No Apology Can Fix GOP Candidate’s ‘Old Racist Stereotypes’: Crow Tribal Leader

For five days, Republican Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy has kept silent as a growing number of Montana tribal leaders have come forward to condemn the racist remarks he made about members of the Crow Tribe and demand an apology.

But Levi Black Eagle, secretary of the Crow Tribe, one of largest Native American tribes in Montana, told HuffPost that an apology would do little good at this point.

“I think the time for an apology may have passed,” Black Eagle said in an interview Thursday. “Any apology now from him, I don’t think it would be sincere. I think it would just be optics, mainly, and a lot of lip service. I don’t think it would justify what he said. It’d help, but would it fix it? No. He perpetuated old racist stereotypes. There’s really no excuse or room for that.”

Sheehy, a multimillionaire businessman and ex-Navy SEAL who is polling ahead of three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, peddled a longstanding racist trope about Native Americans and alcoholism during two private fundraising events in November 2023. Audio recordings of the events were first obtained by Char-Koosta News, the official publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation.

Among other things, Sheehy, who owns a ranch and cattle operation, said that roping and branding cattle on the Crow Reservation was a “great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.” and that “every heel shot you miss you get a Coors Light can upside the head.”

In a second recording, Sheehy boasted of having ridden a horse in a parade at the 2023 Crow Fair, an annual cultural celebration at the Crow Reservation in southeast Montana. He called it a “tough crowd” and again claimed that tribal members hurled beer cans at him.

“They let you know