This project examines the health and environmental disaster that is human waste disposal in much of the world dooming millions to early deaths from easily preventable diseases. Next, Hey Brother digs into the Rainbow Family of Living Light (RFLL) offering background information about key RFLL members and the development of the Rainbow Family history including the annual Rainbow Gathering held by the RFLL on public land and the evolution of their protocols dealing with human waste disposal in a backcountry environment, their on going relationship with local, state, and federal agencies, and, in conclusion, what the RFLL may have to teach a world in desperate need of real relief from the global nightmare that is human waste disposal.

Hey Brother utilizes interviews with RFLL elders as well as other RFLL documents and hip-stories, or oral histories collected by respected RFLL figures, United States Forest Service (USFS) documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), newspaper accounts, and secondary sources both to further illuminate the RFLL and to lend depth to the account. Besides Rainbow related materials, works by experts such as Joe Jenkins and DR. Sin Van der Ryn lend further understanding to the subject.

Hey Brother is an important work because it presents solutions to the millions of will die every year because of poor sanitation. In poor communities, shantytowns, and refugee camps the world poor suffer and die because it is not safe to relieve themselves. The RFLL have developed successful methodologies for thousands to safely relieve themselves.

Downtown Missoula, particularly the sections along Front Street, Higgins Avenue, and Main Street, has changed significantly through the years. In an effort to begin studying those changes in detail, this project draws upon historic resources and combines them with modern technology. Sanborn fire insurance maps were used through the 19th and 20th centuries to record the buildings in urban areas and document attributes like construction materials, height, number of floors, and the general use of the building, thus preserving valuable historical information. Sanborn maps of Missoula were created in multiple years ranging from 1884 to 1957 and provide a visual display of the city’s urban development. However, comparing individual hardcopy maps by hand is inaccurate and time-consuming.

Digital versions of the maps were imported into a Geographic Information System (GIS), and using techniques known as “rubbersheeting,” were referenced to geographically accurate aerial photographs. This involved determining certain “control points” identifiable on both the modern aerial photos and the historic maps to align them. Digital layers were then created for each corresponding Sanborn map while attribute data from the original maps were input into a database within the GIS. This approach is becoming increasingly common in historic archaeology, and inspiration came from a similar project in the French Quarter in New Orleans (Berry 2003). These methods make comparing maps from various years much more efficient and the potential applications of this temporal GIS are numerous; in the future it will be used in the Missoula Historic Underground Project to more thoroughly understand the use history of individual buildings, the transformation and growth of city blocks, and the extent and nature of underground features, including basements, steam tunnels, sidewalk vaults, and other features present beneath the streets of Missoula.

The purpose of this research is to build a cultural-historical perspective based on skeletal evidence to examine microevolutionary changes in the face between prehistoric and Historic Arikara. Using coordinate data observed on crania recovered from sites associated with the Arikara of the Middle Missouri Region of South Dakota, statistical tests are used to assess patterns of morphometric change in facial morphology through time. This study looks at 366 individuals from four archaeological sites spanning all three time periods and utilizes 3D coordinate data for 14 cranial landmarks. Aside from this information, archaeological data and first hand accounts of Europeans will establish the socio-cultural context of the Arikara. Data is subjected to a Procrustes Analysis and compared using mean configurations from each temporal range. The hypothesis of this project is that the environmental stress encountered by post contact populations of Arikara should alter facial dimensions in a way that distinguishes them from pre contact populations.

This presentation aims to address the subject of voter participation, particularly how it responds to the legislative redistricting process. Rational voter theory dictates that as cost of engaging in the political process rises, participation falls. One means of raising the costs associated with engaging in elections comes in the form of candidate recognition; if one does not recognize the candidates on the ballot, the costs of being an informed voter rise. In this context, the process of redistricting has the potential to disengage a large number of voters each election cycle, as it places new boundaries on legislative districts and changes the districts in which some people vote. Using regression analysis to test demographic and political data from elections between 1978 and 2004, this study will test the hypothesis that legislative redistricting leads to lower voter turnout rates. Adding another dimension to the academic conversation surrounding political participation, this analysis will point to whether the current system of redistricting does indeed disenfranchise voters, and if so will provide policy recommendations for addressing this issue.

Montana Department of Corrections’s long term residential Methamphetamine Treatment Programs at the Elkhorn and Nexus facilities, the only programs of their type in the United States, are making substantial progress with the management of convicted drug offenders. Nexus and Elkhorn are long-term lockdown treatment centers that provide intensive chemical dependency treatment. This policy review research covers the methamphetamine related laws and administrative rules codified by the State of Montana between 1995 and 2012, including the inception and continuation of the Elkhorn and Nexus Methamphetamine Treatment programs. The policy research begins at the point of origin: the introduction of the original changes to the Montana Code Annotated with regards to dealing with the methamphetamine problem that plagued the state from the late 1990’s through the current period. The review and critique will trace policy evolution from incarceration and lengthy sentencing to the creation and operation of state of the art treatment facilities, highlighting and briefly discussing salient events in the timeline.

Historically, barriers to students with disabilities accessing Post-Secondary Higher Education have been comprised of architectural, programmatic and attitudinal inaccessibility in the campus environment. Although effective implementation of the ADA resulted in the continual removal of architectural barriers through the renovation and new construction of the physical environment, new barriers to programmatic accessibility have been created as the access to course materials has evolved to become more reliant on emerging educational and informational technologies. At the University of Montana, the failure to implement equal access to educational and web technologies has presented significant barriers to students with disabilities and abridged their civil right to post-secondary education guaranteed by Title II of the ADA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The pervasive capability of attitudinal barriers surrounding disability has managed to impede equal access and successfully helped to construct programmatic barriers to accessible educational technologies at the University of Montana. Informed and effective, student advocacy reemerged to remove these barriers to access for students with disabilities at UM and other post-secondary institutions, reestablishing sustained efforts to ensure an institution remains committed to continual implementation of unfunded federal civil rights law for students with disabilities.