BREAKING BLACKFEET ECONOMIC APARTHEID!

BREAKING ECONOMIC APARTHEID: Economic monopoly and political slavery by Glacier County and border-whites’ encroachment on stolen Blackfeet land allotments in 1919 established white rule over the Indians within the exterior boundaries of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Justice for the Indians requires Congress restoring trust land titles of Blackfeet Indian landowners held by treaty with the United States. The Blackfeet Indians do not have a system of clear property rights due to border-whites void Patent-in-Fee land titles within the reservation borders caused by U.S. Government Indian Agents corruption. The land frauds led to massive thefts of inalienable Indian land titles and usurpation tribal sovereignty by the State of Montana jurisdiction. The Blackfeet Indians had established a successful, self-reliant cattle industry by 1890, which was robbed by white ranchers with the complicity of federal trustees of Indian lands.  

The lack of a clear system of Blackfeet property rights does not allow credit and capital to flow to Indian property owners and does not allow Blackfeet Reservation markets to develop. The Indians still struggle to document their land titles and water rights in 2014. The border-whites operate an illegal economy on the reservation that diverts $850,000,000 from the reservation economy of the Indians. The underground economy of border-whites on the reservation is generated by void Patent-in-Fee lands of border-whites living and doing business on the stolen Blackfeet land allotments. This conspiracy was documented by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 1928. The Glacier County border-whites hold their void Patent-in-Fee property without normal legal title. How do the border-whites operate outside the legal reservation economy? Federal Trustees were and still are complicit in the robbing of inalienable Blackfeet property.  

EXECUTIVE BRANCH “CONFESSES” COMPLICITY: In 1979, the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior testified under Oath to the Select Committee on Indian Affairs in Congressional Oversight Hearings on unresolved Indian land claims. The Assistant Secretary testified that, “The United States, of course, has a trust responsibility to the Indian Heirs just as it does to recognized tribes, bands, or groups. We are unable to locate many of the Indian heirs. The title issues in Indian land claims are not subject to the federal statute of limitations. If the Indian claim does not survive the statute of limitations, there would be a suit against the United States Government as trustee for failure to carry out a fiduciary obligation, a breach of the obligation to bring an action on the Indian Claimants behalf. It would also be a suit by the federal trustees, [Interior Department, Attorney General], against the United States Government, and the public spectacle of the United States Government suing itself on behalf of its Indian wards.”  These bureaucrats cannot keep their heads on straight.  

In a class action lawsuit filed Nov. 17, 1982, in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. the Covelo Indian Community, as Plaintiffs, sued James Watt, Secretary of the Interior, “To seek declaratory and mandatory injunctive relief to secure rights and duties they claim are owed to them, and all others similarly situated, by the defendant federal officials.” The lawsuit covered 17,000 unresolved Indian claims. The Judge wrote “The crux of plaintiffs’ case is that Section 2, of Public Law 96-217 requires defendants, [Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior] to propose legislation for all Indian claims not going to be litigated by them. Defendants have declined to submit timely legislative proposals and have categorically refused to submit proposals for the vast majority of Indian claims, as a result plaintiffs claims will expire without either judicial or legislative resolution.” The Judge ruled, “Defendants have both unlawfully failed to carry out a duty imposed on them by Congress and the President.”

Defendants response was to claim that “The Executive branch’s discretion as to whether or not to propose legislation can never be constitutionally limited in light Article 11, Section 3.” The Judge ruled that is simply erroneous, “By signing P.L. 96-217, the President authorized and approved the requirements of Section 2. If the Executive’s discretion was thereby restricted, it was done by his own hand and is, therefore, beyond a charge of constitutional infirmity.”

Defendants’ final desperate argument for dismissal was that the Plaintiff’s action is barred by laches. They claimed that plaintiffs had enough knowledge concerning the decisions not to litigate and not to propose legislation, to initiate a lawsuit much earlier in time. The Judge ruled, “This argument lacks merit since defendants did not make public many of their final decisions until the Congressional Oversight Hearings held September 16 and 23, 1982. Moreover, the Sampsel Report, which defendants contend satisfies their obligations under Section 2 of P.L. 96-217, was not submitted until October 21, 1982, making this case truly ripe at that time. If anyone has been guilty of foot-dragging in pursuing this matter, it has been defendants. Therefore their equitable defense must, therefore, fail.” The Judge’s Conclusion and Order stated, “Our review of the plain language of Section 2, of P.L. 96-217, the relevant legislative history and the factual record herein, convinces us that defendants have both unlawfully failed to carry out a duty imposed on them by Congress and the President, as well as unreasonably delayed submitting the only legislative proposal contained in the Sampsel Report. Due to this conduct, plaintiffs’ chances of getting favorable resolutions of their claims have been seriously prejudiced. Defendants’ wholesale disposition of thousands of claims through the Sampsel Report, after more than 10 years and countless dollars have been spent identifying and evaluating pre-1966 Indian claims, does not comport with the statute. The statute imposed a mandatory duty owing to plaintiffs and to Congress. We hold that defendants have breached that duty. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that mandatory injunctive relief is appropriate in this case.”

President Reagan and Secretary of the Interior James Watt’s response to the decision of the Court was to stonewall the Indian claims; defying Congress and Federal Courts. President Reagan punished the Indians by cutting Indian Treaty Obligation funds by 40% causing many deaths on the Indian reservations; which also had the effect of cowing tribal chairman nationwide. It left the individual Indian claimants to the mercies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and it split the Indian tribes into tribal council factions and Indian claimants’ factions, who now have no representatives in Congress. The Blackfeet Chairman called us “A bureau problem” and washed his hands of us. I talked with an Assistant United States Attorney in Montana last year and was told that, yes, the U.S. Attorney was aware of the unresolved Indian claims, but had not decided whether to continue to be defendants in suppressing the Indian claims or to prosecute the claims. I see in the tribal summits with President Obama, tribal chairmen never bring up the Indian claims, choosing to ignore the presence of white men on grandma’s land, living fat and sassy. The tribal leaders choose to fight over the Washington “Redskins” owner’s slur on Indian people instead of helping their own tribal members with unresolved land claims. Unresolved Indian land claims in comparison to racist slurs are trivial, nobody dies. 

MODERN DAY GENOCIDES: The United Nations defined “Slow Death Measures” genocide as “Subjecting a people to conditions of life, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene, and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion are likely to result in the debilitation [and early] death of individuals; mutilations and biological experiments imposed for other than curative purposes; deprivation of the means of livelihood by confiscation, looting, curtailment of work, and the denial of housing and of supplies otherwise available to the other inhabitants of the territory concerned.” The Montana Legislature in 2013 rejected $164 million in free federal funds for expansion of child health care, food and nutrition programs, and program funds for low income people in the state. A large percentage of these funds would have flowed to reservation/counties due to the extreme poverty of Indians on “reservation/counties.” It was an example of the Conservative Republican majority in the Montana Legislature “Slow Death Measures” genocide in depriving poor Indians and whites in Montana of needed clothing, medical care, housing, and opportunities for work and job training. Conservative Republicans in Montana are the majority law makers, and many have received $1.7 billion in farmer’s crop subsidy payments from the Agriculture Dept. It is a farmer’s welfare program, “free stuff” from the Government, but helping the poor of any ethnicity violated their “ideology.” They mean to economically enslave all Americans, white, black, red, yellow or brown, it is all the same to them in their feudal ideology, channeling King George. It might be insane, but then insanity didn’t stop Hitler either. 

 WHITE APARTHEID TERRITORY: A Bureau of Indian Affairs Report inadvertently described white apartheid on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation: “To date of August 20, 1930, Patents In Fee had been issued covering 293,422 acres and this acreage is increasing at the rate of 6,000 acres per year. This Patent In Fee acreage now represents slightly over 20% of the gross area of allotted land. This Fee Patent land is scattered over the entire reservation, every township having two or more Patent In Fee allotments. However, a study of the land status map indicates a pronounced tendency for the more valuable areas, particularly along water courses, to pass into a Patent In Fee status ahead of the less desirable, drier areas. This indicates a desire on the part of the white stock owner to acquire title to the watering places to be used in connection with the leasing of adjoining Indian range lands. This condition must be given careful consideration in the formulation and execution of any range management plans for Indian ranchers. As is indicated by a study of the location of the Patent In Fee lands in relation to the areas under grazing lease, the owners of alienated Indian lands are in a position to greatly influence and in some cases to absolutely control the use of adjoining Indian range lands. In presenting this analysis of the economic aspects of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in relation to the livestock industry, we have in several instances taken data for Glacier County and applied it directly to the reservation. The area of the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier County is coincident except that Glacier County includes eight townships, comprising a narrow strip on the east, that are not a part of the reservation, and the reservation includes seven townships that form a part of Pondera County on the south. The population of the part of the county outside of the reservation is much larger in proportion to area involved than the population of the reservation itself. However, in all statistics and other information pertinent to the range livestock industry, the county data will apply directly and quite accurately to the reservation. The total population of Glacier County is 5,297, three thousand of which is Blackfeet Indian; the population of the reservation is somewhat under four thousand, approximately four-fifths of which is Blackfeet Indian. Stock raising is by far the most important, and the one outstanding industry of the region. The counties to the south and also to the east produce a greater value of farm crops than of livestock, but Glacier County, probably on account of the available range lands of the reservation, is distinctly a range livestock county, and as such may be considered as a “distinct economic territory” of whites. The figures show the livestock industry of Glacier County to annually produce approximately three and one half times the income of its nearest competition. To indicate the early recognition of the livestock possibilities of this region and to show the foresight of the early representatives of the Indians and the Indian Service in this regard, a part of an agreement between the Blackfeet Indians and the United States dated September 25, 1895, is presented herewith. This agreement was ratified by Congress under date of June 10, 1896 (29 Stat. 355). Article Five of this agreement is quoted in full, as follows: “Since the situation of the Blackfeet Reservation renders it wholly unfit for agriculture, and since these Indians have shown within the past four years that they can successfully raise horned cattle, and there is every probability that they will become self-supporting by attention to this industry, it is agreed that during the existence of this agreement no allotments of land in severalty shall be made to them, but that this whole reservation shall continue to be held by these Indians as a communal grazing tract upon which their herds may feed undisturbed; and that after the expiration of this agreement the lands shall continue to be held until such time as a majority of the adult males of the tribe shall request in writing that allotment in severalty shall be made of their lands; Provided, That any member of the tribe may, with the approval of the agent in charge, fence in such area of land as he and his family would be entitled to under the allotment act, and may file with the agent a description of such land and of the improvements that he has made on the same, and the filing of such description shall give the said members of the tribe the right to take such land when allotments of the land in severalty shall be made.”

ECONOMIC SITUATION: The stolen lands of the Blackfeet Indians known as “void” Patent-in-Fee lands in Glacier County on the Blackfeet Reservation owned by white men, produce annual revenues of approximately $75 million in sales of cattle and other livestock, including $7,000,000 in federal subsidies; $168 million in revenues from former Blackfeet land allotments along the mountains near the eastern entrance to Glacier National Park for hotels and tourism businesses located on lands robbed from the Monroe sisters when they were children by Joe Sherburne, agency trader and Superintendent Wilson by issuing a “Competency Certificate” which allowed liens and taxes to be filed on their property in Glacier County Court by white men and taxed by the county attorney.

Last winter many Blackfeet families had to sleep in their cars during a winter blizzard due to insufficient funds to pay electric bills. An Indian Health Service doctor told me a few years ago there was an epidemic of juvenile diabetes on the reservation among the children and youth which would require kidney transplants by age of twenty. The children lose their permanent teeth and suffer gum disease due to inadequate funding of dental services in the Indian Health Service clinic which leads to heart disease later in life. There are many early deaths due to poor diets. Public schools in Montana do not teach Indian history curriculum. Anthropologist Rodnick wrote in 1950, “A primer dealing with the “savagery” of the Indian has all kinds of psychological reverberations on an Indian reservation where most of the children are linked to the old Indian culture.”

-Bob Juneau, Sr.