True West

Disassembling myths and the dinosaur museums that sustain them

I was going to start this introduction with a lengthy description of the first time I met Betsy Gaines Quammen and how impressed I was with her. But what she has to say below is much better proof, so I’m going to cut to what’s true.

There is a very small handful of people who have put in the time and research and observation and reporting necessary to really understand how the myths of the West are fueling contemporary far-right extremism. We’re not just talking about people who have interviewed a Bundy once, like I have. We’re talking about people with a deep understanding of the Bundys’ theology and its connection to whiteness and “liberty” and dominion. We’re not just talking about people who know that there’s a creationist dinosaur museum in northeast Montana built with funds donated by the sitting governor. We’re talking about people who have interviewed the head of that museum and read every single explanatory panel in the museum itself.

Betsy is one of those people. And she has been doing this complicated, challenging, often deeply weird work for over a decade — as a part of her dissertation work at Montana State University in Bozeman, but also in her day to day commitment to dismantling the myths that surround her in Montana. She is one of my favorite thinkers and her new book, True West, will help you connect the dots between Yellowstone and January 6th (and Trump and creationist dinosaur museums funded by Montana’s bodyslamming tech millionaire governor. I can’t wait for you to fall in love with her work the way I have.

You can find more about Betsy Gaines Quammen and her work here. You can buy True West here.

---

To start us off, I know you went through a real process with figuring out the right imagery for the cover — can you you tell us about the figurines, their history, and how they relate to the idea of the West as a “myth museum”? 

The Jane and Johnny West dolls are toys I grew up playing with. They were my first impressions of the West as a kid from Ohio. I liked the idea of dolls that rode horses. The book cover features Sheriff Garrett, Jane, Johnny, Princess Wildflower and Thunderbolt, all part of a collection by the defunct Marx Company. They came with a big ol’ pile of saddlebags, guns, rifles, cowboy hats, arrows, branding irons, holsters, saddles, bridles, knives, canteens, pots, skillets, bandannas, chaps, and dynamite for blowing up the plastic safe. For Jane and Princess Wildflower, we had a small plastic compact for occasions when they wanted to powder their noses.

It’s these dolls that started my own fascination with western mythology. They weirdly both represented and obscured the West. I mean, these dolls, especially at the time but even now, epitomized what Americans understand the wild West to be: cowboys, Indians, guns, horses. They literally dolled up settler colonialism and genocide. In addition to Jane, Johnny, the sheriff and the villain, we also had Geronimo, who was not made of the same orange plastic of Princess Wildflower. He came with warrior stuff: a mask, breast plate, arrows, a quiver, a drum and pipe, a tooth necklace, a shield and a horned war bonnet.

In our game, Geronimo was just Princess Wildflower’s dad, not the Apache leader who during his life continued to defy confinement on his reservation. Geronimo died a prisoner of war, after years of captivity and occasionally being trotted out for parades and fairs as an exhibit — something I learned about much, much later. When I did, it made my heart ache that my old friend had such cruel last years. It also made me begin to understand Native resistance.

A couple of months ago, Chris LaTray — the great poet laureate of Montana who is Métis and a member the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe — and I got together for a talk in Missoula. During our time together, he told me that he had a Johnny West collection as well. We both grew up playing with the toys that exemplified toxic western mythology, erasure campaigns, and the legacy of stolen land. The dolls are on my cover because they are an example of cartoonish pop culture obscuring history.

The book launches right into one of my personal “favorite” sites of Western myth: the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum — a creationist museum with significant funding from Montana governor Greg Gianforte. Can you situate the museum for us (the bit about the pottery kills me) and how it “makes its own truth,” as you put it? 

This first chapter is a bit of an artifact, but it ended up working in the book. It helps explain the role of biblical literacy in western mythmaking. I originally started writing about America’s relationship with science and how so many people don’t believe in evolution, but pivoted to western mythology amid a morass of misinformation.

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum is a biblically based collection of exhibits in eastern Montana, a part of our state that happens to be very rich in dinosaur bones. Montana’s current governor, Greg Gianforte, a Christian fundamentalist, contributed to its founding with nearly $300,000. The museum bills itself as an educational institute and looks at Noah’s flood — not deep time, Huttonian processes or evolution, as the basis for life on earth. The group of folks behind this museum see the Bible as a scientific document as much as a religious text.

Though paleontologists have mounds of evidence that dinosaurs were extinct sixty-five million years before humans came into being, this museum offers its own “proof” that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. On the second floor of the museum, there is a diorama with figurines strolling  next to dinosaurs. This shared experience is then “verified” by an adjacent collection of Asian and European pottery. Pots feature paintings and carvings of humans fighting dragons and other reptile-looking things. According to museum placards, the art absolutely confirms dinosaurs and humans were once contemporaries. 

The idea that the world is only 6,000 years old (as presented in the Book of Genesis) is so essential in the worldview of Christian literalism that art becomes that mechanism for authentication. Apply this logic of art as evidence to Roman statues of Romulus and Remus, and you can prove those mythic founders of the city were literally suckled by a she-wolf. Likewise that sixteenth-century tapestries demonstrate the existence of unicorns, and the twelfth-century drawings in the Aberdeen Bestiary established that a maned and horned beast found in Macedonia, called a bonnacon, defecated fire. This is their system of proof, not scientific empirical methodology. Not that science is infallible, but you know what I mean. The Glendive Museum is a biblically based collection of exhibits that have nothing to do with science other than subverting it.

In order to understand why it’s so important to believe that dinosaurs and humans shared planet Earth, I had an opportunity to talk with the museum’s director, Robert Canen, a pleasant man who cannot consider that our planet has been more than four billion years in the making. He said to me “in order for scripture to fit together…,”  he has to leave scientific data aside because it becomes “a stumbling block for many people when they try to bring, what we would say, millions of years into the Bible.” Let alone billions. “There’s virtually no one who could read Genesis who would arrive at anything other than that God created it in six days,” he said. “The flood really happened. That’s the way it’s written.”

Without empirical science, “truth” can be backfilled with potentials, like art on pottery or the story of Noah’s Ark. A replica of Noah’s boat, scaled from cubits, is also prominently displayed at the museum, surrounded by various toy animals, including dinosaurs, awaiting their two-by-two boarding. Canen’s belief that dinosaurs mingled with humans is imperative to his allegiance with biblical literalism. “The beginning of death, disease, and violence is sin,” he told me. “The fossil record is a record of death. It has disease in it and there’s violence in it. So, if the Bible is right,” he said, “then dinosaurs had to be around while people were around.” They roamed together, according to Canen’s line of thinking, because violent carnivores ravaging the earth were a consequence of Eve’s sin in the pursuit of knowledge. In Genesis, that fateful apple brought God’s wrath to the world. To look at things any other way doesn’t make sense to a biblical literalist, so the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum acts as an elaborate production of biblical confirmation. They make their own truth through conjecture, fealty to the Bible by way of pottery.

This literalist construal of the Bible has come to have serious implications in the West. Interpretations of various passages enable people to believe and act upon Christian primacy over Indigenous populations; to embrace myths of infinite resources in spite of scarcity; to claim dominion over land, air, and waters, as well as the animals that depend on these; and to accept the inevitability of end-times, as foreseen by preppers and evangelical Christians, replete with violence, disasters, and death. From Genesis to Revelation, proof-texters find support for the notion of Christian mastery over all living things, and for a future compounded by broken seals, war, pestilence, pale horses, and the Lamb of the Lord. We’ve seen these themes again and again as literalists have come west to build communities in expectation of this ominous chapter in God’s plan — a topic I explore in the panhandle of Idaho a couple of chapters on.

You and a bunch of other scholars and journalists I respect connected the dots between the Bundys and the extremism on display on January 6th long before those protesters showed up at the capital. For people who might just have a cursory knowledge of the Bundys, what are the fundamental Western myths you see animating this movement — and how did it morph from a battle over public lands to a battle over election results? [I’m particularly interested in how whiteness operates as a unifier within this equation, and how both myths rely heavily on the elision of Indigenous and/or POC presence and power (whether in the form of Indigenous land and water rights or voting rights)]

I know this is a MASSIVE question, but there’s very few people better equipped to answer it.

Oh my gosh, Anne — this is a heck of a question! I have a few responses, I think, and will try to tie them all together. First of all, Stewart Rhodes, one of the architects of the January 6th 2021 insurrection, used the Battle of Bunkerville, the first Bundy armed event in Nevada, to better establish his reputation among militia leaders and those in the patriot movement. I write about this in True West — it had mixed results for Rhodes, but the standoff galvanized the patriot movement for sure.

Rhodes co-founded the Oath Keepers and in 2014, he stood alongside the Bundy family when the Bureau of Land Management came to a remote corner of Nevada to confiscate the family’s cattle. The animals had been illegally grazing on public lands for decades, in that Cliven Bundy, the family patriarch, had not been paying grazing fees. Rhodes tried to establish leadership, ruffled some feathers, and offered totally inaccurate information that the Obama administration had ordered a drone strike on the militia gathered near the Bundy’s ranch. He withdrew the Oath Keepers, which pissed people off and labeled him, to some, a coward.

Rhodes' persona and mission evolved during the seven years between the Nevada standoff and the insurrection at the nation’s capital. During the Trump years, he became absolutely devoted to the president in ways the Bundys did not. Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Rhodes promised that he would defend Trump’s victory no matter the outcome. At various events, he told those he was hoping to recruit to his cause, that if Trump lost, the vote was rigged and they needed to act. He, like the Proud Boys, was building a coalition that included militia types, but also everyone from QAnon followers to yoga moms anti-vaxxers. On January 6th, he went to DC and joined this unlikely network to declare war on the government. Rhodes is currently serving eighteen years for his crimes.

As Rhodes’s former associate Jason Van Tatenhove later testified before Congress, the Bundy Standoff was a seminal event in the imagining of and the network behind ongoing revolt. An ex–Oath Keeper from Colorado who once worked for Rhodes, Van Tatenhove appeared before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. During his testimony, he confirmed that Rhodes had indeed been involved in the coup attempt and had entreated Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would have permitted the then-president to engage militias to subdue a rebellion that took the form of a “stolen election.” Van Tatenhove said that the Capitol breach “was going to be an armed revolution,” which “could have been the spark that started a new civil war.” Where did his own involvement with the Oath Keepers start? he was asked. “My time with the Oath Keepers began back at Bundy Ranch, with that first standoff,” he answered. That stuck with me — this idea of the first standoff.

I heard a speech Rhodes gave in Georgia weeks before the presidential election, at an event called the Red Pill Expo, which is essentially a gathering of conspiracy theorists and anti-government cranks. He told a crowd, “You are your own self-defense. You must organize yourselves in the next thirty days in your towns and counties...We will have our men deployed outside the polling stations to make sure you are protected, especially in swing states.” He predicted a civil war on the horizon, promising that “we have members [Oath Keepers] in every state in the union and we are standing them up right now.” Stand back and stand by, as Donald Trump had told the Proud Boys, one month before, during a September 29, 2020 presidential debate. Inspired by Trump and the “first standoff” at the Bundy ranch, Rhodes was laying groundwork, no longer to stand by but to make his move, by bringing the Battle of Bunkerville to the US Capitol.

Embracing the Big Lie of Trump, requiring followers to “stop the steal,” Stewart Rhodes played his part in trying to overthrow American democracy. He’d stockpiled weapons in a nearby hotel, then waited outside the US Capitol for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. This, he hoped, would be his moment—thwarting the peaceful transfer of power and allowing for Trump’s continued reign. 

So this is the direct tie to Rhodes, a westerner who was influenced by the Battle of Bunkerville, and involved in a culture inspired by the events at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Now, I want to take a moment to talk about the issue of white supremacy in these campaigns that brought us to January 6th. This conviction, of course, is not solely western–it’s branded into American culture. The insurrectionists, who were primarily white folks, did not like that Black voters turned Georgia blue in 2020. They were eager to disregard the results — cultural erasure is very much a part of white supremacy.

In this vein, we can look at how the Bundys in particular justified their range war. Here we also see a disregard that fuels anti-democracy in this country. Although the Bundys were not in DC, their ideology is very relevant to the campaigns that created the insurrection. You’re going to have to bear with me a bit. As I explained earlier, the Glendive Dinosaur Museum exemplifies some of the tenets foundational to the mythologized West, biblical literalism and Christian supremacy (the idea that Christianity is the only true religion and that all others are heretical.) 

These notions undergird European conquest, as justified by the 1493 Doctrine of Discovery (a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI, which declared that any land not occupied by Christians could be “discovered” by Christians and taken). The Doctrine “legitimized” conquest over non-Christians, at least according to colonizers. It declared that Christians were more entitled to lands and resources than others. I think this is really important to understanding the Bundys and the layers of white supremacy in the West: it applies to both the Battle of Bunkerville and the takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge two years later. 

When I visited the Bundy family while finishing my dissertation on Mormon settlement and its cultural influence in public land use wars, Cliven Bundy explained his position on why he felt entitlement. He asked me to imagine a Mormon settler — say, Bundy’s  hypothetical ancestor, who came West with all of his worldly possessions. “Everything he owns is on that wagon,” Bundy said “And he has, you know, his wife and family and maybe a milk cow tied behind.”

When this hypothetical man found a place to settle, he unbuckled his horse, removed its bridle, and led it to water. In Budny’s words: “When that horse takes the very first sip of the renewable resource, he is beginning to create a beneficial use of that resource. That’s how our rights are created.”

According to Bundy, land tenure changed when a Mormon man’s horse drank from a river that the day before had been part of Southern Paiute homeland. “And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now,” he told me. “It’s really about protecting three things: our life, liberty, and our property.” Bundy’s analysis may in part stem from laws like the 1877 Desert Land Act, which invokes the concept of beneficial use, a legal construct to protect the rights of an individual’s use of another’s property—but it also reflects an insouciance regarding Native history, rights, and public lands. This country has a history of insuring the rights of white people, with far less  emphasis on the rights of BIPOC. We see this over and over and over: from fights over voting rights, to property rights, to sovereign rights, to water rights. (Here is a link to a recent example of ongoing battles over tribal water in the Colorado Basin.)

 Bundy continued to make this argument, telling The Blaze that he held “adjudicated livestock water rights filed with the state of Nevada” dating back to 1877, “when the first pioneers entered the valley.” This isn't true legally, but he again reiterates an argument that relies on a history beginning with European settlement. His position is firmly ensconced in conquest, commodification, and capitalism. Bundy and his family have conveniently dismissed the people who actually have longtime ancestral ties to his place in Nevada, the Southern Paiute.

When Ryan Bundy and his brother Ammon took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon on traditional Northern Paiute land, he said “Native Americans had the claim to the land, but they lost that claim. There are things to learn from cultures of the past, but the current culture is the most important.” 

So to wrap this question up, the Battle of Bunkerville — the first standoff — was both impetus and testing ground for the Jan 6th insurrection. Additionally, it was undergirded by the same rationales (entitlement and supremacy) which serves as motivation at the core of both events. Read: white people’s rights.

The first time you and I met, we were at a conference in Northern California where one of the Bundys was featured as the closing speaker. When you report at an event like that, you have to be tread this incredibly thin line — you don’t hide that you’re a reporter, but you also want people to talk to you, so you have to be curious and do a lot of head nodding and attempt, to the best of your ability, to blend in….while also recognizing the ways in which many of these extremist myth makers are invested in having you, the legitimized journalist and author, tell their story.

What’s your philosophy on treading that line (whether at “public” events like the Red Pill Expo or in private interviews with people you meet there) — and how has it changed over the time you’ve done this work? 

Ha! It was Ammon speaking — it was 2018 in Modesto and the first time I met you, Tay Wiles, and Ryan Lenz. I was supposed to interview Ammon before he spoke that day, but he hadn't been allowed to board the plane. He was on a no-fly list! So he had to drive, and I only got to have a  short conversation with him.

You’re right about the thin line. I try to listen and understand where folks are coming from. Like you said, I try to be honest as well as convey an open mind. The Red Pill Festival in St. Regis, Montana, was different. There was so much antagonism on the part of the MC, Derrick Skees, who was a former state representative. He was being horrible to the press. Really snide and ugly. I felt uncomfortable and over the course of the day, I became ever more fed up. 

I later actually confronted one of the speakers, Joey Gibson, the head of the far-right Patriot Prayer militia group, who had actively harassed Black Lives Matter protestors in the Northwest. Prior to my conversation with him, Gibson had been on stage talking about how he knew in his heart what was right about his actions and the audience did too. They needed to act accordingly. This was what God wanted, he said to the gathering of hard-core anti-abortion, anti-government, anti-LGBTQ, anti-vaxxer, pro-gun, and Stop the Steal folks. Although violence was not explicitly suggested that day as recourse against the “liberal agenda,” it was certainly alluded to.

After his talk, I approached Gibson’s Patriot Prayer booth and told him (paraphrasing here) A lot of people know in their hearts that what you espouse is not what a Christian God would condone. How do you feel about them? He hemmed and hawed, muttering something about everyone needing to listen to their hearts,  and I blew my cover as an “objective” reporter. 

In the really beautiful ending of the book, you write that “Americans, like me, living west of the 100th meridian may live in a western myth museum, though we ourselves are not displays. We are not fixed. We are not stuffed, mute, or unmoving. We are able to communicate and take action. Myths can be examined, understood, but never quite sidestepped in a place steeped in them. We live with them.”

I often find it difficult to find hope in the direction of so many places in the West, but I also know that doesn’t mean the future is set. What work, what communication, and what action is convincing you of a different way forward right now? 

We are myth makers — we live among myths. It’s so important to understand in order to give them context and boundaries. In a time of climate crisis, we can’t believe in endless resources. We have to address biblical literalism that emphasizes dominion and subduing the earth. Some of these ideas are so intrinsic that we don’t even realize we are operating based on them. Additionally, we have to be both aware of and working to dismantle white supremacy. We need to be actively decolonizing. These acts are only possible when we understand the western myths that remain foundational to American culture and work to disarm them.

I’m optimistic about communities. Not so much about national politics. I think community involvement and relationships are imperative–work that takes us off our computers and social media and into conversation. I love what Christa Hazel, Greg Graf, and Alicia Abbott are doing in Idaho. I am thrilled that Montana’s Great Falls Library is fighting Nazi propaganda found tucked into the pages of their books.

During my work, I had one fellow tell me he’d be scared of me if he never met me. Fear leads to hate and hate is what extremists and the hard right want to promote. It sounds so simple, but I really do believe in conversation, empathy, and common ground. Not with everyone — there are real bad guys out there. But those bad guys are far less likely to indoctrinate folks if relationships are forged and maintained. I’m thinking especially about rural communities that fall prey to extremist recruitment. 

But I’d love to know readers’ ideas about healing rifts and taking action. I personally can’t wait to read Ijeoma Oluo’s Be A Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World — and How You Can Too. I love her work so much — and we’re doing an event at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on April 15!

You can find more about Betsy Gaines Quammen and her work here. You can buy True West here.

---