The breast cancer documentary, “Baring It All”, screens this weekend at Missoula’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. It tells the story of a fashion photographer who creates a portrait series of young breast cancer survivors after his friend loses a breast to the disease. In tonight’s feature interview with reporter Edward O’Brien, breast cancer survivor Michelle Weaver-Knowles – a certified breast health navigator at Community Medical Center’s Advanced Imaging – shares her own story.
At work she offers valuable assistance on a variety of levels to patients dealing with breast diseases. She’s also all too familiar with breast cancer on a personal level.
Ronald Allen Smith speaks at the Montana State Prison
The only Canadian on death row in the United States is making one last ditch effort to avoid execution, requesting clemency, or mercy, from Montana’s Governor. Alberta resident Ronald Allen Smith was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to the brutal murder of two men on Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation in 1982. Capitol punishment is illegal in Canada and the government formally supports the clemency request.
Smith says he is a changed man. But the ultimate decision will be up to Governor Schweitzer, a supporter of the death penalty.
Uncertain winter weather was swirling around the Montana State Prison, just outside of Deer Lodge on Wednesday. A misting rain melted snowbanks dotting the surrounding hillsides. Even this seems a faraway world for a man on Montana’s Death row.
“I’ve been here for 29 years,” Ronald Allen Smith said. Ronald Allen Smith has spent more of his life in the state’s maximum security block then he spent outside of it. He has the chance to spend one hour a day outside, where he could see concrete walls a guard tower and one tan, dead hillside.”But that’s usually prior to my actually getting up so I don’t usually go out.”
This is the life Smith wants to keep–the vast majority of it spent in his cell watching TV, reading books, sending letters. He sat across a table from me in an orange jumpsuit and shackles. He’d pulled back his long red hair. His handlebar mustache is streaked with gray. Smith says he is asking for mercy to spare his family what he put his victim’s family through. He has two sisters, a daughter, grandkids.
“There’s been a change. You know, I grew up–I’ve educated myself–worked really hard at changing and being a better person,” he said.
Smith was a on a drug-fueled hitchhiking trip through Montana in the Summer of 1982 when he was picked up by Harvey Mad Man and Thomas Running Rabbit, both in their early 20s. He marched them both into the woods and shot them both in the back of the head. Running Rabbit’s sister, Carol Russette wants Smith executed for that.
“Well in the first place he asked for it. He admitted what he did. He wanted to see how it felt to kill somebody,” Russette said.
That’s true, Smith asked for the death penalty–turning down a plea agreement that could have had him walking free a decade ago. Smith says he does not deny the crimes were horrible. But he argues he put himself in this situation, and his change of heart deserves another look.
“They’ve kept me here for 30 years. I’ve served a life sentence. So I serve a life sentence and then you put me to death. If you want to talk about fairness, where’s the fairness in that,” he said.
The white wall behind Smith was almost entirely unadorned, but one photo hung right above Smith’s head. It was a picture of Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, the man who now holds Ronald Smith’s life in his hands. The State Board of Pardons and Parole will meet May 2nd for Smith’s Clemency hearing. Within 30 days they will make a recommendation to Schweitzer whether Smith’s death sentence should be commuted to life without parole.
The recommendation is not binding though–the final say is up to the Governor. Governor Schweitzer is not commenting on the Smith case for now, but is a supporter of the death penalty.
Some members of the victim’s families have recently offered support for Smith’s clemency. Smith` believes that will be key to his argument that the Governor should let him live.
“You’re asking him to make a decision you did not make for the two men you killed 30 years ago?” I asked Smith
“Yeah, well it’s…yeah, yeah I really am. I’m asking him to show me compassion.”
Whatever decision Schweitzer makes, Smith knows the rest of his days will be spent inside the maximum security block.
The U.S. department of Health and Human Services has awarded a loan of more than $58 million to start up a Montana Health Insurance CO-OP.
Capitol Reporter Dan Boyce tells us Montana is among the first 8 states to receive such a loan, which was created through President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
“The Canadians are coming,” University of Lethbridge Economist Donna Townley said, and they’re already here. A strong Canadian dollar, favorable Canadian exchange rate, and lower costs in Montana are among the factors driving Canadian shoppers south.
Townley spoke to the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce at the Red Lion Hotel in Kalispell, and walking into the hotel the parking lot has several vehicles proving her right as license plates from Alberta, Alberta, Alberta, and British Columbia are parked outside. Townley took the point home during her presentation showing slides of cars parked at major shopping and dining hubs just north of Kalispell.
“Now, everybody know what parking lot that is? Yep- Costco, now, check this out; Saskatchewan, BC, Alberta,” Townley said, “we don’t just shop at Costco, we go across the street to Sportsman,” and to Target, Walmart, eating at Famous Dave’s and HuHot in the shopping district between Whitefish and Kalispell.
“I’ve got six reasons why we come to this valley,” Townley said, “The number one reason is you have something we want, and don’t have. Majestic Montana, you’ve got the trees, the mountains, the lakes.” Townley said retail prices, as well as a lack of sales tax are two of the draws bringing Canadian visitors south from metropolitan areas like Calgary or Lethbridge. The other reasons Townley sites include the time to travel with government holidays and paid vacations, high household incomes, and a strong Canadian dollar.
Townley says the Canadian dollar is a commodities based dollar and it goes up when the price of commodities goes up. For example, oil, Canada’s biggest export. She says as oil prices go up, so does the Canadian dollar.
“To buy the same amount of oil, it takes more Canadian dollars,” Townley said, “when they buy more Canadian dollars, that causes the Canadian dollar to go up in value. So, when commodity prices rise, the Canadian dollar rises, and with the strong market in the commodities that we’re seeing, and that holding steady, the Canadian dollar has a tremendous amount of strength.”
Townley says a few changes are happening at the border to make it more attractive for Canadians to cross. She says about a year and a half ago the value of goods Canadians can bring back home with them, tax free, went up from $250 to $400.
She said the “Beyond the Border” agreement recently signed by President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will also help with the flow of visitors across the border by increasing efficiency, with improvements to the Nexus card and cross-border sharing of information. Townley has personal experience with this back and forth across the border because her family has a house in the Flathead Valley, and she says they’re in the area many weekends and much of the summer.
Townley says if businesses want to attract and encourage Canadians to come to their store she recommends polite service, making it easy for Canadians by accepting Canadian currency or debit cards, and it also doesn’t hurt to have a Canadian flag in the stores front window.
Filmmaker Matthew Akers new documentary on performance artist Marina Abramovic won the audience award at this year’s Berlin film festival, and kicked off the Big Sky documentary film festival in Missoula. In this interview, he talks with News Director Sally Mauk about the film – and the remarkable woman it portrays…
Over 200 young people from around the region gathered in Missoula this weekend for the Rocky Mountain Power Shift. One of the keynote speakers was 17-year-old Alec Loorz, founder of “Kids vs Global Warming”. Loorz has been a climate change activist for over 4 years and has made thousands of presentations on the topic. In tonight’s feature interview with reporter Edward O’Brien he explains how Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” inspired him to inspire others to fight climate change.
State wildlife officials have set new rules for hunting bison that wander outside of Yellowstone National Park. It’s part of an evolving approach to the controversial topic.
Hunting the bison that leave the Yellowstone Park safe-zone has been drawing controversy for decades. Livestock owners fear the animals will spread brucellosis to their cattle. But wildlife advocates have accused past hunts of being unfair.A hunting plan ended in 1990 had wardens leading hunters to shoot the animals point-blank as they grazed in a field.
Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has been operating a more ‘fair-chase’ hunt for these bison since 2005. Those hunts have occurred in two hunting districts considered ‘tolerance zones’ for the bison right outside Yellowstone.
Still though, some bison don’t pay much attention to their boundaries and they leave the tolerance zones too. That leads to hazing them back into the park with horses and helicopters or capturing them and putting them in quarantine. That stuff has also been pretty controversial. So Fish Wildlife and Parks commissioners have been working on a new hunt for a while to add to the hazing and they approved it last week.
“And they just decided ‘hey, let’s try this and what it basically did was expand the area where those bison would be allowed,” said FWP Spokesman Ron Aasheim. “When they cross a certain line they would be moved back or hunters would be allowed to take ‘em.”
FWP is calling these ‘bison management harvests.’ They’ll be separate from the normal bison hunting season. Aasheim says this won’t be a situation where hunters will be waiting on the line for an animal to cross. It’s gonna be hard.
“People need to understand this isn’t a place where you just drive up and see bison. You have to spend some time. It’s rough country. It’s interesting, challenging country to hunt,” he said.
Fish Wildlife and Parks Commissioners agreed. The Helena Independent Record reports Commissioner Ron Moody took a field trip to the area and has full confidence the harvests would be fair chase.
Former Chairman of the Fort Peck Tribes A.T. Stafne was the only commissioner to vote against the proposal. Some of the quarantined Yellowstone bison are scheduled to be moved to the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap Reservations later this winter. The harvest proposal includes the possibility of hunting bison that leave the reservations.
FWP spokesman Ron Aasheim says details there are still being worked out and that it’s a different circumstance.
“But this whole bison thing as you know, that’s why we’re talking. Contentious, interesting challenging certainly,” he said.
Aasheim says more information on the harvests will come from the season setting process occurring this summer.
