Housing insecurity touches almost everyone in tribal communities in Montana. Its causes and consequences are deep-rooted, confoundingly complex, and often overlooked.

This three-part series, The Shelter Gap, explores Indian Country’s housing crisis by examining the barriers residents and developers face in buying, renting and building homes, investigating the root causes of chronic housing shortages on reservation land, and highlighting what’s possible when residents achieve stable housing.

Part 2 traces current housing shortcomings and challenges on reservation land to more than a century of historical and conflicting federal policies that have created almost insurmountable impediments to development in Indian Country.

BLACKFEET RESERVATION — The painting hangs on a wall in Blackfeet C

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