I’m grateful to have the endorsement of Western Native Voice Action Fund, which works with Native communities across Montana on what their members say matters most: health care, safety, public education, and the power of showing up to vote.

Billings is home to Native families from nations across this state, and many live right here in the Heights. Our nearest reservation neighbors, the Apsáalooke and the Northern Cheyenne, are about ten miles down the road. How the Legislature treats Indian Country matters to the people I hope to represent. Here is some of what I told Western Native Voice.

Indian Education for All

Yes. I’ll vote to fund it fully and keep it intact. Native people know this land better than anyone who came after, and they carry hard-won wisdom about living well here and protecting it. Indian Education for All centers their story and their contributions, and it teaches the rest of us to respect that knowledge and listen to the people who’ve kept it.

I also want those dollars to actually reach the classroom. The recent push to tighten reporting and require regular consultation with Tribal Nations makes sense to me, because tribes are the right people to guide how their own history and knowledge get taught. Protecting the money and honoring the promise go together.

When our kids learn the full story of the ground they’re standing on, they grow up to be better neighbors.

Data centers

I’ve worked in the technology sector since the late 1990s, which is exactly why I’m skeptical of the largest data centers. Montana can capture the jobs and innovation without the harm the largest projects keep causing elsewhere. Before the state approves a large one, I’d require four things:

Real consultation, first. Affected and neighboring Tribal Nations belong at the table at the start, when it can still shape where a project goes and whether it proceeds at all.

Protection for water and sacred places. A binding water-use study with firm limits, full respect for tribal water rights and compacts, and cultural and sacred-site review led by tribal historic preservation officers.

Companies that pay their own way. A separate rate class for large data centers so they carry the full cost of the power and transmission they demand, with open contracts through the Public Service Commission. [UPDATED] The 2025 Legislature expanded the largest data centers’ reduced property tax rate, and it applied automatically, while homeowners had to make sure they were enrolled for theirs. I’d have them pay a fair share that funds our schools and roads.

Real benefits that stay here. Enforceable community benefit agreements that deliver local and tribal hiring, apprenticeships, and revenue for local services.

Tribal sovereignty and natural resources

Honoring sovereignty means dealing with Tribal Nations as the governments that they are: consult them at the start of any decision touching their land, water, or resources, and follow the lead of the American Indian Caucus, who know these issues best.

I’d respect tribal authority over their own natural resources. When lawmakers tried in 2025 to let non-tribal landowners override the Flathead Reservation’s management of its fish and game, tribes, hunters, and Montana’s wildlife agency stood together against it, and I’d have stood with them.

Water comes first for me. I’ll defend clean water and honor the tribal water compacts that give tribes and their neighbors reliable rights. And I’ll support funding the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force and the families and tribal courts doing that work.

Health care and the budget

Balancing a budget has two sides, and Montana keeps working only one of them. We hear plenty about cutting costs and almost nothing about raising revenue fairly. [UPDATED] In 2025 the Legislature expanded a data center tax break that applied automatically, while homeowners had to make sure they were enrolled for theirs. I’d rather fund our community’s care by asking those who’ve done well to pay a fair share and closing the loopholes that let out-of-state owners pay less than the families who actually live here.

For Indigenous health care specifically, the smartest fiscal move is protecting the HELP Act, our Medicaid expansion. When Native patients get care through Indian Health Service and tribal facilities, the federal government covers 100 percent of the cost. Protecting it draws federal dollars into tribal and rural health systems and keeps clinics open, without straining the state budget.

The rest is foresight. Funding mental health, suicide prevention, addiction treatment, and culturally grounded care keeps people well and out of far costlier crises later.

Development that protects Native communities

The oil booms taught us that when transient workers pour in faster than a town can absorb them, crime climbs and Native women bear the worst of it. Making large projects pay their own way has to cover more than power and water. It means funding public safety and protections for nearby Native communities up front, and backing the state’s MMIP Task Force.

On the record: Montana’s HELP Act renewal passed the House with votes from both parties in 2025. The current representative for House District 39 voted no.

Thank you, Western Native Voice Action Fund. I’ll work to earn it.