In this interview with Bozeman octogenarian, Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel, recorded on Jan. 12, 2020, she recounts her and her family’s lives from before her birth in Plentywood, MT to the present in Bozeman, which she wrote about in her memoir, WAITING FOR THE REVOLUTION: A Montana Memoir.
Her father, Rodney Salisbury, was the Communist Sheriff of Sheridan County, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Montana in 1932. Her mother, Marie Chapman Hansen, was a journalist. Wed to other spouses, who refused to grant them divorces, they defied small town conventions to live their free love, while organizing farmers and ranchers to resist foreclosures and other inequities of “Main Street”.
Through the lens of her ancestors’ and her own experiences, she illuminates the way things were in Montana from the 19th century to the present.
What happens when a family decides to devote themselves to creating a more healing world and gathers materials from nature and engage their own creativity to make toys for children bychildren? What if this is part of bringing into reality a vision of community healing the harm of generations of trauma experienced by First Nations people? What if the busy parents ask for assistance from a local church group, and a group of elder women joins in?
In October of 2019, some of those Elders from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bozeman, “Kaalas” in the language of the Crow, brought us to the home of Drs. of Education Megkian and Shane Doyle, where we were welcomed by four of their five children: 6 year old twins, Blake and Quanah, 9 year old Lillian, and 11 year old Ruby. They shared with us their vision of the Family Healing Center, and why they created The Native American Children’s Toy Company.
Every 10th toy the children make is given to a Native American child currently in foster care with this letter: “…. No matter what happens, you will always have a home and a homeland with your people…”
Megkian (center), Quanah (left) & Blake (right) write words in English & Crow on stones to create “Story Stones”. Players pull stones from a bag & then make up stories from them. Kaalla, Ita Kileen, in the background works on a hoop for “Sticks & Hoops”.
Quanah Doyle works on a project. A bag of “Story Stones” are in front of him.
Lilian (left) & Ruby (right) Megkian (back)
From left to right: Ruby, Brooklyn, Kaalas Robyn Lauster & Kitty Donich (photo by Megkian Doyle)
From left to right: Blake, Lily’s friend, Elizabeth, Lily, Ita Killeen, Kitty Donich in back. (photo by Megkian Doyle)
Ruby (left) & friend, Brooklyn, (right)
Lilian (left) & friend, Lia, play “Story Stones”.
Quanah demonstrates “Stick & Hoop”
Unless otherwise credited, all photos courtesy of Kaala, Robyn Lauster. The family photo at top is by Arnica Spring Rae.
On this edition of Ecotones, we hear from local Bozemanites, Dr. Mary M. Clare, Ph.D. and author, Gary Ferguson, about their work in evolving the concept of Full Ecology. How regaining our sense of kinship, relationship and interconnection, and being guided by balance, rhythm and harmony, we can survive and thrive the disruptions of our personal embedded environments, and the greater environments of which we are a natural part. Gary is The author of 26 books, the latest of which is THE EIGHT MASTER LESSONS OF NATURE: WHAT NATURE TEACHES US ABOUT LIVING WELL IN THE WORLD, published by Dutton.
Les AuCoin represented Oregon’s 1st Congressional District from 1975 to 1992. At the age of 32, he was the first Democrat to do so since 1936. After serving 18 years, he gave up his seat to run for the US Senate against incumbent Republican Senator Bob Packwood, who although winning that race, resigned under threat of expulsion in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault of women emerged.
In this interview he shares his thoughts and experiences as one of the first cohort to be seated after Richard Nixon’s resignation under threat of impeachment in 1974, “The Watergate Babies.”
It was recorded on December 18,1019, as the US House of Representatives was impeaching Donald J. Trump .
Born in the Civil Rights era of the Southern U.S., Susan Neiman has spent most of the last four decades in Berlin. She is the Director of The Einstein Forum. Her latest book is Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Among the many things she reminds us of in her book is that the Nazi regime lasted only 12 years – from 1933 to 1945. Likewise, the period we call “Reconstruction” also lasted only 12 years from 1865 to 1877. She quotes her colleague, the late Tony Judt: the historian’s task (is) “to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well-organised society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves”.
What can Americans learn from the Germans about confronting and moving on from our racist past toward more social justice? Susan Neiman has much to share of what she has learned from the Germans.
What can we learn of what Southerners have done and are doing to heal the wounds of our past? Susan has much to share of what she has learned in Mississippi and Alabama.
Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host. He’s a New York Times bestselling, 4-times Project Censored Award-winning author of 24 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Among his many books are Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It; Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” – And How You Can Fight Back; Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom Hartmann’s book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, to make the movie “The 11th Hour” (in which he appears). His latest books are in his Hidden History Series: The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment and The Hidden History of The Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, both published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. In it, Thom Hartmann address questions such as Why did the founders create the Supreme Court? What is judicial review – and how does it make the Supreme Court what thomas Jefferson, post-1803 – a despotic branch? How does the history of the US Constitution explain the Court’s frequent decisions in favor of the wealthy and corporations? The HAS the Court sided with popular opinion – and how have people successfully challenged the Court in the past? How did a 20th Century coalition of business and billionaires seize control of the American government, including the Supreme Court? How did America’s great democratic experiment end in a functional oligarchy? Most important, how can we change course in time to address the planetary crisis of climate change?
University of Notre Dame History professor, Darren Dochuk is the author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plainfolk religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, which has received numerous prizes and awards. He has also co-edited several other books in American history, including most recently, The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States. His most recent book is ANOINTED WITH OIL: HOW CHRISTIANITY AND CRUDE MADE MODERN AMERICA, published by Basic Books.
“Power is never so overwhelming that there’s no room for resistance.” Henry Giroux
In this interview with Professor Henry Giroux, we discuss his latest book, THE TERROR OF THE UNFORESEEN, published by LARB Provocations, from The Los Angeles Review of Books. Just the latest of over 65 books he has written.
Henry Giroux is the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest & The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. The Toronto Star has named him one of the 12 Canadians Changing the Way We Think. He has also been named in Routledge’s Key Guides as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period. He is on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly journals. He is on the Board of Directors for Truthout.
Henry Giroux is a regular contributor to a number of online journals including Truthout, Truthdig, and CounterPunch. He has published in journals including Social Text, Third Text, Cultural Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Theory, Culture, & Society, and Monthly Review.
His primary research areas are: cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education. He is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neoliberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe.
In this interview recorded on July 25, 2019, John Taliaferro discusses the extraordinary life of George Bird Grinnell, largely forgotten to conservation history. His book, Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer & His Restless Drive to Save the West, is published by Liveright Publishing, a division of W. W. Norton.
Grinnell is credited with being the first person of European descent to explore what is today Glacier National Park, as well as being instrumental in its creation
He was a founder of the Audubon Society and published The Audubon Magazine.
Grinnell was a prolific writer on many topics, including hunting, conservation, the ethnology of numerous Native American tribes, and novels about Jack, a Western boy.
Childless himself, he wrote the “Jack” books for his nephews:
In 1959, when she was 23 years old, Anne Phillips sang on her first album, BORN TO BE BLUE. It received excellent reviews, but the burgeoning Rock & Roll overshadowed it.
She has had a long and varied career since then, including back-up singer to Carole King and others, composing jingles for ad agencies, composing operas and liturgical music.
Her Nativity musical, Bending Toward the Light, has been produced for decades in Manhattan, featuring some of the jazz greats of the era.
Anne Phillips has been on the faculty of the Jazz Department at NYU, music Director for the 9AM service at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church and was a National Trustee of NARAS, the Recording Academy.
With her late husband, Bob Kindred, she formed a non-profit, Kindred Spirits, which created Children’s Jazz Choirs.
You can find out more about Anne Phillips and her work here:
He was a founder of the Audubon Society and published The Audubon Magazine.
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