Good afternoon, Beacon readers. I had the honor of attending the Fire in the Mountains festival at Red Eagle campground over the weekend, hosted on the sacred lands of the Blackfeet Nation. While I’m no stranger to the festival scene, this was my first heavy metal, multi-day experience.

What brought me there wasn’t the head banging, or the world-class acts like the mystical Old Norse-rooted Wardruna, or the Norwegian black-metal Old Man’s Child first North America appearance (though I left the festival with a strong respect and appreciation for both), but the pull of a festival that sought to bring vulnerability and life’s hardships to the foreground.

The event is a long-running staple in the heavy music community. When the festival was ousted from its normal meeting grounds near the Grand Tetons a few years ago, Charlie Speicher, the director of the alternative Buffalo Hide Academy in Browning, reached out to the festival director to see if they’d be interested in hosting the festival in Montana. The campground, which is interspersed with fields and forest, borders Lower Two Medicine Lake and sits against a backdrop of looming mountain peaks.

Upon sight, the answer was an instant yes.

Students from Buffalo Hide Academy and Browning High School crowded onstage during Pan-Amerikan Native Front on Saturday afternoon, head banging over the blue Blackfeet Nation flag they were gifting to the Indigenous black-metal band. The experience was something they’d been anticipating for a long time.

They’ve been learning the nuances of metal like Pan-Amerikan Native Front in their Heavy Music Symposium class taught by Speicher and others. The accredited course dives into the creative process of heavy music, its subgenres, and how it can be a cathartic release for negative feelings – as Speicher, a lifetime metal and hardcore fan, has long referred to it, “part of wellness.”

Coping and emotional expression are central to the class. Montana has the highest rate of suicide in the U.S. with the highest percentage among Native Americans, according to the CDC and National Vital Statistics, although they only constitute 6% of the state’s population.

To combat the prevalent issue, educators at Buffalo Hide, Browning High, and the BPS Blackfeet Native American Studies Department collaborated on the course out of a desire to meet the students where they are – through music that speaks to their experience. They and other community members formed a nonprofit, The Firekeeper Alliance, with the mission of bringing attention to mental health in Indigenous communities. Students interned at the late-July festival through the organization.

Due to the negative impact it has historically had in Indian Country, alcohol was not served over the weekend, at the request of the Blackfeet Nation.

“Our aims have always been to build an event that places value on music, nature, and connection above all else, and to have a positive impact in the community that has welcomed us,” the festival website reads. “We stand behind the decision of our Blackfeet partners that all of these aims can be obtained without the presence of alcohol.”

Workshops ran throughout the mornings and afternoons of the three days, starting out with yoga and land-based meditation before diving into panel discussions where teachers broke down the impetus for the heavy music course, metal artists spoke on the life-saving qualities of music, a land guide shared his knowledge of ethnobotany, and others.

On Sunday evening, members of The Firekeeper Alliance welcomed CONVERGE, a metalcore band that the nonprofit had been allowed to select as a token of their partnership with the festival organizers. Speicher took to the microphone before the nonprofit group handed band members a blue Blackfeet Nation flag and a buffalo skull.

“To my friends and family here in Blackfeet country, suicide has obviously had a profound impact on us all,” Speicher said. “But please know that your pain will never go unseen.”

“There are no words for the magnitude of the grief you’ve experienced, but amid sorrow there is still so much strength here. You carry songs, stories, and a spirit that no darkness could ever erase,” Speicher added. “There’s just something that hits different when you connect to someone that has been through what you’ve been through, and to us this is what Fire in the Mountains is all about.

“As we welcome CONVERGE to the stage tonight, let us hold space for everything they represent – their ferocity, yes, but also for their empathy, for the noise but also for the message behind it, that survival is sacred, that cathartic expression is liberating, and that even in our darkest moments, we are not alone,” he said.

Immediately following was one of the most frenzied, yet humane mosh pits I’ve participated in.

With a sore body and a full heart, I’m Zoë Buhrmaster. Here’s the rest of the Daily Roundup.