Who are the Wyoming women shaping the West? That’s the question one photographer and author originally from Powell tried to answer.
“I was just, from a very early age, fascinated by people, by place, how people live their lives,” said Lindsay Linton Buk.
During Women’s History Month, Linton Buk released a book telling the stories of 25 Wyoming women, called “Women Shaping the West: Stories from Wyoming.” It’s the culmination of a decades-long project that also includes a podcast and a traveling photo exhibit.
She sat down with Wyoming Public Media’s Hanna Merzbach.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Hanna Merzbach: Why was it so important to tell these stories in your home state of Wyoming?
Lindsay Linton Buk: I have very deep roots in the state. Our family goes back to the Bighorn Basin area [for] five generations. So I think I grew up with, as a lot of Wyoming kids do, you contribute what you can and you step up in your community.
If we do not capture these stories, they go away. I wanted to create this record, to create both this visual record, but also this audio record through the podcast and now this physical record through the book.
HM: As a storyteller myself, I'm just struck by the diversity of stories you ended up telling. There are a lot of firsts. There's Wyoming's first female chief justice, first Native female lawmaker, but then a lot of more everyday voices, like a regenerative farmer and an airport director. Tell me how you tried to strike that balance.
LLB: The first chapter, there were these women who were more well known or were the first in their fields or had overcome really great personal odds and obstacles. That chapter became chapter one, “Breaking Boundaries.”
Each ensuing chapter, I really did want to create this more colorful and diverse picture of Wyoming than you're used to seeing, whether that's where these women are from in the state, their age range. Skye is the youngest. She was 11 at the time for the Wyoming Latina Youth Conference. Mickey Thoman was, I believe, 89 when I featured her story. She's a sheep rancher.
I really just wanted to showcase a broad depiction of women and different ways that you can express yourself. I did try to cover as much of Wyoming as I could in 25 stories. These stories are not an exhaustive list by any means. This could be a lifetime of work. The stories are endless, and I just tried to create a body of work that felt like it touched enough notes to give a picture of what is possible here.
HM: I'm wondering if you could paint me a picture of your first interview with Neltje.
LLB: As I was conceptualizing the project, it was always a big vision. I felt like I could tell five stories in a year, so I started talking to people and a lot of the same names came up.
I was meeting with someone, and she said, ‘Have you heard about this woman painting 10-by-30-foot canvases from her ranch in Banner, Wyoming?’ And I said, ‘No, but I have to meet her.’
If you're from the Sheridan area, you know Neltje. She saved the Sheridan Inn. It was meant to be destroyed. She shifted into becoming a full-time artist later in her life. In her 70s and 80s, she started painting these massive canvases the size of a wall. I was just so intrigued by why she felt so compelled to create at this scale.
I was able to go and spend a few days with her on her ranch. It was in December, so crossing this sleepy hibernating landscape and then entering her world, which was so vibrant, so alive, so colorful, and just being blown away and just entering this world of life and passion and art and just thinking like, ‘Oh my gosh, where am I?’ I wanna show how these women are being themselves fully in this environment that we call home.
Neltge just completely rewired my idea of scale. She sadly passed away in 2021. It was this very short window. I think that is the value of storytelling, too. If you have that energy to go tell an idea, to go capture someone or their story, do it, because you really never know what's around the corner.
HM: I imagine it can be hard to find people to talk to sometimes. I know living in Wyoming, I often can't find sources on Google. It's a lot of scanning the comments on Facebook posts to find people or showing up in random towns and asking around. What was the weirdest way that you found someone, or the most surprising?
LLB: Going into chapter two, I wanted to feature women who you may not have heard of unless you're in their community. That took a little more digging because there weren't necessarily lots of public articles, but I had a vision of a female pilot.
Eventually, after sourcing online and doing a lot of searches, not really turning up with anything, I just pulled out a paper map of Wyoming, noted all the municipal airport symbols, looked at their numbers on Google and just started cold calling the list. And when I got to Upton, which was towards the bottom, I got to Lori Matei, and I knew that was my gal.
HM: There's a lot of stereotypes of the West — the cowboy culture and tumbleweeds blowing across dirt roads. What kind of picture did you wanna paint of the West?
LLB: I definitely wanted to divert from the especially visual imagery that I think is very predominant, which is more nostalgic, black and white, very centered upon the cowboy. I wanted to flip that on its head. I feel like there's so much vibrancy and color in our state and just within the spirit of the people.
Then, I wanted to make it women centered. Certainly in history, our stories have not always been at the forefront. We haven't always had that opportunity for voice or the same rights. And so I wanted to create that platform to illuminate the incredible impact that women have made and are continuing to make.
HM: We're the Cowboy State, but we're also the Equality State. This was the first place to recognize women's right to vote and hold office, not including Indigenous women, you note in the book. But at the same time, we rank towards the bottom for representation of women in the state Legislature, a place where lawmakers are passing laws concerning abortion that impact women. How do you hold all these different narratives together at once?
LLB: Something I just believe deeply is that many things can coexist at the same time. Something that I talk about in the book is, this cowboy is a symbol of freedom and resilience and independence. And I think something that women do really well and bring to the table is interdependence. That's something that I really learned from becoming a mom. I could not do it all on my own. I think that while we celebrate the cowboy as this symbol of that rugged individualism, it's really that interdependence that takes us so much farther.
I think in many ways the project represents an ideal to still aspire to. I'll note, too, that most of the production for the project happened between 2016 and 2019, so where we're at as a state right now is so different than when I first set out to create these stories. I think we have a lot of work to do to really embody that ideal.
My focus as an artist is really to promote people who love and work for people, and I think women can do that so well. That's why I wanted to highlight their stories.
