CONSTITUTION REFORMS IMPOSSIBLE AT BLACKFEET TRIBE

The Blackfeet people have been buried by a crabbed form of tribal democracy since the tribe adopted the Indian Reorganization Act constitution issued by Department of the Interior lawyers in 1935 concentrating all powers in the tribal council and providing a "preference clause" for elected tribal council members to lease tribal oil and grazing leasing to themselves. In 1935 the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Chairman profited $500,000 by leasing tribal oil lands to himself, and 12 other tribal council members had incomes over $100,000 in leasing oil and grazing lands to themselves and providing their oil company partners with favorable tribal oil leases that made the tribe pay the costs of the well production; stealing a billion dollars of tribal oil royalty revenues. A cadre of rich one percent tribal politicians emerged in 1936 from the old tribal governance systems of chiefs and Indians ruling themselves in tribal meetings of importance. Now the tribal council does all of its business in the back room of the tribal offices and the Blackfeet people find out about tribal council corruption in the newspapers. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Zimmerman reported in 1950, "The record is discouraging at many points, successive tribal councils have grown progressively irresponsible as council members learned to evade duties imposed upon them by the constitution and charter. The only alternative is to file an injuction in federal court for willful council actions in violating the constitution and refusal to act in accordance with the constitution and charter of the Blackfeet Tribe." Chairman Pambrum of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council sponsored a tribal referendum in 1950 to go under state law and Glacier County to evade council responsibility to the Secretary of the Interior for prosecutions in violations of tribal laws, but the Blackfeet people voted down the opportunity to become white men living under white rule since tribal elders remembered the mass murders of hundreds of Blackfeet landowners by Glacier County border-whites in 1919-1922 for the fee patents lands robbed by the Glacier county attorney. The tribal council is viewed as the lesser of two evils; that of certain annihilation by Glacier County border-whites or slow death poverty under the tribal council. Tribal democracy has been an expensive experiment for the Blackfeet people who have lost billions of dollars and personal freedoms and liberty to an old, corrupt tribal government system. Perverts and crooks lead the tribe and rob tribal and federal funds secure in the knowledge that the FBI and U.S. Attorney will allow elected tribal council members to rob tribal dollars and federal grants and pay the missing funds back with tribal dollars with no prison time for the council criminals when by a miracle they are caught by the funding sources. Tribal members have no idea of how much money the tribe possesses or how much debt the tribal council owes or anything at all of tribal financial records. Congress funds tribal government and allows the tribal council to operate as a third-world nation stealing federal funds! The enemy is from within, the enemy is the tribal constitution that allows tribal council dictatorships that produces council crooks!
Bob Juneau Sr. Read all about it in "The Sacred Buffalo Vision" available on Amazon.Com.