kept going up and up, I sympathize with that viewpoint. In fact, I'm not wholly un- able to disagree with Yellowstone's vilification of Bozeman; it's true that the ski resorts, Yellowstone Club, and giant tech companies are making it pretty hard for the little guy to get by. In the odd duality of Belgrade and Bozeman, in which Bel- grade looks at Bozeman as the bastion of the enemy, we have the "real" Montanan vs. transplant debate in miniature. Of course, Yellowstone name-checks Bozeman once per episode, and sometimes Livingston too, but to my knowledge has nev- er even mentioned Belgrade—it's probably not pretty enough for the show's location scouts to consider it. Montana's profoundly divided politics compound the problem. A map of the state election results show a small handful of blue islands in a sea of red—but that's nothing all that different from other states, or even the whole coun- try. Take Texas: for all the discussion on CNN and Fox News about how it's going blue, it remains a polka dot print of blue and red. I wonder: do some Texans think they're more real than others? I suppose they might. But then, I've heard a lot lately about great swaths of rural Texans, incensed at how Texas isn't the real Texas anymore, have upped and come to Montana. I also wonder if a "real" Texan gets to be counted as a "real" Montanan, or just a particularly odious transplant. After all, we're justifiably proud of Steinbeck's assertion that (and I'm paraphrasing here) Texas is just a fake Montana. The absurdity of our situation is laid bare when we consid- er that only 6.5% of Montana's population is truly "native:" the other 93.5% of us moved here at some point. If we think we have it bad with all the out-of-staters coming here, imag- ine how pissed off the Indians were. But no, come to think of it, even the Native Americans came here thousands of years ago, invading our beautiful land by way of the Bering Strait, not quite so underwater then, and then strolling all the way south through Canada until they got here and decided to set up shop. I guess the only "real" Montanans are bison, moose, wolf, elk, and squirrels. Certainly not the horse, which was brought here by loathsome transplants in the early 16th century. Forgive me, I'm getting a little carried away. I guess what I'm saying is that the idea that only some Montanans are real while others are somehow fictitious is untenable. Prick the "fake" ones, and you'll find they bleed. Take their money, and you'll find it spends. So it seems to me that the more relevant metric by which to judge other Montanans, if indeed we need to judge them at all, is by whether or not they're total jerks. If they come to Montana and throw beer cans on the side of the road (some- thing, by the way, I've seen presumably "real" Montanans do), then they're probably jerks. If they come and try to pet a bison, or put their kids up on a fluffy cow's shoulders for a great Instagram picture, that's not so smart either. Oh, and this one is for all the Native Americans out there: if they promise to leave you alone that the Great Father back east loves and cares for you, but they keep breaking their own treaties, then, by all means, look at them askew. For my money, we're all "real" Montanans. But some of us are more respectful than others. "you're not a real montanan."

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