"RESERVATION/COUNTY IS A WHITE-APARTHEID TERRITORY"

Did you vote to be a part of Glacier or Pondera County on the Blackfeet Reservation? No! The Blackfeet Indians were not allowed to vote in the election to incorporate the county governments within the reservation in 1919, or hold public office, or to be a state citizen. Oh happy days for the Blackfeet Indians of today, we get to hold office, vote, and even get served in stores in Cut Bank, but does that make up for robbing 529,000 acres of allotted lands, 25,000 head of cattle, oil wells, and businesses that generate an estimated $850 million dollars of the gross reservation product from Glacier Park tourism, cattle industry, crops, oil & gas, and now they want the rest of our water resources worth billions of dollars per year. The truth is the Blackfeet people are the poorest on the reservation despite owning 900,000 acres of allotted and tribal lands. "Education" was the answer our educated leaders said, and it is sadly untrue except for the 8% of the tribe that have college degrees. The civilized Indians are content to run for county government and state political offices, but the money is controlled by the state legislature in Helena, and last term the legislature voted down $164 million in social/welfare funds meant for the poor Indians residing in reservation/counties. The Blackfeet children in public schools suffer a 50% drop out rate, a genuine disaster, doubly so as it is our own Blackfeet/Cree superintendents and school board who still teach the "savage Indian" class in history that glorify the white man. My platform has been to teach the truth to tribal leaders and the school system to stop the psychological damages done to our children by historical lies in school curriculum in Browning Public Schools. We cannot ever win our stolen lands back until we learn our own political history and treaty rights to tax free lands and to be free of white rule on the reservation. The "reservation/county" is a system of internal colonialism whereby a tiny minority of white men can control the majority of Blackfeet Indians and reservation economy and usurp the tribal treaty rights and restricted allotted Indian trust property through state law and county government imposed on our illiterate and incompetent original allottees in 1912-1922. Border-whites are human parasites on the Blackfeet people and reservation economy including robbing the successful, self-reliant Blackfeet cattle industry developed by 1890 with 25,000 cattle, 500 Blackfeet ranchers, and shipping steers to Chicago markets. Most of the Indians had cattle and equipment to produce hay for winter feed and for sale to the agency. The people were happy and prosperous until the white man robbed us and stole everything from us, which is the basis of our current land claims. Vote no on the state-tribal water compact until we get our stolen property back and remove the white man from the reservation and regain our tribal sovereignty and allotted land base and cattle industry. Bob Juneau Sr.