Humanities Role in Montana 

Jamie Dogget | Councilwomen, National Council on the Humanities

Hi, I’m Jamie Dogget, and I live about 20 miles west of White Sulphur Springs in Paradise, Montana. I want to talk with you today about something that I have a passion for. A long time ago I had the opportunity to participate in the Montana Committee for the Humanities, now called Humanities Montana.

The humanities changed my life.

My nearest neighbor is about five miles away. At night you can see one light from my neighbor’s house. There isn’t anybody out there. Most of my neighbors—the women, the ranch wives—are college educated. But none of us have jobs or occupations there.

In a small town like that there really aren’t jobs for us. Some of them are retired teachers; they quit when they had children, and the opportunities to work never presented themselves again. But I got to be on the Montana Committee for the Humanities. I served for 12 years with 86 different board members from across Montana. By serving that time with them, and being on that board that has outreach all across Montana and serves people in a variety of ways and allows people to tell their stories, my mind opened to the diversity that every individual brings. It was a wonderful time.

I chaired it for three years, during the tumultuous years when the Republicans were going to eliminate it. We had two or three different executive directors, and I provided the continuity throughout. It was a real honor. Because I had been appointed by a Republican governor, who was the first Republican governor to serve since the Humanities had been formed in 1972, the executive director at the time didn’t know who we were when the Republican governor appointed us. When she came over to White Sulphur to interview me and another lady that were appointed by Governor Stevens, it was probably because I don’t have a scholarship background, like a PhD in History or Philosophy or Literature, that I was appointed. I probably would never have been elected to the Committee on my own merits.

So here’s this young Republican woman sneaking in the back door of Humanities Montana. It was a wonderful time!

Through the Humanities, I traveled to so many other communities across Montana, and that part changed my life. A lot of these organizations meet where their base is, possibly Helena, possibly Bozeman, but the Humanities took us everywhere. We went to Glasgow, we went to Sidney, we went to Glendive. We saw Makoshika State Park. We went to Helena. We met with the legislature. We were in Missoula. We were in Bozeman. I remember we were here in Bozeman once when the Pow Wow was held in the Fieldhouse and the native dancing was going on. It was so exciting to sit there and watch that, and participate with that, but also to have some of our Committee members tell us what the costumes meant and what the dances meant.

That’s a part of the diversity that we need to have more of and see more of.

The Humanities changed my life because it gave me an outreach. It gave me an opportunity to meet all of those other people. When my term was over in the Montana Humanities, Montana nominated me to serve on the Federation of State Humanities Councils. There are 56 state Humanities Councils across the country. Every state and territory has a humanities council. Montana’s was formed in 1972. That Federation was formed so that all of these states’ organizations had a lobbying effort and so they can learn from each other about wonderful humanities programs that are going on in each and every state, because we all have such different needs and different perspectives of what our citizens want.

There were great opportunities. I had the chance to travel to Colorado and speak with the Colorado Humanities Council and take part in a humanities debate on the Constitution between recent doctorate candidate and graduate Gary Hart (who was a presidential candidate at one time from Colorado) and Clay Jenkinson, who was dressed as Thomas Jefferson, in what we in the Humanities council call a Chautauqua. It was so much fun to see these two major scholars debate various issues related to the Constitution.

Another fun Chautauqua was when Clay came to Helena, Montana and was able to have a discussion with a crowd of us. But he also had Stephen Ambrose there. They were both Presidential Humanities Awards winners. They are both scholars, so high in their field. It was not long after that Ambrose’s books had really done well. It was so exciting to see those two amazing scholars debate Thomas Jefferson’s projects, the trip west with Lewis and Clark, and have the Undaunted Courage author, who was so immersed in that subject, debate on a stage in front of us.

Those kinds of things make you change your thinking.

While I was on the Federation for States Humanities Councils, I became friends with a very nice gentleman, Bruce Cole, who was at that time the Chairman for the National Endowment for the Humanities. That’s a presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. He put my name forward to President Bush as a potential member for the National Endowment for the Humanities National Council position. So I am now serving on the National Council for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

And yet again, I get to meet new people.

I serve. There are 26 members on the national council, and the continued irony of it is I have a B.A. in History from Montana State University. And I’m damn proud to be a Bobcat. And I’m very, very proud of the education I received from MSU. Of those 26 members, 25 have at least one PhD.

And then there’s me.

I could be intimidated by them. But I know I’m their equal, because my vote counts as much as theirs, just like it did when some of my ex-professors were on the Montana Committee for the Humanities with me, or those Executive Directors that have a couple of PhDs. When your vote counts the same as somebody else’s, then you don’t have to be intimidated anymore.

I’m just an ordinary Montana ranch hand. And I’ve had these wonderful opportunities. The wonderful opportunity is when you have a different perspective and you hear different people’s stories. There are so many stories across Montana. Some people showed up last summer at my ranch, they had a picture of the mountains behind my house. They wanted to know if they could take that picture that had a wagon, a woman, and three little kids, and find the exact location by holding it up to the skyline and possibly locate where their family’s homestead was.

So we stomped around out there in the rocks and the dirt and we finally found this spot. And growing there, in the rocks, in a dry old field, were a bunch of irises that had been planted probably 80 years ago. One of the ladies took a couple of those irises home with her to Missouri where the family originally came from.

That’s a story. And that’s what the humanities do. It tells those stories.

There are discussions on literature. There are discussions on public funding, discussions on public education, discussions on books. If you have a discussion with people, you develop your thinking, you expand your mind, and you learn to grow.