While the March weather has cut the number of vehicles cruising the strip, just off the main drag a slew of vehicles — pickup trucks, mainly — are parked at the Golden Spike, one of several taverns the locals call "cowboy" bars.

There usually are four beers on tap: Bud Lite, Miller Lite, Blue Moon and Budweiser, but the blonde bartender smiles and explains she's out of Miller Lite. About 60 people are here this night, smoking, laughing, drinking. In one corner, some are shooting pool; in another, the men's NCAA basketball tournament flashes on a gigantic TV. Above the bar, country singer Brad Paisley serenades from the depths of a small, fuzzy screen.

By 10 p.m., when it's just crowded enough that maneuvering through the room has become a bit tricky, the crowd suddenly parts to allow four people to file past. They've come in through the back door of the Spike, and as they move through the room conversation falls off.

The newcomers are Indians. The rest of the bar patrons are white.

One white man turns his red baseball hat sideways and starts to strut, his right foot sliding along the floor as his elbow swings out from his side. He's mocking what he sees as the Indians emulating rappers. He looks to be in his late 20s, and he's wearing jeans and a long-sleeved, gray V-neck shirt. His straight white teeth and chiseled features stand out against the dark room. He continues strutting for a moment, then laughs and resumes his stance along the wall with a bottle of Budweiser in one hand and a cigarette in another.

"He's making fun of them because of the way they dress. They come in here looking like Usher, trying to look all different," says Mike, a conductor for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. "Native Americans here are like the blacks in the South."

The Indians take seats on barstools in the far corner, silently watching the man in the red hat.

A few minutes pass, and a friend greets the man in the red hat, prompting him to turn the red hat sideways again. He struts for a few paces, his right elbow moving to the side, and turns around and struts back. His movements produce more laughter from his friends.

The Indians have been in the room only five minutes, but they apparently have seen enough. They get up to leave and move toward the back door in single file, staring straight ahead. When one man lags a pace or two behind, the woman in front of him reaches back with her hand to hurry him along. Red hat guy and his friends stop talking as the Indians pass and step nearer to them, their faces close and unsmiling.

Once the Indians are gone, the man in the red hat turns his hat once more and gives his friends one last imitation.

It's a Friday night in Havre, Montana.

Havre is famous for its wind. The National Weather Service marks the average wind speed for the town at 10 miles per hour. But wind along the state's Hi-Line can gust to the point of derailing freight trains. Situated along the state's northern tier, the town is half an hour south of Canada and two hours northeast of Great Falls. Montana State University-Northern calls Havre home, as does a health care clinic and a hospital. The town has a couple of grocery stores, a Dairy Queen, a Kmart, a handful of convenience stores and another handful of fast-food restaurants: KFC, Wendy's, McDonald's, Subway, Domino's. It takes about five minutes to drive from one side of Havre to another. From a hill on the western outskirts of town, you can see the entire downtown, with the railway running parallel to it and vast open expanses of ranchland all around.

Twenty minutes south of Havre lies another windy place: the Rocky Boy's Reservation. Established in 1916 and sandwiched between ranch land and the Bear Paw Mountains, the reservation is now home to about 2,500 Chippewa-Cree Indians. It is a decidedly isolated place. The town of Rocky Boy Agency has a small grocery store and a casino. Bordering the reservation in Box Elder is Jitterbugs, a combination gas station, casino, restaurant, and grocery store. Besides Havre, Great Falls — more than an hour and a half drive — is the only town of any size around the reservation. Some people from the reservation go to Great Falls to shop, but the majority of reservation residents spend their money in Havre.

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"I don't mean to be racist. But there are a lot of Native Americans around here, and that's who we have to watch."

Trista Goodnough, clerk
Maurice's, Havre, Mont.

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Havre is a railroad town, but it's also a border town. And as in some other Montana towns that border one of the state's seven reservations, tension is frequently apparent.

Ask people in Havre, and most will say they're not prejudiced. Ask people from Rocky Boy's the same question, and most will say they're treated differently at some spots in Havre because of the color of their skin.

Take Ken Blatt. He rattles off stories about times he says he's been treated unfairly because he looks Indian. Once, he says, the checkout clerk at Office Equipment put dozens of staples across the bag of items he had just paid for. "I'm not going to steal from you," Blatt recalls telling her. She smiled at him and put another row of staples across the bag. "There were at least 30 staples there," Blatt says, emphasizing the words at least.

Up the hill from the Golden Spike is Maurices, a shop that sells trendy clothing for teens and 20-somethings. The store in Havre is one of more than 400 Maurices stores nationwide. It's a popular place for both Havre and Rocky Boy's residents to shop.

And it has its fair share of shoplifting, says Marisa Gandenberger, the manager on duty. Clerks are trained to watch carefully for shoplifters, she says, but it can be a tough task. Sometimes friends of a shoplifter will distract the employees so that items can be taken, adds Trista Goodnough, another clerk. It's difficult to monitor the entire store at once, she says, but there are certain things they look for.

"I don't mean to be racist," Goodnough says, "but there are a lot of Native Americans around here, and that's who we have to watch."

"We watch everyone who comes in here, but some we watch more than others," Gandenberger adds, nodding.

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A few doors down from Maurices is a large, all-purpose store, called Big R. Big R has more than a dozen aisles piled high with products, with everything from light switches to saddles to Carhartt clothing to paint to peppermint candies. Clerks in blue knee-length aprons move around the store, talking to one another via walkie talkies when a question arises.

A security camera greets customers as they enter Big R, flashing their figures on a television screen. Warnings about electronic surveillance clutter the entryway. Manager Lee Kohler says that the new security system — a system that includes 64 cameras sprinkled throughout the aisles — was installed after Christmas.

But last December, before the new security system was in place, J.C. Big Knife, a Rocky Boy's resident, went into Big R with his friend, Max Gabaldon. Big Knife and Kohler have different accounts of what happened that day, but both are still talking about it months later.

Once inside the store, Big Knife and Gabaldon separated for about 15 minutes. It was during that time that Big Knife saw a female clerk was watching him closely. "Some lady was following me around," the 16-year-old says. It's the most common complaint cited by Indians across Montana when asked if they encounter racism.

Gabaldon, who was 18 at the time and looks white, though he has Indian and Mexican ancestors, said in a telephone interview that he doesn't think he was being followed while he and his friend were apart. He did, however, notice the woman eyeing Big Knife once the two boys rejoined each other. Soon afterward, and without buying anything, the boys left the store.

"We were a few steps out the door when this really big guy made J.C. take off his jacket and empty out his pockets," Gabaldon recalls.

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"It's very simple for us. We follow the law. Our response is exactly the same no matter who we're dealing with."

Lt. Russell Ostwal
Havre Police Department

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"He didn't even apologize," Big Knife recalls, smiling through his braces.

But Kohler denies the incident took place at all. He wasn't there at the time, but says an employee of his would never ask anyone to remove his jacket. He says employees know not to accuse someone of shoplifting without actually seeing that person steal.

"We don't feel we target any one nationality of people more than another," Kohler adds.

Kohler knows about Big Knife's claim because Big Knife's grandfather, Joe Big Knife, confronted him about it.

"It's humiliating," the elder Big Knife later says of the treatment of his grandson. "It's just humiliating."

Kohler chalks up Joe Big Knife's complaint to another issue. Big Knife was upset with the store for not being allowed to return an opened product, Kohler says now, and was looking for something to make a stink about.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, of the 16,673 residents of Hill County, which includes both Havre and Rocky Boy's, nearly 80 percent are white, and slightly more than 17 percent are American Indian. In March, whites made up 38 percent of the inmates at the jail, and Indians made up 56 percent.

Are more Indians than whites in jail in Hill County because they commit more crimes, or is it because they're more closely scrutinized?

Lt. Russell Ostwalt, who has worked at the Havre Police Department for 17 years, is quick to say the police treat all people in Havre equally.

"It's very simple for us," he says. "We follow the law. Our response is exactly the same no matter who we're dealing with."

He's proud of the fact that two of Havre's 17 officers are Indian. And while he knows that people in the community sometimes accuse others of being prejudiced, he's emphatic that there's no room for racism if you're an employee of the Havre Police Department.

One of the force's two female officers, Cathy Huston, seems to embody Ostwalt's philosophy of equal treatment for all. During a ride-along, she talks openly about the challenges of working in a border town. But she's also careful when she speaks, aware that race is a controversial subject. Huston says she's learning how to be more sensitive to racial issues by attending conferences and listening to other people's perspectives.

"Before, I used to say, ‘It doesn't matter if you're red, white, green, blue, or brown,'" Huston says. "But then I learned that I'm not supposed to say that, because it offends people.

"I didn't know that before," she adds. "Now, I just say, ‘It doesn't matter who you are.'"

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Big Knife is a timid boy, his mother, Charlene Big Knife, says months after the incident as they sit in their dining room. Two young boys peek out from the kitchen while a dryer hums in the background.

"J.C. was a quiet kid when he was in junior high. He didn't go out and make friends," she says.

Photographs of Charlene Big Knife's children line the walls. A basket of bananas forms the dining room table's centerpiece, while books like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Little Women" are neatly stacked near the computer on the neighboring desk.

As she feeds her 10-month-old daughter breakfast, Big Knife says she's angry that Big R employees would accuse her son of being dishonest. "Chances are I'll have to go back there someday, but I'm not going to spend a lot of money there," she says.

J.C. Big Knife is wearing jeans, an Adidas t-shirt, and a baseball cap that has "USA" written on it. He's been competitive in the rodeo circuit – he's a cowboy, his mom says – since he was 13. He listens to his mom as she speaks. "Now, when he rodeos, he goes all over the place, and he makes friends," she says.

Down the road from Big Knife's house, his grandpa has a vacuum strapped to his back at the Rocky Boy School. Joe Big Knife works for the school district as a custodian and a bus driver. He chuckles when he's told that Kohler denied that Big R employees accused his grandson of shoplifting. "It would be bad for his business if people found out how he treats Indians," Big Knife says.

Big R has documented the conversation between Kohler and Joe Big Knife, Kohler says, but he refuses to share that file with the media. "What would be the point?" he asks.

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Whether these exchanges are racist are a matter of perspective. But racism is based on stereotypes, says Betty Kijewski, a community organizer for the Montana Human Rights Network, a group based in Helena that works to challenge bigotry and intolerance. "Stereotypes are perpetuated pretty convincingly," she explains, "and people buy into those."

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"But I'm not prejudiced. There are good Indians too."

– Tammy Farmer, bartender
Golden Spike, Havre, Mont.

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