The Northwest Territorial Imperative (often shortened to the Northwest Imperative or simply known as the Northwest Front) is a white separatist idea that has been popularized since the 1970s–80s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist and neo-Nazi groups within the United States. According to it, members of these groups are encouraged to relocate to a region of the Northwestern United States—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana—with the intention to eventually turn the region into an Aryan ethnostate. Depending on who defines the project, it can also include the entire states of Montana and Wyoming, plus Northern California. Several reasons have been given as to why activists have chosen to turn this area into a future white homeland: it is farther removed from Black, Jewish and other minority locations than other areas of the United States are; it is geographically remote, making it harder for the federal government to uproot activists; its "wide open spaces" appeal to those who believe in the right to hunt and fish without any government regulations; and it would also give them access to seaports and Canada. The formation of such a "White homeland" also involves the expulsion, euphemized as the "repatriation", of all non-Whites from the territory. The project is variously called "Northwest Imperative", "White American Bastion", "White Aryan Republic", "White Aryan Bastion", "White Christian Republic", or the "10% solution" by its promoters. White supremacist leaders Robert E. Miles, Robert Jay Mathews and Richard Butler were originally the main promoters of the idea. The territory which is proposed by the Northwest Territorial Imperative overlaps with the territory of the Cascadia independence movement, and the two movements share similar flags, but they have no ties to each other. Cascadian independence activists overwhelmingly reject the White supremacist ideology of the NTI movement. History The Oregon black exclusion laws of 1844, an attempt to expel all African Americans from the state, are cited as an early example of such a racist project in the region. White supremacist journalist Derek Stenzel, the Portland-based editor of Northwestern Initiative, emphasized that the 1859 constitution of Oregon explicitly stated that "no free negro, mulatto or Chinaman" could reside, vote, hold contract, or make business in the state. In his view, the Northwest Imperative project would be in line with the "high racist ideals" of the original settlers. The primary proponents of a separatist white homeland in America were Richard Butler (1918–2004),