"The Blackfeet Tribe has many political heroes" by Bob Juneau

The Blackfeet Tribe has many political heroes who fought and died from being starved by the agent and the county officials who were in the process of "stealing" hundreds of individual Blackfeet Trust Land Allotments in 1919-1934; the year the Montana Legislature enacted Glacier and Pondera County jurisdiction on the Blackfeet Reservation to protect the void Patent-in-Fee lands that make up the county land base within the reservation boundary. There was no consent of the Indians, who were the victims of the massive land frauds called "Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation." I wrote a Blackfeet history book detailing the political battle to keep the reservation for the Indians for whom it was created out of vast Blackfoot Confederacy Lands out of which the State of Montana was created with the disclaimer that the state and white men would stay off-reservation until two/thirds the Blackfeet Indian males voted to accept state jurisdiction and to come under state laws, which has never been voted on or agreed to in the history of Montana and the Blackfeet Tribe. Three Bears spoke at a tribal council meeting in 1928, "It isn't right for [BIA] to try to sell our land on the sly, I am afraid that someday the white people will flood our lands and there will be nothing left for us." Joe Spanish said, "Senator Walsh is looking out for himself and his re-election and will starve us down to nothing. His bill will be the end of our cattle industry." Mrs. Mabel Monroe-Bond wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier many times on the forced patents land frauds and the starving of the Blackfeet landowners to force them to accept fee patents on their family lands and ranches, "Superintendent Campbell's five year starvation program amounts to starve us out, burn us out, kick us out. Most of our land is gone and it won't be long till the [white men]  "owners" of this reservation will demand us to get out. Will there be a wholesale exodus of the Children of the Sun into the strange land of the white man to stand in bread lines, begging for bread, penniless, homeless, permanent objects of charity? We are tired of agents who come to the reservation with the sole idea of exploiting us." In 1944 Chairman Sharp protested to the Congress that, "Louis Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railway, has been able to get oil structures "patented" on the reservation that have produced millions of dollars for the oil companies and the patent-in-fee white landowners, but nothing for the tribe or the individual Indian allottees. One allotment produced over three million dollars for the white man." The unresolved Blackfeet claims include 1,200 Blackfeet forced patents claims estimated @ $600 million to be paid to heirs of the original allottees, and a billion dollars worth of oil removed from the reservation by patent-in-fee landowners and oil companies. My own experiences have been that the tribal council is helping to suppress our claims in the water compact which will :forever" give to the white landowners a clear title to stolen Blackfeet Trust Land Allotments. "Institutional Equity" means that all parties to the claims must be heard on an equal basis including Indian landowners who "own" the Blackfeet Reservation. Read the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.

Bob Juneau Sr. Blackfeet Patriot