Amazingly, I’ve found common ground with Freedom Caucus legislators Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, and Steve Johnson, R-Cheyenne. They recently wrote in Cheyenne’s paper about the fallacy that one must be born in Wyoming to want to help the state. They correctly stated, “If the only qualification for good policy is a birth certificate stamped in Wyoming, we’re in trouble.” Too bad they didn’t stop there and omit claiming the Freedom Caucus, infamous for recent blunders like unconstitutionally gutting public education and encouraging guns in grade schools, aspires to “uphold the Constitution.”
Opinion
Still, they’re right that Wyoming birth qualifies no one as an authority on Wyoming. Like so much else, you don’t choose your birthplace. Same with skin color, sexual identity and family of origin. Everyone’s entitled to relish heritage, but not to borrow glory.
Not that I don’t try. The good representatives continued, “Ideas should rise or fall on their own merit — not on where someone’s great-grandfather ran cattle.” As it happens, mine ran his in Laramie County, which then reached to Montana. My forebears were, wait for it, immigrants, having struck out twice further east. Like many others, they came here seeking a better life. They relied upon the kindness of a Native American family who looked after my 12-year-old grandfather for the winter while my great-grandfather went back to Iowa to bring out more Yoders.
To the extent that this story might inform my own ideas about the value of immigrants today, wonderful. But I deserve no points for the postholes they dug for the Swan Company or the homestead they bought out and improved on Bear Creek.
When Becket Hinckley, born and raised in Basin, ran successfully for a Cheyenne seat in the 2000s, he was vilified as a Californian — he’d attended Stanford. Such parochialism inspired my letter to the editor, with which Pendergraft and Johnson should logically agree.
Today, protesters are showing up all around Wyoming to resist the excesses and abuses of the Trump administration. Harriet Hageman has received her fair share of complaints about it. What has been her reaction?
When her responses were jeered in Laramie on March 19, she called the protesters “organized.” Her apologists claimed they were paid and brought into the state to flood the event. I attended her March 20 town hall in Wheatland, which was packed with what looked and sounded to me like Wyoming people. I heard, “I’m a lifelong Republican, but I’m worried about __________” repeatedly.
Hageman thereafter switched to virtual town halls but is now doing very controlled in-person events. You must preregister, giving your full name, address, and email address, and agree to receive her newsletter. It’s not clear if out-of-staters or even out-of-county Wyomingites will be allowed in.
I bet no one except police is being paid to show up at the rallies I attend. I recognize lots of people — from church, volunteer work and around town. They’re hardly out-of-staters “being brought in” or “paid.” At one, I asked a mother and daughter where they were from and they said Saddle Ridge, north of Cheyenne. Most people driving past the Capitol honking in support display the ugly new Wyoming plates.
But so what if some protesters aren’t from Wyoming? Does it make their concerns about the state of the country any less compelling if they call Nebraska or Colorado home? I write to senators from other states whenever the spirit moves me. To his staff’s credit, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., answers, even though I live here. His recent reply was quicker and lots better than what I get from Barrasso. His milquetoast assertions about the “waste, fraud and abuse” co-president Musk has “found” fall flat and ignore the fallout Barrasso’s constituents are suffering under Musk’s chainsaw.
Call me a foolish optimist, but I think it’s great for America that people are exercising First Amendment rights and demanding that our leaders know just how dimly we view the improper rejigging of our government. It’s good for the body politic to remind itself where the real power in this country is — vested in us. If that means that we, the people, have to walk around carrying signs, so be it. I just wish I’d needlepointed one I saw on TV: “I’m so angry I stitched this so I could legally stab something 4000 times.”
Thank you so much for this. While I’ve called Wyoming home for my entire life I find it discomforting that a voice in our state may mean less if they are from somewhere else. Right now it seems we are fighting a massive war and I believe we need more voices of reasoning, no matter where they are from. Thank you again for your opinion. It should matter to all of us.
So if my parents had to drive to Nebraska as the nearest birthing hospital, but brought me home to Wyo a week later and I never left, am I a native?
In Cody, this mentality is very prevalent and particularly vicious. Rare is the public discussion that does not get derailed by a self appointed purity committee that scours the internet (ok….Facebook and LinkedIn) for indications that someone taking part might have lived somewhere else at some time. The Hinckley example talked about in the article is at least a daily occurrence around here.
The majority,vast majority, of people who act like this are adherents of a certain specific political persuasion. Ironically, most of these people are all too happy to have Faux Newz beam it’s New York City television studio ideas into their homes and heads. There seems to be no concern among them when Wyoming legislators and Wyoming regulators become glorified xerox machines for out of state interests (not just a freedom caucus thing), or take marching orders from out of state political organizers. (Also not just a freedom caucus thing). I recall being booed out of the room during a campaign event back when Liz Cheney first ran for the Wyoming house seat she held. My transgression was daring to question her loyalties to Wyoming given her status as a poster child carpetbagger.
But the most ironic thing, at least in my eyes, is this:
Cody sees a very large number of tourists come through each year en route to Yellowstone. The two things that have always caught visitors attention, the two things they almost always comment about are
1) the scenery, which is not really relevant to my point here
And
2) how thoroughly and genuinely nice, friendly, hospitable, polite, theetc the people from here are.
And time and time again, hundreds of times a year, I see these nativists turning into complete assholes (like one might expect from stereotypes about people from New York or New Jersey) in the process of complaining about Californicationing, or Coloradicationing of Wyoming….
Nieztsche once said to take care when fighting monsters that you do not become one yourself.
And in the quest to stop Wyoming from developing an “east infection”, these people create a social climate like one would expect from New York City, based on reputation.
Born in Wyoming, to conservative Christian, republican parents, my life as a Navy spouse with him stationed on both coasts, Europe, and Hawaii exposed me to the incredible diversity of our world. Our retirement back to Wyoming in no way erases those years of experience, but adds context to the exclusionary mindset I see here today. It’s not the attitude that I remember from my growing up years. Folks loathe the progressive minded folks coming here with their ideas, but welcome with open arms the folks who would take us back to the late 1800s. We can move forward into the future while preserving our values of live and let live, helping and trusting each other, and appreciating our differences. We are, after all, better, together.
We can all definitely agree that birthplace is no qualifier. Thank you for making that so very clear in this opinion article.
Thank you for a thoughtful essay. It is essential to acknowledge the contributions of Native peoples and to fight for their rights today. I am relieved to see some common sense and basic decency coming from red states where MAGA has simply drunk the KKKoolaid of its own bigotry and lies. Grateful for this very thoughtful commentary to speak out against the illegality of Musk-DOGE-Trump violations of Congressional funding and Constitutional laws.
Great article, Marion! Carol Mathia
It’s sad that to live in Wyoming you have to be a certain way. Assimilate or else. What is so frightening about someone who isn’t like you? After 45 years in Wyoming there is very little that is very inviting to others coming in. Wyoming sure isn’t growing, just dying on the vine.
Let’s remove all the non-natives… retroactively. I say we go back about 300 years to make sure the trailer parks are track homes are empty. And seriously Andy? Seriously? This is how you talk? “If you don’t like it, leave! Don’t try to change anything”
Quit pouring whiskey in your thermos and calling it culture.
We gave into fear and anxiety. The collective ‘we’ of course, only about 70% of registered voters from WY need to sew the capital “C” for coward onto their truck stop hoodies.
Team orange is currently arguing that prices going up is a good thing because we consume too much, when 6 months ago they were calling for an armed revolution over egg prices. It was “TRUMPS ECONOMY!” in January 2025, but since the drunken fools have tanked things, “IT’S BIDEN’S ECONOMY!” Bezos backed off displaying the tariff charges on his Amazon site, after a threat from the crypto grifter. maga apologists are now saying the quiet part out loud, and embracing abandonment of the Bill of Rights, if it means they get their wish list of bigotry and graft. The INCELs at doge have proven a total bust. Public lands are going up for auction. Canada got a Rhodes Scholar as their new PM, and we got a moron with soiled diapers. Last of the pre-tariff ships are pulling into port along the West Coast. Fun should start soon.
There have to be some in WY, when growing up and studying history, that wondered if in 1945 Germans looked across their destroyed lands, the piled-up bodies of dead family and friends, then asked if any of what they wanted was worth the price they paid. For WY, is that pronoun, or any one of ten Div I trans-athletes, or the illegal working the beet fields… any of the stuff you really voted for, because it sure as hell wasn’t about debt, or the economy, or tyranny, or Hunter’s laptop, or protecting your religion… was any of the bile you poured into the voting booth worth bringing the entire Nation down? A 240+ year democracy ends with a foul stench and a dumb looking red hat. Was it worth it? Did you own the Lib, cowboy?
How a country, state or city fails is through immigration (outsiders moving enmass to another region that don’t assimilate). Wyomings “mountain west” culture is different than Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, New York or Kathmandu. Many people refer to this as “culture”. So while I agree with the concept of a native birth certificate doesn’t give you knowledge and license about Wyoming…I completely disagree with the concept that “I moved to Wyoming therefore I’m an expert on Wyoming”. For example: You don’t have to hunt to live in Wyoming, but if you move to Wyoming and try and change hunting laws, you need to get back in your electric car and “go home” back to the state you came from. This transcends across everything that made Wyoming great…from taxes to crime to anything that makes us “Wyomingites”. Real Wyomingites…believe in liberty, the constitution, federal and state laws, moms and dads…and even apple pie…not repackaged communism that liberals peddle. I for one, as a native, completely support “the rejigging” of out federal government as we were on a path for liberal feds to be “in Wyoming’s business”…so in others words: outsiders to Wyomings culture trying to change Wyomings culture.
If you want to change conservative leadership in Wyoming, they aren’t the problem…you are, and even if you’re a native, you should get out a map and find another place that matches your particular culture, because you’re really not a native.
The classic real Wyomingite litmus test, and I forgot to study. You should come with a soundtrack, Andy.
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” – Iron Britches Maggie Thatcher
If you have to tell people you are the true WY, you aren’t.
Sir, you have a “Wyoming–love it or leave it” attitude.” Many of us have a “We love Wyoming and want to stay and make it greater in spite of its flaws.
I’m just a bit confused on your logic here Andy. You say “real” Wyomingites “believe in the constitution, federal and state law, and that our conservative leadership isn’t the problem and everyone who disagrees with them is.
I suppose in MAGA world this makes complete sense and that’s why the attacks on the judicial system continue, lawful orders by judges (who are trying to uphold the rule of law) are being ignored by the administration, and our representatives are actively encouraging it is just fine with you. I’m sorry sir, but that’s not how this country is supposed to work.
Fox News is your problem Andy. I’m a RINO of the Al Simpson variety and I can spot their horsesh-t a mile away and refuse to listen to it as the gospel according to Trump. You might look outside once in awhile and notice Wyoming is still a pretty decent place and that, like always, most of us can disagree without being disagreeable
Thanks again for another great article Marion from another born and raised Wyomingite that’s had enough of our delegation and this administration’s reckless and dangerous way of governing. Keep them coming!
I moved to Wyoming in 1979. The first 10 years I lived here people gave me crap cuz I wasn’t a Wyoming native. I simply told them I am a Vietnam vet and I can live anywhere I damn well please. That hageman women should stand on railroad tracks and stop trains with her ugly face
A minor addition to the last paragraph:
“It’s healthy for the body politic to remind everyone where the real power in this country lies-in us. If that means that we, the people, have to walk around carrying signs, so be it. Mine reads, “We Do Process, Not Kings.” I wish I’d had the wit and the ability to needlepoint one I recently saw on TV: “I’m So Angry I Stitched This So I Could Stab Something 4000 Times.”