Meet your Montana Team Leader: Rosie Morrison
Rosie has a heartwarming story about her meaningful relationship with Montana to share. She is currently Global Volunteers Montana Team Leader, having joined the staff in 2023. In this blog post, Rosie shares her connection to the Blackfeet Reservation and Global Volunteers Co-founder and Senior Vice President, Michele Gran.
A resilient community lives in their ancestral homeland in the rolling foothills on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains in northern Montana. The land borders Glacier National Park on one side and marks the transition between mountainous landscapes and the vast plains of eastern Montana. This land makes up the Blackfeet Reservation, an area around the size of Delaware, with vast natural beauty and a complex history. The Blackfeet people have resided in this area for centuries, though it is only a fraction of their original homeland, which spanned north to what is now Calgary, all the way south to what is now Yellowstone National Park, and east through the Dakotas.
This area attracts many tourists traveling to Glacier National Park, also the historical homelands of the Blackfeet people, throughout the summer months. People of all ages are drawn to the park’s natural beauty, which has some of the last remaining glaciers in the lower 48 states. Rosie Morrison’s family was no exception.
Rosie’s parents took their honeymoon in Glacier National Park and returned with Rosie when she was just 9 months old. Nearly every summer until she was 18, her parents would take her and her two brothers to Glacier on road trips. They would camp, hike, and watch wildlife from the different valleys within the park. Through learning more about the area, as well as programming from the National Park Service, she grew to learn more about the Blackfeet people and became more interested in learning their history in the area. “Reframing what I was learning about American history in school through understanding what happened to Indigenous tribes across the United States changed how I understood this country’s past. That understanding was vital to how I began to see the world and understand systems that perpetuate injustice,” she remarked.
After her first year of college, she returned to work on the eastern side of the park in the summer. She continued this for the four subsequent summers, in continual awe of the place and the people who called it home. After some time away, she moved back to the area permanently at the end of 2021. She worked at a local grade school for just under 2 years, before hearing about Global Volunteers from a local nonprofit. Rosie heard they were hiring a local Team Leader for their Montana service programs and discovered that the home office was only 20 minutes from where she had grown up in Minnesota. After learning more about Global Volunteers’ Philosophy of Service, she applied for the position. “I felt like the philosophy and values behind Global Volunteers aligned with the ways I was looking to give back to the community,” Rosie shared.
Rosie was hired in June of 2023, and was able to assist with many service programs during the summer, learning from team leaders how best to go about being a team leader. Rosie mentioned, “I felt especially connected to Global Volunteers once I worked with Michele Gran, Global Volunteers Co-founder and Senior Vice President. She also spent some of her childhood in the area, and I felt like our connections to the community were similar.”
As this summer approaches, Rosie is looking forward to leading teams of volunteers who want to help a community that has endured incredible hardships, resulting in cycles of trauma. Global Volunteers works with organizations in the area that seek to help the community through development work.
According to Rosie, the best part of the Montana service programs is the community, “The people here are warm and welcoming and are eager to share their culture and history. “Knowing and understanding the people and all they have been through can help current and future generations to make positive changes for indigenous communities now and in the future.” Service programs in Montana offer the opportunity to spend time in service to the people of the Blackfeet community, as well as to experience the culture. This allows for connections to be built between volunteers and local people, which helps us all understand each other.
To learn more and sign up for a program in Montana, go to our Montana service program page. Limited spots remain available for programs this summer. Rosie welcomes everyone to volunteer in Montana.
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