Mitt Romney Wins Montana, Big Horn County Votes for McCain

Rural News Network

Big Horn County's GOP delegation voted overwhelmingly for Sen. John McCain in the Super Tuesday Republican caucus this week, but still, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took the majority of the state so he will get all 25 of Montana's delegates nominating him at the party's national convention.

Of the 28 votes cast in Big Horn County, McCain won 13 while Romney won six, Gov. Mike Huckabee won seven and Ron Paul won two.

Statewide, Romney took 38 percent of the 1,630 votes cast. Ron Paul came in second with almost 25 percent and McCain came in third with 22 percent.

Nationally, McCain took the most states on Super Tuesday, but Romney did very well in the Mountain West, including big wins in Utah and Colorado.

Tuesday was Montana's first Republican caucus. Before, both parties have used a primary system and the Democratic primary this year will remain in June and stay a primary, opposed to a caucus. In a primary, all party registered voters can vote. In a caucus, only party members, or in Montana's case, only selected party members are allowed to participate. The process differs state to state. Some states, like Iowa, use the caucus system, while others, like New Hampshire, use the primary system. Also, who can participate in either differs from state to state. In Montana, the caucus was "closed" to non-party members while in other state's, it can be open, meaning anyone can participate or it can be "semi-open" meaning Independents can vote in a party election.

Montana's caucus was also a winner-takes-all contest, which means which ever candidate wins the majority, gets all 25 of the state's delegates voting for him at the national convention. In some states, the votes are allocated proportionally.

Chris Carter, the communications director for the Montana Republican Party, told NewWest.Net that the Tuesday's turnout in Montana was “absolutely incredible, and it shows the excitement the Republican party up here in Montana is generating."

But, the change did cause some confusion this week with party members who were expecting to be able to participate, just as they had in the past. The Great Falls Tribune's Karl Puckett reported Tuesday that across Central Montana, clerks and recorders were fielding calls to clear up what exactly was happening Tuesday.

Community Calendar

Waiting on a Win

Story by Mary Hudetz|Slideshow by Mary Hudetz, Elena Russell and Leona Hugs
CrowNews.Net

When the Little Bighorn College Rams step onto their home court Thursday for a game against Dawson Community College of Glendive, they will have claimed four victories so far this season. They'll also have more than two months of their roughly four-month-long schedule behind them.

Claiming that fifth win -- no matter how the team's wins and losses compare come late February --  would prove significant for LBHC, which got its basketball program started just last year under the direction of head coach Gordon Real Bird.

The fifth win, should it happen, would tip the team's victory tally
to a new school record. Last year's mens team won four games. This
year's team has six scheduled conference games left between now and when their National Junior College Athletic Association season ends Feb. 26.

The Rams will enter their game against Glendive coming off a pair of losses
at home against Salish Kootenai College and Bismarck State, a team that
edged the Rams by just three points to win 133-130 in double overtime.

The list of remaining NJCAA opponents includes some tough teams and
bigger schools like Sheridan College, which beat the Rams in November.
But team members, like second-year player Isaiah Stewart are holding
out hope.

"It was a fun experience last year, even though we only had four
wins," Stewart said. "It was a new program and the elders were telling
me, 'It's OK you guys are just learning.' Hopefully this year we'll get
more wins then we got last year.

Click here or on the image above to hear Stewart talk about
his path to joining the Rams, and his hopes for the team.

Meal, Music and Meeting: Hymns Project Plans Potluck

CrowNews.Net

The Crow Hymns Project will hold a meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 22, at the Crow Agency Elementary School. The evening will include song, a potluck and planning for the project's upcoming elders dinner, which is set to happen in March. All are welcome. The project also holds regular meetings on the second Tuesday of each month.

College Students and Staff Await Bigger, Better Library

Larry Kindness, construction liaison and building inspector for Little Big Horn College, discusses building plans for the school's new library.

Story by Brett Thomas-DeJongh|Photos by Tyler Wilson
CrowNews.Net

Children sit around the fireplace, listening to a storyteller weave a tale. A college student—ready to start work on a term paper—searches rows of book shelves. On the periphery, a couple of teens update Myspace pages. Little Big Horn College administrators take care of business on the second floor, and below them the college archives hold the history of the Apsaalooke, the region and more.   

This is the vision librarian Tim Bernardis has for the $7 million library center that is being built a stone’s throw from the school’s administration building.

“Hopefully, everyone will find something here,” he said.

At 25,000-square-feet, the new building is double the size of the
current library, granting Bernardis room to expand the book collection
and add computers. Plans for more comfortable furniture and office
upgrades for the staff are in the works too, he said.

Little Big Horn College's students also are looking forward to the new
digs. Lakisha Flores, a LBHC freshman, said she anticipates
seeing more fiction on the shelves. 

“I know we're college students and we need to do research," Flores
said, "but the library we have now doesn't have books you can read on
your own time." 

Leslie Smith, president of LBHC's student government, said the
increased number of computer workstations will solve a shortage she's
noticed at the current library.

The building will be completed in March, said Shane Ridley of Fisher
Construction, a Billings-based company that began construction in late
2006. Though the foundation was finished that December, the ground
froze and they couldn't backhoe, he said. 

Larry Kindness, LBHC's construction liaison and building inspector,
acknowledged the weather delays but said that some setbacks are to be
expected in a large project — and the weather wasn't the only roadblock for the new library.

Had the
college not received $3 million from a special tribal budget bill,
Kindness said construction might have been halted indefinitely. 

“We wouldn't have been able to finish or furnish the building,”
Kindness said. “We would've had to get creative, and we're creative
already.” 

With Bernardis, Kindness has spent weeks brainstorming ways to make the college’s building a community center, too.

Bernardis envisions creating photo exhibits of Crow families by researching the tribal archives to trace family trees. “We would start with an old photo,” he said.

Digitizing the tribal archive is a priority, he said, because
putting the archive's content online provides a way to both preserve
and share content with other museums.

He is working to gain access to the digital archives at the Buffalo
Bill Historical Center’s Plains Indian Museum in Cody, Wyo., where the
one-of-a-kind Paul Dyck collection will be housed. 

The Cody museum acquired The Paul Dyck Collection of Plains Indian
artifacts and art work in September, a fact not lost on Bernardis.   

“Initially, [the Paul Dyck Foundation] wanted to give the collection
to the Crow tribe,” he said. “Somehow it slipped through our fingers.”

The collection will not go up for several more years, as the museum
catalogs and restores the items, according to the Historical Center's
Web site.

If the library eventually gains digital access to the collection's
bear claw necklaces, war shirts and other beaded items, then Bernardis
and other staff members could display them on flat screen televisions
mounted to a wall in the new building, Kindness said. 

“I don't think any other college in the country will have that,” Bernardis said.

New Year's Eve in Crow Agency

Click to Play

On the final night of 2007, dances were held to ring in the New Year.

Native Nativity

CrowNews.Net

A manger scene staged at Crow Agency's Apsaalooke Center during the tribe's annual senior citizens dinner featured a baby Jesus, played by four-month-old Lucia Real Bird. Lucia was wrapped in a cradle board made by her grandmother Birdie Real Bird. The wise men and Joseph donned head dresses and buckskin suits for the occasion. Mother Mary wore an elk tooth dress and the shepherds were cloaked in wool, Hudson Bay coats. Heywood Big Day III, pictured fourth from the left and playing Joseph, contributed this photo.

We at CrowNews.Net hope your holidays were as bright as the stars we saw in the Big Sky on Christmas night.