Description

At one point the Chinese made up more than a tenth of Montana Territory’s population, but their stories were seldom told – until now. On Monday, April 10, author and professor Mark T. Johnson will speak about the Chinese experience in Montana at the Northwest Montana History Museum. Johnson, a professor at Notre Dame University who lives in Helena and grew up in Great Falls, was teaching in Shanghai when he learned of two collections of hundreds of documents, mostly written in Chinese, at the Montana Historical Society. He assembled a 60-person multigenerational, international team of translators to discover the documents’ contents, primary research that would inform his book “Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky: The Chinese Experience in Montana” (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). As Chinese Montanans navigated opportunities and ever-changing attitudes about immigration and Asians in particular, they learned to adapt and organize in their new environment. Johnson’s book, drawing on translated documents from the 1880s to the 1950s, tells of instances when Chinese immigrants displayed agency, persistence and global knowledge in dealings at home and abroad. Details: 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 10, 2023 Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 2nd Ave. E., Kalispell, MT 59901; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org