Blackfeet "Doughboys" starved by the agency ring, a criminal conspiracy. The National Indian Memorial Association wrote General Pershing in 1921, "150 Blackfeet Indians fought in World War One on the fields of France, and that only about 20 of them came back, not one of them sound, and many of them wounded; that these Indian veterans are now dying by the roadside, and so are many of their other tribal members, from sheer hunger; that the tribe is being decimated by the pangs of hunger; that their hunting grounds have been pre-empted and their land filched. We request you use your influence and great heart to strike a blow somewhere, somehow, that will rouse the people to a realization of the horrors that exist at their own door, and that the spirit of mercy and of good-will clustering about the manger and cradle in Bethlehem will bring gifts of food and clothing to these dependent, oppressed, and damaged Indians, old and blind, who lived to rear boys whom they sent to fight under your sword in France and are likewise wounded, helpless, and suffering with their fathers whom they cannot help. God have mercy on us if we do not do something and do it soon. The Indians of this bleak region allege they are being starved to compel them from necessity to consent to the sale of their irrigable lands. I want to know, General Pershing, if you are able to find anywhere, in the annals of the deplorable conditions obtaining in starving Russia and hunger-ridden Armenia, anything more heart rending or deplorable than this condition on the Blackfeet Reservation-denied absolutely by Cato Sells, Indian Commissioner, unheeded by the Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane; and why it is and how it is that this nation will pour out its treasures of food and clothing and sympathy on the children of foreign lands while they leave destitute and dying these Indians, under the control of a merciless bureaucracy. There is no speech, there is no language, there is no heart-rending cry that in any fashion become adequate to the description of such a state of affairs. Joseph K. Dixon, National Indian Memorial Association."  [Authors Note:] These lands are the private-property of the Blackfeet Indians stolen by border-whites on the Blackfeet Reservation with the complicity of the Interior Department which lands today produce estimated revenues of $850,000,000 annually for the whites while the Blackfeet Indians Heirs live in poverty today on the Blackfeet Reservation. We need the help of good people to petition President Obama to send our claims to Congress to recover our stolen lands under Public Law 96-217, Section 2 which Provides;" Not later than June 30, 1982, The Secretary of the Interior, after consultation with the Attorney General, shall submit to the Congress legislative proposals to resolve those Indian claims subject to the amendments made by the first section of this act [extending the statute of limitations period] that the Secretary of the Interior or the Attorney General believes are not appropriate to resolve by litigation." President Reagan and Secretary of the Interior James Watt refused to comply with this federal law by defying Congress, but perhaps President Obama will act if we can reach him at The White House.Gov Please help us!
-Bob Juneau, Sr.