For five days, Republican Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy has kept silent as a growing number of Montana tribal leaders have come forward to condemn the racist remarks he made about members of the Crow Tribe and demand an apology.
But Levi Black Eagle , secretary of the Crow Tribe, one of largest Native American tribes in Montana, told HuffPost that an apology would do little good at this point.
“I think the time for an apology may have passed,” Black Eagle said in an interview Thursday. “Any apology now from him, I don’t think it would be sincere. I think it would just be optics, mainly, and a lot of lip service. I don’t think it would justify what he said. It’d help, but would it fix it? No. He perpetuated old racist stereotypes. There’s really no excuse or room for that.”
Sheehy, a multimillionaire businessman and ex-Navy SEAL who is polling ahead of three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, peddled a longstanding racist trope about Native Americans and alcoholism during two private fundraising events in November 2023. Audio recordings of the events were first obtained by Char-Koosta News, the official publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Among other things, Sheehy, who owns a ranch and cattle operation, said that roping and branding cattle on the Crow Reservation was a “great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.” and that “every heel shot you miss you get a Coors Light can upside the head.”
In a second recording, Sheehy boasted of having ridden a horse in a parade at the 2023 Crow Fair, an annual cultural celebration at the Crow Reservation in southeast Montana. He called it a “tough crowd” and again claimed that tribal members hurled beer cans at him.
“They let you know whether they like you or not. There’s Coors Light cans flying by your head as you’re riding by,” he said.
Tim Sheehy, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Montana, speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Aug. 9 at Montana State University in Bozeman.
Black Eagle called Sheehy’s comments “appalling,” “disheartening,” “disturbing” and “disgusting.”
Black Eagle remembers seeing Sheehy at the 2023 fair, riding a horse with a campaign sign attached to its saddle, but didn’t really know much about him at the time other than that he was running for the U.S. Senate.
“He didn’t look distressed,” he recalled. “He didn’t look like he just dodged a couple of cans.”
Black Eagle said the Crow are generally modest people who are not flamboyant or quick to brag. But the Crow Fair, which the tribe has put on for more than 100 years, is a time for Crow Tribe members to “show the best versions of themselves,” he said.
“If there’s ever a time where we’re allowed to be proud of who we are and to put it on display, it’s during a parade,” he said. “That’s the spirit of what our parade is: To share with the world, all the spectators, this is who I am, this is what I have and I’m proud of it.”
During the fair’s daily parades, tribal members, most riding horseback, don their most dazzling regalia, including feathered headpieces and intricate beaded garments and jewelry, and celebrate their family members. Crow beadwork is “symbolic of how loved we are,” Black Eagle said.
“It’s all in a spirit of recognition … to share the goodness with the community,” he said. “We’re proud to have people come and see that because there is really nothing quite like it. To have it tarnished in such light, it’s really, boy, it’s really disappointing. We’re better than that. Our parade is better than that. And to have a negative connotation like that with it is just, there are no words.”
Levi Black Eagle, secretary of the Crow Tribe, called Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy's comments about "drunk" Crow tribal members “disheartening" and “disgusting.”
Sheehy’s campaign has not responded to HuffPost’s numerous requests for comment since Wednesday.
Footage of the Aug. 19, 2023, Crow Fair parade shows Sheehy and Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, both on horseback and wearing white cowboy hats, near each other at the front of the event. No beer cans are thrown.
Black Eagle said candidates for political office often participate in the annual festivities, and the tribe is always accommodating.
“We’re always welcoming of our guests and like to think that we treat our guests really well,” he said, adding that Sheehy’s account doesn’t make sense.
In comments to the Daily Montanan last year, Sheehy said he tries to attend the fair every year with his family. “These are the first Montanans, you know, so it’s great to connect with them,” he told the publication.
Just three months later, during campaign events far from the Crow Reservation, Sheehy would cast the Crow people as alcoholics and their annual cultural event as little more than a rowdy, drunken affair.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) talks with constituents on Aug. 19, 2018, before a parade at Crow Fair in Crow Agency, Montana.
Black Eagle said Sheehy’s words have left many tribal members outraged.
“That old adage of ‘all Indians are drunks’-type rhetoric has been around since I was a kid. I feel like we’ve always made strides to rectify that,” he said. “We feel that that’s not representative of who we are as a nation or as a people.”
Black Eagle described Crow ranchers as hardworking people with strong family values. For Sheehy to brush that aside and suggest that they all start their day with beer misrepresents and disrespects tribal ranching and farming families, he said.
“It’s a dangerous rhetoric to try and spread that we’re all just a bunch of drunks,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing to happen.”
The longstanding “drunken Indian” stereotype has not only negatively affected Indigenous communities, it also has been thoroughly debunked .
For Black Eagle, Sheehy’s trope sounded like an outsider trying to fit in and not knowing how to do it.
“What he thought he could do is, ‘OK, I’m with a bunch of cowboys, and I’m going to be cowboys against Indians. I’m going to make these Indians the butt of this joke,’” he said.
“I think any real Montanan probably would know better not to say it,” Black Eagle added. “We have a lot of non-tribal friends. We’re a big melting pot here in Montana. We’re very neighborly. We’re not rude. And what he said was just rude and beyond the pale.”
Whatever his motivations, Sheehy risks ostracizing a significant voting bloc in Montana — and, so far, has not apologized for it. Six percent of Montana residents are Indigenous. The state is home to 12 tribal nations and seven reservations.
Native Americans are the largest minority group in Montana, Black Eagle noted.
“We’re not going to be the end-all, be-all deciding vote, but we do have the ability to move the needle one way or another,” he said.
Sheehy, originally from Minnesota, moved to Montana in 2014 after retiring from the Navy. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who chairs the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee, was among the Republicans who courted Sheehy to run against Tester, in part because of his ability to self-finance a campaign.
A statewide poll released Thursday shows Sheehy leading Tester by 8 percentage points, 49% to 41%, with 5% of voters supporting a third-party candidate.
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