Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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University of Montana doctoral student James Compton explores the 1940 Montana Indian Convention in Great Falls at which the Rocky Boy’s Reservation’s Francis Four Souls allegedly asserted that his father, Chief Little Bear, had negotiated in an 1870 treaty that “the Chippewa Crees” were
“exempt from Army service.” Compton’s presentation explores how the story
developed, Native American responses to the draft, and, more broadly, the
politics of conscription in Montana in 1940–1941.