A couple of months ago, I was driving back from a hunting trip in southeast Montana and a billboard in Lockwood caught my eye. The text reads: Onward Pioneers. The photo is of a man wearing a backpack overlooking a beautiful Montana vista with the Visit Billings logo prominently displayed.  

I immediately went to the Visit Billings website to see if this was a one-off billboard or if it was part of a broader tourism campaign. It’s not a one-off. 

The new Visit Billings tagline is: “Today is ours for the taking – tomorrow too.” 

There are two more billboards that I have personally seen. One is between Laurel and Billings with the text, “Conquer New Endeavors” over a photo of a little girl eating ice cream.

Then, there is the other one. When a friend told me about it, I thought, no, it can’t be possible that Visit Billings would put up an Onward Pioneers billboard on the Crow Reservation. I wanted to double check so I drove out there to see for myself. I passed the Little Bighorn Battlefield and didn’t see one but I kept driving to Lodge Grass.

On the way back I saw it, right before Garryowen, very close to the place where the 7th Calvary was hoping to wipe out the rest of the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota Tribes.

The billboard has the words onward pioneers overlaid on a photo of three young women in a wildflower meadow on top of the Beartooth Pass.

Someone thought this was a good idea.

Manifest Destiny

Let’s take a step back into history and talk about Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is a term used to describe the 19^th century doctrine or belief that it was the country’s divine destiny and right to expand westward to fill the American continent. The philosophy drove U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans from their land and genocide that followed. My family benefited from it. Both sides of my family homesteaded in North Dakota and Montana.  

The language being used by Visit Billings is the same language that was used to justify the genocide of Native Americans: onward pioneer, conquer, take, it’s ours. Words have definitions. Words have histories. Those words in this geographical place cannot be used without putting them in this context.

Today is ours for the taking, tomorrow too. All I hear in that statement is: the land is ours for the taking.

Manifest Destiny is a concept inextricably tied to race; the Visit Billings slogan makes me wonder what groups of people were meant to be included in the word “ours.” Judging by the website’s photos they are using in this campaign, it means white men, white women, and white families.

The very few photos of Native Americans I could find that are included on the website are from Crow Fair, as if that is the only thing that Native Americans do, as if they aren’t a part of our community, as if they aren’t people who mountain bike, hike and eat at restaurants (see every other photo on the website).

Onward History Buffs

Let’s take a trip to the history section of the website. This page features six pioneers: Yellowstone Kelly, Lewis and Clark, Calamity Jane, Preston Boyd Moss and Frederick Billings. The paragraph about Lewis and Clark doesn’t mention Sacajawea, who was the only reason they were able to do what they did. So much could be said about this.

The fact that no Native Americans are included in the main profiles is not shocking, considering the pioneer/conquering theme of the campaign. Visit Billings is right about one thing: Natives weren’t pioneers. Native Americans were killed or forcibly removed from land so pioneers could settle here. I guess that is an inconvenient fact that doesn’t really fit with the theme.  

Native American culture gets a couple of grammatically bothersome and factually inaccurate paragraphs at the bottom of the history page in a swipeable banner. 

The Northern Cheyenne Reservation, established in 1884, boasts many notable attractions including a historical buffalo jump, burial sites of Indian Chiefs, Custer’s last camp before the Battle of the Little Bighorn and St. Labre Indian School.

Where do I begin? First, I’m pretty sure the background photo being used for the Northern Cheyenne paragraph is a photo of members of the Crow Tribe during Crow Fair. Prove me wrong. I’ll admit it if I am. 

Second, burial sites of Northern Cheyenne leaders who brought their people home after being forcibly removed to Oklahoma are not tourist attractions. My brain almost exploded when I read this. I’ve never heard a Cheyenne “boast” of them. I have heard many stories of bravery and loss and hope, however. I’ve heard my Cheyenne friends talk about how their ancestors fought for them and went through unimaginable hardships to return their people back to the Tongue River country.* What I haven’t heard is any Northern Cheyenne say that they should commercialize and advertise the graves of their ancestors.

Third, let’s take a moment to talk about the “establishment” of reservations. The reservation system was created under the assumption that if the Native Americans who survived the genocide of their people, could be confined to one particular geographical place, they would become “civilized” and assimilated. For many years, they were not permitted to leave, except by permission, and those who left without this permission were arrested and punished or killed. So, if by “established,” Visit Billings means that a group of people were forced onto a piece of land, imprisoned on that land, and then had their children taken away and sent to boarding schools to be assimilated, then yes, I guess the Northern Cheyenne Reservation was “established” in 1884.

Then, Visit Billings tackles the apparently difficult task of describing the Crow Tribe.

Established in 1851, the Crow Reservation’s original name was the “Apsaalooke,” which in native tongue means ‘children of the large-beaked bird.’ Over time, this misinterpretation turned the tribe into the “Crow.” 

The Crow name is an English mistranslation of their tribal name which is Apsáalooke. Apsáalooke is not their “original” name. It is their name.

Mistranslation didn’t “turn” them into anything. They are still the Apsáalooke. Also, see my previous comments on the establishment of reservations.

Onward Roadtrippers: Dead Indian Pass 

Take in panoramic views at Dead Indian Pass and the rich history of our state along the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce Indians out of Yellowstone National Park and into Montana along this same route in 1877.

Another one for those History Buffs, Custer’s Last Loop takes you along the historic path of the Indian Wars. Stop at Fort Custer, Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reservations, and Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, to name a few.

There are a couple things here that jump out at me. The first being is that it seems Visit Billings’s idea of including Native American history and culture in their campaign is to only include events and places that involve battles or efforts of the U.S. military to pursue Native Americans and kill them or put them on reservations.

Native Americans have been here for 15,000 years, if not longer. The last couple hundred years of war, settlement and genocide is not their only history. And if anyone is going to write copy about Native American culture for the Visit Billings website, it needs to come from the Tribes themselves, not the intern. 

I don’t know about you, but the proximity of the words “Dead Indian Pass” to “the rich history of our state” seems completely out of line, as is describing Chief Joseph’s attempt to save his people from being slaughtered by the military as little more than a day hike.

Can I just put in a request now that the Nez Perce Tribe renames that pass to whatever they see fit?

What’s next for Visit Billings? 

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this entire situation. How did this happen, Visit Billings? Tell me how it happened. I want to know. 

It’s not my place to say what should be done; that’s for Native American members of our community to decide, but I will tell you a couple things that seem important to do.

The Billings Chamber of Commerce should officially apologize to all of Montana’s tribal nations, especially to the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Tribes. I’d expect it to be a real apology, not an “Oops, we didn’t know.” This campaign doesn’t contain some innocuous mistake; this campaign is a manifestation of the structural and overt racism that exists in our community. 

Visit Billings should immediately remove all the materials associated with this campaign: website, travel guide, billboards, and whatever other content has been created. That content should be archived and used as an anti-racism teaching tool for schools, organizations, and businesses.

Then, during their next stab at a tourism campaign they need to involve the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and Crow Tribe. It would also be nice if the photographs that were used showed the actual diversity that Billings and the surrounding area has, not just pretty, fit, white people recreating outside. 

I have an idea for a new slogan though.

Instead of “Today is ours for the taking – tomorrow too” we should just go with “Billings – we have a lot of work to do.”

I want to apologize to all of my Native American friends, because in no way is what I wrote adequate to address this topic. This issue deserves more from someone who can speak from the depth of personal experience about the racism and exclusion that is so interwoven into Montana culture that this was allowed to happen. I hope that someone better suited to write and speak about this topic will do so.

*On a cold winter night in January of 1879, Chief Dull Knife and 140 Northern Cheyenne people broke out of the Fort Robinson barracks in Nebraska, where they had been held in captivity, starved and beaten, and began their journey home, to the Tongue River valley in southeastern Montana. The ancestors of the Northern Cheyenne people fought for their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren in the middle of winter, starving and without supplies. The United States military hunted them down and killed many of them; men, women and children. Descendants of the outbreak survivors tell stories of children imprisoned in the barracks using their fingernails to scrape frost off the windows for water.