Montana State comic artist shares Blackfeet stories

BOZEMAN - Most people who live just outside the Blackfeet Reservation have heard of the Goat-Man.

Some say the mysterious half-goat, half-man has always haunted the Depot Coulee area, while others believe he arose more recently as a guiding spirit to scare people away from drugs, alcohol and other harmful things, said Jade Lowder, who is Amskapi Pikuni and was born in Browning. Lowder is an assistant professor in the School of Art in the College of Arts and Architecture at Montana State University.

Shivers ran up Lowder's spine one evening in June this year as he listened to a young couple describe their encounter with the Goat-Man - the spirit, they said, jumped back and forth on their roof, visible only for a moment before he vanished, leaving faint goat tracks across their yard.

The couple sat among several Blackfeet community members gathered for a storytelling night in Browning, hosted by Lowder and Aaron LaFromboise, director of the Medicine Spring Library at Blackfeet Community College. Other attendees contributed their tales of things that go bump in the night, teasing each other when their stories elicited spooked expressions.

Not for the first time, Lowder said he recognized the power of storytelling to build community, one of his primary goals in founding the Niitsitapi Publishing nonprofit with LaFromboise. The pair will publish artists and authors from all four nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, stretching from Browning into Canada. LaFromboise hopes they will eventually expand to include Blackfeet authors living across the U.S. and the world. Once they publish their first work this fall, a horror comic by Lowder, they will release a collection of tales from the storytelling night and a book of poetry.

The nonprofit will provide access to modern stories Blackfeet readers can relate to, and many of the projects will include translations in the Blackfeet language, LaFromboise said.

"There are so many brilliant Blackfeet artists and creators and storytellers, but if there wasn't something made to specifically work with those voices, then many wouldn't get shared," Lowder said.

Lowder's publishing expertise and ability to carve out a niche for himself in the horror comic genre lend themselves well to his students in the School of Art, according to Dean Adams, dean of MSU's College of Arts and Architecture. Lowder teaches first-year Montana State students how to think critically about peers' work and propose alternative ways to represent their stories visually, as well as the foundational principles of 2D and 3D design, Adams said. Along with Visual Language: Comprehensive Foundations, Lowder instructs Intermediate Painting. He received his bachelor's degree in painting from MSU in 2012 and has taught at the university for 10 years.

"His breadth of skills and knowledge combined with his interest in student success make him an extremely effective art foundations coordinator and professor," Adams said. "Through integration of his creative scholarship and his teaching, he is building bridges between MSU and the Blackfeet Nation that will improve the lives of the Blackfeet community and MSU students."

LaFromboise has long had a desire to collect the oral histories of the Blackfeet Confederacy, even before becoming the longest-serving director of the Medicine Spring Library, which is home to the official Blackfeet tribal archives and a place where community members gather nearly as often as community college students. LaFromboise said she found a way to make her dream a reality after meeting Lowder, who is experienced in the publishing world as a comic artist and possesses a "let's do it" attitude. They connected through the MT 988 Project, a suicide awareness program that uses art to empower people to ask for help, and has previously partnered with MSU students to create a challenge coin and a poster campaign.

"Instead of waiting for an opportunity to find us, let's create our own opportunities," LaFromboise said. "[Before now,] I really didn't feel like there was a place for me in literature, and I didn't actually feel like that place could exist."

Niitsitapi Publishing's first release, Lowder's horror comic titled "Not Enough Blood," tells a story about a young Blackfeet man who becomes possessed by an evil entity that feeds on blood and violence near Browning in 1979.

Lowder's fascination with horror began when he was a child, reading about the Wolf-Man and Frankenstein's monster in books held together with tape because so many children had checked them out from the H.C. Davis Elementary School library in Cut Bank. Tall tales often followed Lowder home, where his father, Fred, told stories around campfires and on road trips, about how he rolled his car in Kalispell or about sleeping on the sandstone Rimrocks above Billings or about the mysterious fire at a shop he once owned.

When Fred Lowder died in 2020, Jade Lowder was left with many unanswered questions about his father's stories. He also lost one of his last ties to Blackfeet culture. Jade Lowder said his great-grandparents and grandparents were raised in an era of cultural assimilation and were fearful of passing down their knowledge, which meant he often felt distanced from Blackfeet traditions unless his father snuck in "little nuggets of the culture," like attending Browning's North American Indian Days celebration.

"[My dad's death] started me on this journey of going back and learning more about where I come from and where my family comes from," he said.

"Not Enough Blood" was born out of exploring that part of himself and what might happen to Louis, the main character, when faced with similar life experiences as Fred Lowder. The story soft launched this summer at the San Diego Comic-Con, where Jade Lowder was a panelist at the largest convention of its kind in the world.

"Realizing that I had made it to a place in this industry where I can offer help instead of just being the one that needs help, which is kind of where I was even two years ago, is surreal," he said. "Because of that, I feel like these next projects I'm working on are the right things to do. This is where I want to go."