Katherine Tobie Weist Interview, October 5, 2020

Tobie Weist discusses how her work on the Northern Cheyenne reservation influenced her anthropology career. She describes the poverty on the reservation and how she and her husband struggled to become accepted within the community. She talks about her research on suicide rates and causes among the tribe. Weist notes her hesitance to teach indigenous studies at the University of Montana because she wasn’t an expert on the subject and isn’t indigenous. She compares her interactions with the Northern Cheyenne tribe to those with the communities in Botswana and Tanzania, noting the various difference and similarities. Weist talks at length about her work in Tanzania interviewing over 100 women. She recalls her extensive post-retirement volunteerism, serving for the Red Cross in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, working for the Peace Corps in South Africa, and working with local Missoula organizations to provide help in elementary schools and to help individuals displaced by forest fires. She concludes by talking about her family—children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. She also reflects on anthropology as a 21st century profession and how the study of indigenous cultures should be approached.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/tobieweist_oralhistory/1002/thumbnail.jp