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56 Counties: Mandy Smoker Broaddus, Leonard Smith

courtesy Leonard Smith and Mandy Smoker Broaddus

Roosevelt County is located in the northeast corner of Montana, bordering North Dakota on the East. Three fourths of the county is made up of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home of the Assiniboine Tribe, as well as three branches of the Sioux tribe, the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota. Mandy Smoker Broaddus and Leonard Smith both spent much of their formative years on the Fort Peck Reservation, and have spent most of their careers trying to give other Native Americans opportunities to better their lives.

Mandy Smoker Broaddus belongs to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana in Missoula, where she was the recipient of the Richard Hugo Fellowship.

Her first collection of poems, Another Attempt at Rescue, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 2005. She also received a regional Emmy award for her work as a writer/consultant on the PBS documentary Indian Relay.

She served as the Director of Indian Education for the state of Montana for almost ten years. In 2015 she was named the Indian Educator of the Year by the National Indian Education Association and was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education by President Barack Obama.  She currently works at Education Northwest as a practice expert in Indian Education.

Leonard Smith (an Assiniboine & Sioux tribal member of the Fort Peck Tribes) is the Executive Director of the Native American Development Corporation (NADC) and Director of the Urban Indian Health and Wellness Clinic in Billings, Montana.

Mr. Smith has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from Montana State University Billings and 30 years experience in organizational and business Development. 

Currently Mr. Smith is expanding the Urban Indian Clinic and Community Development Financial Intermediary through capitalization expansion and development of a sustainable Social Enterprise model.