In popular culture, protagonists and antagonists battle eternally for Montana’s precious land. Country folk fight off city folk in Yellowstone and the podcast Land Grab: A Podcast About the Place We Call Montana. Long before that Montana (1950) pit sheep farmers against cattle farmers. In Last of the Dogmen (1995) cowboys faced Cheyenne Indians. Of the 14 major film/TV projects scheduled to be shot in Montana, every single one involves some take on the battle for Montana’s soul. And Montana’s soul is in its land…
Land conflicts have led to at least one recent murder, but despite Yellowstone’s depiction of ranchers (our heroes) massacring greedy real estate developers with machine guns, so far Montana hot wars have been relegated to fiction.
More interesting to me were the parts of Montana I saw by accident. A new coldness grips the relationship between visitors and locals. I first noticed it at the ranch. Six years ago the kitchen helpers were a happy mix of blue collar whites, hispanics, and native Americans. The chef was known for his thoughtful local cuisine, elk with au jus, beef burgers from ranch cattle, loaded baked potatoes, hearty mac and cheese. The servers wore big smiles. The progressive boomers attending the reunion were comfortable with this type of staff, the same hodgepodge they interacted with at home. Much backslapping occurred.
This time, the help had clearly experienced a vibe shift. They were all white, and distant. The food was awful—boiled carrots and reheated pork steaks, clearly the result of some Aramark-type lowest-bidder supply chain. The new staff had been mostly hired on Coolworks, a website for low paid service jobs on ranches, resorts, and other “great places.” They came from the surrounding towns, forgotten about, left behind, bright red Trump country. Young women with sloped posture and heavy eyeshadow, barely 18. Their clothes don’t fit, they looked impoverished, hungry, skittering. The young chef who had once proudly presented his take on local food was gone. The guests no longer chatted with servants. There was separation and silence. Read more…
