Blackfeet Poverty Is Caused by White-Economic- Apartheid

BLACKFEET POVERTY IS CAUSED BY WHITE-ECONOMIC-APARTHEID

            Glacier County white ranchers and farmers profited $61,000,000 in 2006 and collected $7,000,000 in subsidies from the Department of Agriculture in livestock indemnity programs, crop insurance, price supports, and a myriad of other cash payments in subsidy checks sent to their rural mailboxes. There are at least 50 farmer and ranchers programs that provide subsidy “welfare” payments to white ranchers and farmers.  

Glacier County “welfare” ranchers & farmers oppose welfare assistance for the impoverished Blackfeet Indians. Glacier County border-whites usurped Blackfeet treaty rights, stole Blackfeet allotted lands, and robbed Indian economic opportunity. Glacier County border-whites established political and economic apartheid over the Blackfeet Indians. In Montana, farmers and ranchers received $5.8 billion dollars from 1995 to 2010. Blackfeet Indian landowners get a pittance from the BIA in leasing their lands to border-whites through Blackfeet “middlemen” who use tribal preference to lease allotted Indian lands cheap and sub-lease allotted Indian lands to whites for cash payments or cattle for themselves, while the Indian trust landowners live in poverty.

Economic apartheid is possible through white ranchers & farmers monopoly on Indian reservations. Chief Rides At The Door opposed white ranchers entering the reservation in 1922 testifying to the senate committee, “This reservation belongs to the Indians. I want to ask you honorable gentlemen, why I do not have the full say of our lands. The white man comes in and he has the full say of what is to be done with our lands. You realize my belief is, and my forefathers belief is, I raised you. The white man came here and I gave him the land [Montana] and I raised him in this country. Now you should give me the full power to say about my own land in my own country.”

After the Baker massacre Montana Governor Martin Magginnis tried to deport the Blackfeet to Canada, “The Blackfeet will be more difficult to deal with-all their blood and kindred are in British America where they really belong themselves. It might be a matter of International arrangement to settle these Indians permanently [in Canada].”

Interior Department officials wrote, “The Blackfeet Indians are active, intelligent, progressive people and are unusually polite and sociable people. It is well known that this is a stock raising country, the Indians recognize this and are devoting their time and energy to making hay and raising cattle.”

Chief White Calf traveled to Washington D.C., “We wish you would give us some key to lock up the reservation; we think Congress will cut this reservation down again. We want to lock it, so nobody can get in there. White men are running their stock cattle on our reservation. We haven’t much more land than we can utilize ourselves.”

 Bear Chief said, “The Piegans wish to keep our own ground. It is not large now. We ask you to keep the envious whites away. The whites are always bothering us. They drive their herds on to our land to steal our grass.”

 Inspector McCormack investigated trespass of white men in 1903, “This reserve, being fairly watered, is well adapted to stock raising. The Texas cattle kings, appreciating the desirability and advantages of it for grazing purposes have thrown their cattle on it for years, and have eaten up and trampled the grass and hay meadows. At this writing fully twelve thousand head of cattle owned by these white cattle owners are roaming over this reservation. During the round up season, when these cattle are driven off to be branded by their owners, they drive off cattle belonging to the Indians. I have but little doubt there is an “agency ring” at this place and it can readily be seen the damage they do”

Agent Monteath reported, “Prosecutions under these sections would most likely come before a jury of cattlemen. I would not presume to say that exact justice would not result, but I believe good judgment would seek to avoid such a course. I venture the assertion that if a tract of land, situated as is this reservation, were in the hands of a white man, not one moment would be lost in throwing a fence around it. I believe a fence on the north, east, and south sides of this reservation to be a primal necessity to that proper care. The Indians must have something to eat, if cattle are issued this summer, they will either eat them or sell them to the trader, or if they keep them and take good care of them, they will not receive any return for three or four years. What do they do for food?”

The Glacier County Sheriff came to the reservation and removed Indian cattle for what he called “bad debts” and said, “The only good use to put Indians is to hang them” and told the agent he “did not hold with the treaty” and would “do as he pleased”

Chief White Calf protested, “These stock barons are compelled to seek new pastures for their cattle and sheep, and they look with covetous eyes on our land-our only inheritance and our only possession. The past summer we had our reserve fenced, at which we labored faithfully with the hope that we would see the last of the hordes of range cattle of whites, but our hopes were dashed to the ground by the government turning our country into a white man’s cow pasture.”

In 1921, James Willard Schultz and his son Hart Merriam Schultz wrote the Secretary of the Interior to report that Joe Sherburne, Swift & Armor, and the Great Northern Railway, through their subsidiaries, the Portland & Cattle Company, and The Park Saddle Horse Company were starving hundreds of Blackfeet landowners to force them to sign forced fee patents on their lands. J.W. Schultz reported Joe Sherburne had 212 Blackfeet allotments taken by forced patents in Glacier County for taxes and liens.

Hart Merriam Schultz wrote, “Well, the Blackfeet are about finished, except a few old people, they get no rations, they have no grain crops, no cattle and very little hay and the worst is yet to come, the dreadful winter. Yesterday an old woman came up to see me, walking all the way from the forks of the Two Medicine River. She was in rags and starving. I gave her a meal, and bought coffee, sugar, and meat for her and she was so affected by this she broke down and cried. I tell you, by God, it makes me so mad all the time to see the conditions these Indians are in! They are plumb out of food and have turned gray from hunger. Many Guns and Dog Gun came away up here to see me, and said they were so hungry they had to ask me for help. Tuberculosis is rapidly killing off the Indians, but it serves the interests of whites who are after this “big grass country.”

 Charles Reevis spoke to the Senators; “You look at the Indians here. The biggest part of them have not got their land anymore. The only way you can help them is to see they get their land back. Give their land back! When the President issued these patents here, he was very wrong and very crooked at the same time for doing that. If I ask you to become an Indian, then I can beat you out of everything you got because you do not know what I am talking about. The people here cannot even write their names.”

 I have worked on forced patent claims since 1983 when Willie Running Crane and Joe Bear Medicine, asked me to help the people with their “land problems.” I got the senate committee to hold field hearings, but it was blocked by Chairman Earl Old Person and Vice-Chairman Archie St. Goddard, who had 35,000 acres of tribal land leased. I was ordered to cease investigating the BIA and fired by Chairman Earl Old Person, who is a chicken shit traitorous dog hiding in plain sight protecting the white man who exploits us.