"TRIBES AS RICH NATIONS" AN ARTICLE BY PROFESSOR RAY CROSS, COPYRIGHT U OF OREGON

Raymond Cross is a real Indian lawyer with real life victories  in the Supreme Court and in winning claims cases for the Fort Berthold Tribes for illegal takings of tribal lands for Garrison Dam which flooded the rich bottom lands that produced the tribal economy. Mr. Cross wrote, "Testimony by natural resource economists aided the Joint Tribal Advisory Commission in examination of Indian claims. The valuation standard used to make the Indians "whole" for their losses is to be measured by the capitalized values of the expected future incomes that would have been generated by these lands. Dr. Ronald Cummings, a leading natural resources economist was appointed by the Commission to do an assessment of the Indian's losses imposed by the 1949 taking of the Fort Berthold Reservation bottom lands flooded by Garrison Dam." Congress imposed an "Institutional Equity" requirement in Indian claims cases to insure that the Indians claims were heard with federal, state, and county governments on an equal basis. The Blackfeet claims have not been heard on an equal basis for a century! Blackfeet claims include usurpation of Blackfeet treaty rights, reserved tribal lands, water rights, cattle industry, oil wells, reservation economy and the sovereign status of the Blackfeet Nation. Tribal claims include illegal taking of reservation streams and lands by the Federal Reclamation Service for the St. Mary-Milk River Diversion to downstream water users. There are hundreds of Blackfeet allotted land titles converted to void Patent-in-Fee lands of border-whites who also usurped Blackfeet cattle ranchers special treaty rights contained in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five. The stolen cattle industry and allotted lands provide border-whites $85,000,000 in annual revenues generated from the stolen allotted lands and cattle herds of the Indians. The Blackfeet Tribe has claims to losses of a billion dollars worth of oil revenues robbed by border-whites, and oil companies. "Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation" estimated by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee @ $600 million with 4% interest from 1912 bringing total valuation of Blackfeet Tribe and Blackfeet Original Allottees losses somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion dollars. Nobody knows the true value of the Blackfeet Claims because western Congressmen elected by cattlemen will not support Indian claims restoring Indian land titles on Indian reservations across the United States. The Indian claims would rid the Indians of border-white parasites that drain the lifeblood of Indian economies on Indian reservations on lands that are the private-property of the Indians under a federal treaty. I have worked on the Blackfeet claims since 1982, and helped to bring tribal resolution #224-2001 to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee requesting an investigation of the forced patents cases in 2001, but nothing has come of our tribal government request for institutional equity. I am alone in the quest for justice for an estimated 100 million acres of allotted lands of 17,000 Indian Money Damage Claimants on Indian reservations across the United States. I would appreciate any legal or financial assistance from anyone in pursuing our claims. I was told if the Blackfeet win their claims all tribes and Indians would win their claims like a virus through Indian Country. Please purchase our book, "The Sacred Buffalo Vision" on Amazon.Com  Bob Juneau Sr.