I keep telling the Blackfeet people they have been sold down the river by Earl Old Person and Archie St. Goddard for 50 years and why? A 1960 F.B.I. Report said that Earl has 85 awards from national white organizations, and Archie had 35,000 acres of Blackfeet Tribal lands as Chairman of the Land Board. Famous Amos and richy rich cost us 50 years of progress. They blocked any business deals that would have brought the people out of poverty. Why? Who would want the tribal council or BIA around if we were rich? The tribal council and BIA would have to find real work if the tribal poverty economy were dismantled and the Blackfeet were given herds of cattle to bring themselves out of poverty as the Blackfeet cattle ranchers did in 1893 by developing a tribal cattle industry of 500 Blackfeet ranchers, 25,000 cattle, shipped steers to Chicago markets, built ranch homes, chicken coops, vegetable gardens, root cellars, and had cash for all needful things. How about us? Educated Indians, looking down on our ancestors, who are looking down on us, and shaking their heads at our foolishness. We are minimum wage slaves of the tribal council, BIA and white men. This is not their American dream for us, as I have researched our history, and if you read the "Sacred Buffalo Vision" by me, available on Amazon.Com. you would be way smarter and prouder of yourself and understand that you come from a great people. Chief Old Person is a council bum, and he is bumming you, to pay for his hookers, his incestuous relations, and his devil ego. He has had a great life for a pervert. But he is the tool of the border-whites in Cut Bank, Valier, and Conrad who have murdered and robbed us for a century now, and if the compact is voted in we will spend the rest of time in poverty we cannot get out of because we gave up our treaty and our land rights for a cash payment to the tribal council, and the funny business will go on until the money is gone. The names of the murdered Blackfeet should mean something more than money for the council. Are you living well today? Do your children have good food, shelter, clothing, and a future? I know Earl's son is set up with all of the Blackfeet artifacts him and his niece stole from museums all over the country when they were traveling as man & wife. He brags on how rich he is gonna be when Earl dies! Those are tribal artifacts and family religious ceremonial pipes. Doctors at IHS told me there is a full blown juvenile diabetes epidemic on the reservation, and said by the time they reach 20 years, if they do, they will need kidney transplants, and they are losing their permanent teeth as teenagers, and it is because there is no funding to get food and medicine for them. The doctors said it is not the big-pop at Town Pump but the lack of proper nutrition. Hunger is rampant on the reservation. I spent Two years with Ed Spotted Eagle in the low rent districts where people live poor, but they are interested in the claims because it is their family names on the list of murdered Blackfeet landowners. Robert Hamilton, in 1913 brought an example of the starvation rations to Congress and made the senators smell the rotten pig and cow guts, he put it in their faces, and made them recoil from the spoilt meat. He told the senators, "just before I left the reservation, Mrs. Victoria Kicking Woman died. She had tuberculosis and was at the time about thirty years of age. Her husband was almost blind from trachoma and sick most likely with the same disease as his wife. They asked for rations but did not get any. The husband was unable to bury the body and it lay in the church a week or more and was then taken to the burial ground where the coffin lay for more than a week on the ground. Superintendent McFatridge was asked to have the grave dug, but he said, "you ought to have guts enough to bury your own dead." At the time he had a large number of Indian prisoners sawing and cutting wood to keep the agency employees warm. I believe there are Indians who would rather die than make a request of Arthur McFatridge for anything. The cold has reached forty degrees below zero this winter. There is much sickness among the Indians and the doctors do not respond to calls by the Indians. Wolf Eagle is an old Indian, sixty years old and eyesight is poor, he has but one arm, which was broken so badly he amputated it himself. He was awarded one slice of bacon, and one hundred navy beans and they counted out the beans. Little Agnes, ten years old, was in a very weak condition, and asked her father for some oatmeal, as she had an appetite after a long sickness. Her father said, "I thereupon went to the agency doctor and told him I needed rations for my little girl, and he got very indignant and told me he was not buying any rations for any Indians. My child died during the month of February, her death hastened by the lack of food and proper nourishment." How much better are you than little Agnes today? If it weren't for school lunches could you really keep your child alive and healthy? Where are we going with this water compact money? My hope is that the tribal council funds 500 ranchers, and buys at least 50,000 cattle for them, with cash subsidies like white ranchers get, and allows them to graze their cattle on tribal lands because the 1896 Agreement reserved the whole reservation for Blackfeet cattle ranchers, and we kick the white ranchers out and their third-party Blackfeet "middlemen" who get leases for nothing by preference. The whole tribe is getting poor because the rich one percent whites have all our money. We, the Blackfeet Indians are the original "one-percent" that knew how to share tribal resources. We were the rich ones here on the reservation.
Bob Juneau Sr.
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