DISPOSSESSED BLACKFEET HEIRS UNDER ATTACK BY COBELL CASE AND WATER COMPACT

States and white men will do anything to make the massive allotted Indian land claims go away which cover 100 million acres of allotted Indian lands nationwide robbed during the allotment period. The Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation cover the loss of 529,000 acres of the Blackfeet Reservation severed in Glacier and Pondera County courts. Blackfeet allotted land titles were taken for taxes and liens filed by white men against illiterate Blackfeet landowners. These Indian claims are in the Senate Indian Affairs Committee since the Blackfeet Chiefs filed the claims in 1928, but the Government is a co-conspirator with white ranchers and nothing has been done to resolve the claims even though Indian claims are pending in Congress, but held up by western states Congressmen and white supremacist organizations like the National Cattlemen's Association whose members call for abrogation of Indian treaties and Indian trust land status. They are descendants of the perpetrators if their fee land is on the reservation. White men are prohibited from purchasing Indian land or to reside on Indian reservations by treaty and federal laws. The way white men got on the Indian reservation is by robbing illiterate Indian landowners with the help of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It all came to a point in 1982 when Congress passed Public Law 96-217, Section 2 which ordered the Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General to either litigate the Indian claims or to send the claims to Congress to restore Indian trust land titles and to remove patent-in-fee landowners from Indian reservations by Condemnation Payments of Congress that pay market value to the white landowners and restore the Dispossessed Indian Heirs of the Original Indian Allottees. The Cobell Case did not consider any of the land frauds, it considered only the revenues lost in tribal and individual Indian account holders who got a pittance of money stolen from Indian accounts-$2,000 for each account holder. There were Indian accounts that had oil wells whose families lost millions of dollars and the Blackfeet Tribe is estimated to have lost over a billion dollars in oil revenues due to the land frauds of the railroad and oil companies because the BIA did not reserve the underlying minerals such as oil & gas, coal, uranium to the tribe. The only avenue left for the Indian landowners to recover their stolen lands and oil wells is the Indian Money Damage Claims still in contention in Congress, but will be lost in the state-tribal water compact which recognizes the white landowners water rights on the reservation. The tribal council already signed off on the tribal compact, but we did not vote on it yet. This is the last opportunity forever for us descendants of Original Blackfeet Allottees to recover our stolen land allotments, oil wells, cattle ranches, money and reserved water rights to the 529,000 acres of stolen fee lands on the reservation. The Cobell Case wants you to sign over your tiny land trusts under BIA management to the tribe which solves nothing but eliminates the trust land owner from federal recognition when blood quantum separates you from tribal recognition-where will your descendants go to then? It is self-termination of treaty rights. Vote no on the water compact and do not give your land to the tribe, it is your only lifeline to federal services in IHS and BIA while the tribe kicks out your children on blood quantum requirements. You are being turned "white" and will lose all of your remaining treaty rights if the Cobell Case and water compact are successful. Even if you retain one acre and one dollar from your trust land it gives you federal recognition when the tribal council votes you "white" on blood quantum. The requirement of institutional equity means all of the parties to the compact must be treated equal in hearing the water claims and Indian land claims, but we, the allotted landowners, have not been heard at all to date, and we will never be heard if we vote in the state-tribal water compact. "COMPACTS ARE FOREVER!" Bob Juneau Sr.