William “Snuffy” Main, a member of the Gros Ventre tribe, leaves the remaining satellite voting office in Fort Belknap on the day of Montana’s 2020 primary election. “A lot of Indians do not trust mail,” he said.
Photo: Terri Long Fox/Terri Long Fox
When election season rolls around every two years, the approximately 2,400 eligible voters living in the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana’s central plains start getting a lot of phone calls. Gerald “Bear Shirt” Stiffarm is often the voice on the other end of the line.
Fort Belknap sits on roughly 1,000 square miles; its vast grasslands, where buffalo graze, and its dramatic mountain buttes make up about 25 percent of Blaine County. The main road is a two-lane highway that snakes through the rolling hills. Two Native American tribes, the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine, call this land home.