Trinka Marie Michalson

Our beloved friend and family member, Trinka Michalson, passed from this earth on the spring equinox after a brief illness.

Trinka was born in Havre, Montana in 1950 to parents Gordon and Mary Michalson and spent her early years in Chinook, surrounded by a large extended family. After graduating from Chinook High School in 1969, she moved to Helena, where she made lifelong friends and loved working in her garden, listening to jazz, and filling her house with art. She was devoted to Sourdough, her wonderful husky, and George, her pesky orange cat.

Trinka was an enrolled member of the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe and an active member of the Helena Indian Alliance. Since an early age, she was a community organizer, community leader, and an activist. In 1972, she walked the Trail of Broken Treaties, a protest march from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. to demand redress for years of destructive federal Indian policies. She represented the Montana Low-Income Organization, trained in the Urban Preceptor Program at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, served as the director of the Anaconda Indian Alliance, and spent time doing community work in Belize.

In her later years, it was rare for Trinka to miss a demonstration or rally for human and worker rights at the Helena Capital. She was a lifelong Democrat and kept herself informed, reading two or three online newspapers a day. She believed we are here to make the world a better place, and she was always hopeful.

In the mid-eighties, Trinka joined the Montana AFL-CIO as one of the few women laborers at that time, building bridges and roads across Montana until she retired. With her great sense of humor and strong work ethic, she also built bridges among her colleagues. She was a strong supporter of unions and often served as the AFL-CIO’s election judge.  She was the Union President of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 1686 and served on their executive board for several years.

In between her seasonal work with the Laborer’s Union, Trinka worked at the Sweetgrass Bakery, where she became an expert baker. Even after retirement, Trinka regularly made delicious breads in her tiny kitchen, often giving a loaf away in a lottery she held on Facebook. Someone was always being well-fed or lodged at her house on Pine Street.

No memorial would be complete without mentioning Trinka’s original sense of humor. It was bold, audacious, good-natured, and peppered with sayings and jokes she learned in the labor camps and the street, always employed with the intent to remind us not to take ourselves so seriously.

Trinka was preceded in death by her siblings Melvin Michalson, Phillip (Gene) Powderface, Ivan (Lee) Powderface, Ina Powderface and is survived by siblings Inez Halseth, Sophie Gottfried, Robert Michalson, Martin Michalson, Alvin Powderface, many nieces and nephews, grand nieces and nephews, and a multitude of friends. An outdoor memorial is being planned in Helena at Laborer’s Union grounds in May or June.

In remembrance of Trinka’s life, the family asks that any charitable donations be made to the Helena Food Share, the Lewis & Clark Human Society or Montana PBS. Simple Cremation Montana has assisted the family.

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