A Racist Runs Through It

As the government-fighting Bundy brothers stand trial this month, supporters are quick to separate their anti-public lands crusade from their racist tirades. But a historical review finds that in the Wild West, privatization and hatred have always been in

Illustrations by Eros Dervishi

When the neo-Nazi and his acolyte came to my high school, I dimly thought racism was just a history or geography lesson. I was born and raised in Missoula, Montana, a friendly college town cut through by great trout rivers and surrounded by mountainous national forests protected more than a century ago by President Theodore Roosevelt. I was also a white teen in the middle of one of the whitest regions in the country. To introduce my class to ideas outside our pine-fresh bubble, our teacher invited as guest speakers the late Richard Butler, who founded the Aryan Nations in Northern Idaho, and his onetime associate John Trochmann, co-founder of the Militia of Montana.

The men spoke on different days and they hammered on the threat public lands posed to white society. Our nation’s more than 600 million acres of national parks, forests, grasslands, wildlife refugees and Native American reservations held in trust by the federal government were, we heard, tools …