BROWNING — Box fans whirred as dozens of people crowded into the Medicine Bear Lodge homeless shelter on a 100-degree day last July.
“Hi Bum!” and “Hey Auntie!” were among the greetings people shouted into Director Marcedes Old Person’s office as they grabbed plates of meatloaf and green beans.
Leaning on the doorframe of Old Person’s office, one man poked his head in to ask if he could stay for the night. Old Person, who’s on a first-name basis with nearly everyone who comes in, shook her head no.
“I have to hire a night watchman,” she told him, dabbing her glistening forehead with a tissue.
“Really?” he interjected. “You got the room …”
Located on the Blackfeet Reservation in north-central Montana, the Medicine Bear Lodge can sleep 40 people — 20 men and 20 women. Despite its capacity, however, the shelter hasn’t been able to fully operate in more than a year due to a lack of money.
But whose fault is it?” Old Person asked in a recent interview with Montana Free Press.
It’s the question at the center of broiling frustrations in the close-knit tribal community.
The Blackfeet Reservation is home to 10,309 people, 33% of whom live below the poverty level. Like in every tribal community across Montana, access to housing is limited, and federal funding for low-income housing doesn’t come close to meeting community needs.
Shelter closures have plagued other tribal communities, too. Homeless shelters in Poplar and Wolf Point on the Fort Peck Reservation have struggled to stay open through the years. In the winter of 2019, community members built plywood huts to help keep people warm.
Once able to provide shelter for dozens of people, a lack of money has crippled Medicine Bear Lodge, effectively reducing it to a soup kitchen serving one hot meal a day. Community members for months have voiced frustration and urged investment in the shelter, saying people experiencing homelessness have nowhere to go.
Medicine Bear Lodge needs several full-time employees to operate 24/7, including at least three male and three female resource aides — one for each shift. But the shelter’s $100,000 annual federal grant isn’t enough. Old Person said it covers supplies, food for the once-a-day meal and her salary. Blackfeet Manpower, a tribal workforce program, provides the shelter with two cooks.
As Medicine Bear Lodge survives on a shoestring budget, Old Person said looming federal cuts could threaten its existence.
“It’s really sad,” she said. “It’s a community struggle.”
During a cold spell last January and February, Manpower supplied enough staff to keep the shelter open 24/7. But when the temperature rose, the shelter closed again, limiting its operations again to the daily hot meal.
The shelter’s brief opening highlighted for many its vital role in the community. Marlee Wells worked at the shelter on behalf of Manpower at the time. She said she didn’t realize how badly the community needed Medicine Bear Lodge until she saw the many elders who relied on it.
“I had an elder cry because he didn’t have a place to go,” she told Montana Free Press in March. “He asked me if I could talk to people to keep it open, and I told him I would try really hard.”
Funding challenges
The Medicine Bear Lodge opened in 1986, first as a soup kitchen and later as a place to house community members. It was established by Old Person’s father, Carl Cree Medicine, and Joe Bear.
Managing the shelter grew harder as the men grew older, and in 2012 the original building was condemned because of asbestos. The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council around that time designated a new building (its current location) for the shelter and hired Marcedes Old Person to get it running again. The tribe would provide funding for salaries to operate the shelter.
Old Person, who worked in law enforcement for 40 years, came out of retirement to do the job. She was drawn to it because she’d been working with the houseless population all her life.
“The street people are my type of people,” she said in a July 2024 interview.
When she first took over, Old Person said she crowdfunded about $8,000 for the shelter. She used the money for things like food and hygiene supplies. At the time, she said many tribal employees donated a portion of their paycheck to the fund.
Old Person wanted Medicine Bear Lodge to be a place where people felt safe. Where they could wash up, clean their clothes and eat a good meal.
“That’s how you turn people’s lives around,” she said in July. “You make them feel worthy.”
But through the years, Old Person said, securing adequate funding has been difficult. The last time the shelter received money from the tribe for salaries was in 2022 when the tribe appropriated $60,000 to Medicine Bear Lodge, according to Old Person.
While the tribe initially oversaw the shelter, in 2022 oversight shifted to Blackfeet Manpower. People hoped the shelter would receive more personnel support and achieve stability under that program.
Federal American Rescue Plan Act funds in 2021 and 2022 provided a big boost. The shelter used those federal dollars to hire staff and finish ongoing infrastructure projects, according to the director and a tribal official. Outfitted with two large trailers — one for men and one for women — the shelter could for the first time sleep 40 people. Each room had a bed, mattress, closet and desk. At the time, Old Person said the shelter employed six resident aides, two cooks, a resource officer and several security workers.
“Everyone was pretty excited,” she recalled.
But when the federal ARPA funds ran out about two years ago, Old Person said she had to lay off everyone on staff. Medicine Bear Lodge has not been fully operational since then.
Manpower Acting Director Roberta Gordon told Montana Free Press this March the shelter “cannot operate” on the annual $100,000 federal grant alone.
“The impact, of the lack of funding, on the community is detrimental to those who are homeless,” she wrote.
Without a place to go, she said some people put their lives at risk by staying in unsafe, abandoned buildings. Others may seek shelter with family members whose homes are already full, which Gordon said “creates a hardship for all involved.” A 2018 Community Health Survey identified housing as a priority concern among Blackfeet Reservation residents. It also revealed that 32% of the nearly 500 people surveyed lived in overcrowded homes, meaning there were more than two people in a bedroom.
As the Trump administration announces sweeping cuts to federal spending, Old Person said she worries every day whether the grant holding the shelter together will disappear. Those funds come from the Community Services Block Grant, a program within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that provides money to states, territories and tribes to assist low-income families and individuals. While the White House has not yet sent a formal HHS budget to Congress, Politico reported that an April 10 proposal outlined sweeping cuts that would eliminate dozens of programs, including those focused on low-income Americans.
“We’re all on edge about what he’s doing,” Old Person said of President Donald Trump. “We’re crossing our fingers and our toes but we live day by day.”
Old Person said Medicine Bear Lodge would need about $300,000 to be fully functional. If she was able to hire more employees and open the shelter, she said she can think of at least 20 people who would immediately benefit from having a place to stay.
“I don’t know [the tribe’s] financial situation,” she said. “All I know is they don’t have the money to put into this program as of yet.”
Blackfeet Treasurer Lionel Kennerly did not respond to several requests for comment.
In a March 18 Facebook post on the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council’s official page discussing the financial health of the tribe, Tribal Public Relations Officer Martina HeavyRunner wrote, “We are in uncertain times under the Trump administration.”
“We are scrutinizing spending and evaluating programs to ensure we have financial stability for the future,” the post reads.
At 71, Old Person hopes to retire in a few years. She wants Medicine Bear Lodge to succeed but wonders who would want to take her place with so little financial support. She likes to say she’s “begged, borrowed and bummed” for every dollar the shelter has received through the years.
“But what do you do?” she asked. “Where do you go when there’s no resources out there?”
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org.
