Bozeman Magazine

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, the American West saw an increase in anti-government and white supremacy extremism. Montana had a number of events where residents resisted the federal government culminating in the Montana Freemen, a group who engaged in an 81-day armed standoff with the FBI in the spring and summer of 1996. Why were western residents so angry at the federal government who they believed was, at best, ignoring rural western communities, and at worst, threatening their liberty and their lives? To answer this question, Dunn examines three rural Montana communities -- Denton, Jordan and Libby -- each of whom clashed with the government at the end of the century. While these conflicts developed for different reasons, residents’ responses to the encounters and the regulations imposed on them illustrate a continuum ranging from resigned irritation, to urgent pleas for help, to outright rebellion. Jennifer Dunn recently received her Ph.D. in history from Montana State University and is currently the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts & Architecture at Montana State University. Jennifer is an environmental historian who explores the connections between the resource extraction and far-right extremism in the 20th century American West.