“For Indians, defeat in the face of American Progress and Manifest Destiny was supposed to be a foregone conclusion.” So writes our guest in the first half of today’s broadcast, Julian Brave Noisecat, in his article, When the Indians Defeat the Cowboys, published in the January 2017 issue of Jacobin magazine. This young indigenous scholar, journalist and activist is in the first half of our show.

In the second half hour, we speak with Doug Peacock, Montana grizzly bear aficionado, who among many, many other things, was an erstwhile friend of Edward Abbey, and inspiration for the character, George Washington Hayduke, in Abbey’s seminal work, The MONKEY WRENCH GANG. He discusses the delisting of Yellowstone grizzly bears from the endangered species list, as well as what the heck is going on with Montana’s Washington gang, now that 2/3 of its congressional delegation – excluding the other third, organic farmer, Senator John Testor – are not only from the same small city of Bozeman, MT, who worked together at the same cyber-technology start-up, Right Now Technologies, but also both became multimillionaires after Oracle bought it for $1.5 billion. You may remember hearing about the recently elected Greg Gianforte, who pled guilty to assaulting Guardian journalist, Ben Jacobs, the night before the statewide special election to replace former Representative Ryan Zinke, who had been confirmed as Secretary of the Interior. Doug recounts the recent up-close encounter with a mama grizzly and her yearling cub, who nursed for 7 minutes 35 feet from him and his daughter in Yellowstone Park.