Montana's history magazine wins national honor

Press release

“Montana The Magazine of Western History” will receive a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City April 14 in a ceremony to be emceed by actors Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross.

The “Outstanding Magazine Article” winning the award is “All-American Indian Days and the Miss Indian America Pageant,” published in the Summer 2017 issue of “Montana The Magazine of Western History.” This will be the eighth Wrangler Award for the Montana Historical Society’s magazine.

“This is an extremely prestigious award,” Montana editor Molly Holz said. “Greg’s article has received a lot of attention and we’ve had requests for it from all over the nation.”

Nickerson’s article tells the story of the creation of the All-America Indian Days and the Miss Indian America Pageant at the Sheridan Wyoming Rodeo in the early 1950s. During this period, Indians from reservations in southern and eastern Montana often travelled to Sheridan to shop, yet they faced prejudice in Main Street businesses that refused to serve them.

Native people and reform-minded community leaders joined together to create All-American Indian Days and the Miss Indian America Pageant as a site of reconciliation, and these efforts at improving race relations earned Sheridan national recognition. The winners of the Miss Indian America pageant embraced the opportunity to use the honor to promote interracial understanding and American Indian culture.

Nickerson holds a master’s degree in history of the American West from the University of Wyoming. Originally from Big Horn, Wyoming, Nickerson conducted interviews with Miss Indian America organizers and Crow Fair participants as a student at Carleton College and later while curating an exhibit on All-American Indian Days for the Sheridan County Museum. In 2015, he produced the short film “No Indians or Dogs Allowed? Sheridan, Wyoming, and the Miss Indian America Pageant” for Wyoming PBS, which is available on Vimeo.

“This article and award really is a tribute to the Sheridan volunteers and American Indians who put on the Miss Indian America pageant from 1953-1984, and to the local archivists who preserved records of the event,” Gregory Nickerson says. “The expert staff at Montana Historical Society were extremely supportive in bringing this article to fruition, especially editors Molly Holz and Randall Williams, photo editor Laura Ferguson, graphic designer Diane Gleba Hall, and business manager Tammy Ryan.”

To read the article, check your local library or visit gregorynickerson.com. The magazine is also available for sale from the Montana Historical Society by calling 406-444-4708.