BLACKFEET WELFARE ECONOMY IS GROWING UNDER THE TRIBAL COUNCIL

The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council sits on top of the poor people and likes it. They don't have to work to improve the lot of tribal members, just go on a vacation until the people throw them back in the street, with a $10,000 tribal check for screwing up. The Blackfeet cattle ranchers brought the people out of a famine by developing a cattle industry made of 25,000 cattle, 500 tribal brands, and shipping steers to Chicago Stockyards, building ranch homes, barns, chicken coops, vegetable gardens, root cellars, fences, small irrigation ditches to water hay meadows, produce winter feed, and cash for all needful things. The tribal council economic policy is to develop tribally-owned hotel/casino that depend on cheap labor of tribal members to be profitable for the council payroll. Past tribal enterprises like the pencil factory made white men rich, elite tribal people salaries of $172,000 and $72,000 while the workers got minimum wages for 19 years and no retirement. These tribal enterprises cost the tribe a million dollars per year to keep the doors open. A new tribal economic policy would take a lesson from the past set by original cattle ranchers in 1893, and to develop a beef processing plant facility to process our own products to sell to the Agriculture Department Food Programs and Las Vegas casinos to create high paying jobs for tribal members. The reservation can carry 55,000 cattle to market at least 10,000 head per year and to keep cow/calf operations going to preserve our ranch families and ranch kids both endangered human species on the reservation. There is no reason to graze white men's cattle on our allotted and tribal grazing lands to make them rich. The water compact money will be enough to purchase cattle for every Blackfeet cattle rancher, it is a treaty right in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five. The other tribal group that needs developing are the traditional Blackfeet people to market crafts and tribal cultural entertainment to Glacier Park tourists as our relatives did in 1931 when the museum was built in browning. 1.2 million Glacier Park tourists drove past the museum last year and spent $85 million dollars at St. Mary and East Glacier. These tourists did not stop at the tribal hotel/casino! Glacier Park tourist exit surveys showed the tourists were disappointed they did not get to experience Indian culture or purchase Indian made crafts. The Blackfeet crafts guild was started in 1934 by traditional Blackfeet Indians to construct and sell crafts to tourists and to entertain tourists with Indian dancing exhibitions. In 1950 Theodore Last Star tried to develop a tourist attraction at St. Mary but he was not successful because of no funding. 70 % of the economy of the United States is consumer spending and we do not have beef products, bottled water, Indian crafts, or traditional culture to market to the richest nation on earth, we have a welfare economy that supports only the tribal council bums. The water compact money will be enough to purchase cattle for every Blackfeet rancher, build a beef processing plant and build a Blackfeet Culture center for our traditional people. Sayeh is a danger to any business operated by tribal members, it is a predator of the tribal council to be destroyed by the next council. $9,000,000 gaming money came directly from welfare money, no tourist stopped at the casino. Turn that building over the Blackfeet Crafts guild to start up traditional dancing and make some money for our traditional people and keep the council away or it will fail. It is time for change.

BLACKFEET WATER COMPACT IS THE END OF ALL BLACKFEET LAND CLAIMS

BLACKFEET WATER COMPACT IS THE END OF ALL BLACKFEET LAND CLAIMS

            The Blackfeet Water Compact forever ends past, pending and future Blackfeet land claims including 1,200 Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation-of Blackfeet landowners robbed by Glacier County border-whites 1919-1922. The Montana Legislature created Glacier and Pondera counties inside boundaries of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The County Court Attorney issued hundreds of Patent-in-Fee titles to white men living on stolen Original Blackfeet Allottees lands.

This claim is valued @ $600 million to be paid in just compensation to Heirs of Original Blackfeet Allottees and trust land titles restored to heirs of Original Allottees to 312,250 acres. Glacier County is a white-apartheid territory land base created entirely of stolen Blackfeet allotted lands. The water compact also wipes out a billion dollar claim filed in 1982 by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council to recover title to all minerals underlying the reservation. Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Resolution 224-2001 requested a Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of the Blackfeet Forced Fee Patents Cases passed unanimously on August 6, 2001. Has it been rescinded or ignored?    

            The Blackfeet Chiefs fought in Congress many times to save our reservation from white encroachment and won many times or we would not exist today as a Sovereign Reservation, we would be state citizens living in Glacier County. This is the danger the Blackfeet Water Compact presents to us today, it turns sovereign Blackfeet treaty-Indians into white citizens so far as our sovereign status is concerned and it brings state game wardens onto St. Mary Lake, Milk River, and St. Mary River to patrol these waters under the Montana State Fish & Game Code. “Surplus” waters belong to the Blackfeet Tribe under the water compact leaving out Indian cattle ranchers, outdoor recreation, sport fishing, irrigation, industrial, municipal, aquaculture, fish farms, and domestic users.   

INDIAN CLAIMS ATTORNEY ARTHUR LAZARUS JR. MEMORANDUM IN 1982 CHALLENGES CONSTITUTIONALITY OF “RETROACTIVE VALIDATION OF INDIAN LAND TRANSFERS” EXTINGUISHING  INDIAN CLAIMS ARISING FROM TRANSFERS NOT PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BY EITHER CONGRESS OR THE APPROPRIATE EXECUTIVE OFFICIAL WITHOUT ANY DETERMINATION THAT THE DEED WAS ACQUIRED WITHOUT FRAUD OR IMPOSITION ON THE INDIAN.

            The Blackfeet Water Compact approved by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council EXTINGUISHES ALLOTTED LANDOWNERS HEIRS CLAIMS to Blackfeet forced fee patents without any prior determination that “NO FRAUD” or imposition had been practiced upon the Blackfeet Indians from whom the deed was originally purchased.

The President of the United States must be satisfied before endorsing the deed that the Indian transferor received fair compensation, and that had the Secretary of the Interior been advised of the Indian’s incompetence, “we do not doubt that the transfer would not have been approved.” Blackfeet Forced Patents are preserved under this law.  

Indian Title obtained for less than just compensation is not “just and equitable title.” Blackfeet land at East Glacier given to James J. Hill by an act of Congress, is itself an illegal act, under vested property rights in U.S. v. Glacier County, Decision.

These Hill properties were valued in 1980 for $130 to be paid for just compensation.

The teenage Monroe sisters land allotments robbed by Agent Horace Wilson, Joe Sherburne, licensed agency trader, Glacier County Attorney, and Great Northern Railway owner James J. Hill, have not been restored to their heirs or just compensation provided. There are approximately 1,200 Original Blackfeet land allotments listed by the Blackfeet Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1980 as ‘Eligible Indian Claimants for Indian Money Damage Claims’. The tribal council insists our forced patents claims are dead and gone.

THE TRIBAL COUNCIL IS WRONG TO KILL OUR FORCED PATENTS CLAIMS

Mr. Arthur Lazarus Jr. a nationally known Indian claims attorney cites Supreme Court Decisions that “Retroactive Validation of such tainted title is not, therefore, merely curative, designed to remedy mistakes and defects in the administration of government where the remedy can be applied without injustice; RATHER, RETROACTIVE VALIDATION OF TAINTED TITLE IS DESTRUCTIVE, PERPETUATING AN INJUSTICE AND DEFEATING INDIAN CLAIMS WHICH, LIKE THE CLAIMS OF THE SWINDLED INDIANS, IN KENDALL, HAVE A “FOUNDATION IN EQUITY.” The wholesale rejection of Blackfeet allotted land claims “forever” agreed to in the Blackfeet Water Compact is perpetuating a well-known historical injustice by the unanimous votes of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council approving the water compact. Another injustice inflicted upon Blackfeet claimants is denial of “Institutional Equity” a requirement by Congress to insure that all parties to settlements are represented and heard on an equal basis. We, the Blackfeet landowners, were tossed out of the water compact meeting held in Browning by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council. Yet, I watched long lines of white landowners testifying in state water compact meetings on state t.v. against the Salish-Kootenai Tribes water compact settlement which provides $2.5 billion dollars for development of Indian farmers and ranchers, ownership of one half of Flathead Lake, ownership of Kerr Dam and Hydro-Electric Facility, and tribal sovereignty protections. We still do not know why the tribal council approved the Blackfeet water compact without any testimony from Blackfeet landowners, ranchers, farmers or water users.

How did the White Man get on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation?   

Economic-apartheid systems developed by Texas Cattle Kings, Great Northern Railway, Swift & Armor, Montana confederates and Chicago crime boss Al Capone caused wholesale violations of Blackfeet Indian treaty rights in complicity with Congress and the President. The Territory and State of Montana political and economic interests lie at the bottom of Blackfeet Indian genocides rather than any “race” or “religion” issues.

President Grant’s Peace Policy to Christianize and civilize the Indians with a massive dose of Christian religion to “advance the metamorphosis of the savages” was his dog-whistle signal to Montana border-whites to rob and kill Blackfeet Indians.

Montana border-whites are confederate soldiers sent up the Missouri River by the Union Army in 1863 to Montana Territory who commenced to massacre the Indians, and to encroach on Blackfeet Confederacy lands held by the 1855 Treaty with the United States of America. The “Confederate States of America” soldiers told United States Indian Agent George B. Wright they “did not hold with the treaty” and “did not care for U.S. law” and would do as they pleased. Texas Cattle Kings reached the Judith Basin in the 1860’s forcing Blackfeet land cessions for Texas cattle herds vast grazing pastures.

From 1881-1887 the Blackfeet starved due to destruction of millions of tribal buffalo and the Blackfeet tribal population decimation from 7,800 in 1860 down to 1,811 Blackfeet left alive by 1890. Massacre, famine, small-pox epidemics, whiskey trade, and Indian removals were the weapons of frontier Montana border-whites physical genocides.  

White Historians do not recall settlement of the West as genocidal attacks upon treaty Indians. Border-whites and border-states in the West are Civil War Southern plantation slave owners dispossessed of their “Negro and Hoe” economy. Confederates immigrated to Blackfeet Indian Country and established “southern plantations on Indian Reservations” like Glacier and Pondera Counties legitimized by the Montana Legislature enactment of “reservation/county” state jurisdictions on sovereign Blackfeet Country.

       

ORIGINS OF BORDER WHITES CALAMITY  ON  BLACKFEET INDIANS

Lieutenant John H. Beacom, a soldier stationed at Fort Shaw, Montana Territory, recorded Blackfeet Napi stories in his book, “How the Buffalo Lost His Crown.” The Napi stories learned from Blackfoot Orator Nis-su kai-yo provided insight into the

calamity that had befallen the Blackfoot Indians caused by conquest of white men, printed in MONTANA, THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY, Spring, 1979.

 “The Blackfeet held sway over a vast domain extending from the Yellowstone to the Saskatchewan and from the Rocky Mountains to the Eastward; but before Nis-su kai-yo had passed his prime Blackfeet fortunes had begun to recede before the pitiless advance of another race, and he lived to see the Blackfoot driven gradually Northward and then Westward further and further towards the great rocky barrier until, as he expressed it, they were forced to “lean against the mountains.”

Nis-su kai-yo fully realized the extent of the disasters that had come upon his people, but he seldom spoke of them in the presence of white men. The great battles and the famous buffalo hunts, in which, as a young warrior and hunter, he had taken an honorable part, were the themes he loved to dwell upon. He was familiar also with the folklore of his people and often while sitting at my campfire of an autumn evening, he told me these quaint tales of the ancient time.

Nis-su kai-yo could readily recall the time when the buffalo roamed over the prairie in vast herds, and deer, antelope, and other game abounded everywhere. He remembered also that in those days his people were rich and powerful. Now, however, the buffalo was almost extinct and other species were terribly decimated, and, as a result, the Indian was reduced to beggary and utter helplessness. Few realize that the sudden extermination of the buffalo was a genuine calamity to the Plains Indian than has ever fallen to the lot of any other people, but such is the fact.

The buffalo was the source of his wealth and power. Upon it he was dependent for the material for his teepee or house, for his clothing, for his food, and for all the luxuries of life. No other people have been deprived in a moment of their accustomed food and stripped of their means of shelter or have been forced to adjust themselves to such new and strange environment. Nis-su kai-yo was too proud to give this painful sequel to his story or to lament over his change of fortune, but as he slowly uttered the words,

“Ai-ik-si-sum-mo”-that was long ago” there was a solemnity in the old man’s manner that contrasted strangely with his look of exultation but a moment before.

My race had mastered his and had dealt harshly with him and with all the other dwellers on the plains. Few of the great brotherhood were left alive and his dear prairie land, once so full of life and happiness, had become a lonely desert. As his mind wandered back over the past, it doubtless occurred to him, as it did to me, that if the countless dead could rise again and meet in council as they had done in the long ago, they would choose the Indian and not the white man for their Chief. But what Nis-su kai-yo  thought is mere conjecture, for he sat there calm and impenetrable as became one of his race and dignity.” Lt. John H. Beacom, Fort Shaw, Montana Territory

Blackfeet Chiefs fight to the end to restore the Blackfeet people to prosperity

            The ‘Sacred Buffalo Vision’ is my Blackfeet history book written to bring tribal awareness to genocides of the Blackfeet people by Montana border-whites massacre of women, children, elders, and infants for the sole purpose of exterminating remnants of the Blackfeet Tribe. The fear of Territory and State of Montana border-whites living on stolen Blackfeet lands on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and oil corporations draining billions of dollars of Blackfeet oil property is that justice will someday be extended to the Heirs of Original Blackfeet allottees for 120 years of racketeering of Indian property. The Blackfeet water compact extinguishes Blackfeet claims signed by Chairman Old Person.

In 1980, Blackfeet Traditional Chiefs Joe Bear Medicine and Willie Running Crane requested me to bring Blackfeet Forced Fee Patents Claims to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee such as Blackfeet Chiefs did for a century prior to the Indian Reorganization Act that deprived the Traditional Chiefs of their governing powers.

Blackfeet Tribal Business Council members Leonard Mountain Chief and Leland Ground like their forefathers had done, joined us, and we negotiated an agreement with the expert assistance of National Congress of American Indians lobbyist Wayne Juneau, and Pete Taylor, lawyer for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to resolve century-old Blackfeet Claims by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to restore Blackfeet trust land titles and Pete Taylor estimated just compensation for the Heirs of Original Allottees at $300 million in 1980 grown with 4% interest to an estimated $600 million in 2016.

In 1980, we came home triumphant like Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume, Young Man Chief, Black Weasel, White Antelope, Curley Bear, and tribal lawyer Bob Hamilton did in 1922, by defeating the Blackfeet Surplus Land Bill of Senator Walsh of Montana to sever the reservation line at Seville and give away 156,000 acres of Blackfeet land to Commercial Clubs in Cut Bank, Conrad, and Valier for white settlement.

In 1907, Blackfeet Chiefs were thrown in the agency jail by Superintendant McFatridge and agency employee Joe Brown until the train passed Browning and held in the agency jail overnight. Bob Hamilton boarded the eastbound train to Washington D. C. in Cut Bank, a railroad town, and sent a letter to the chiefs from Washington D.C. ”The victory is ours, and you men who have stood by the right and by your own people will always be highly respected by members of Congress who have been with us in this fight. And, those of you who have stood by the right may justly consider themselves the leaders of their tribe and not among those who are controlled by the agent.”

Covelo Indian Community defeats President Reagan and Interior Secretary James Watt

Congress enacted Public Law 96-217, Section 2,  “Not later than June 30, 1981, the Secretary of the Interior, after consultation with the Attorney General, shall submit to the Congress legislative proposals to resolve those Indian claims subject to the amendments made by the first section of this act [extending the statute of limitations period] that the Secretary of the Interior or the Attorney General believes are not appropriate to resolve by litigation.”   

In November of 1982, the Covelo Indian Community sued Secretary of the Interior James Watt in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in Civil Action No. 82-2725, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to secure rights and duties owed to them, and all others similarly situated, by defendant federal officials.

The Indian plaintiffs’ complaint alleges that federal defendants violated the mandate of Public Law 96-217, Section 2. Plaintiffs contend as a class, all Indians and Indian tribes pre-1966 Indian Money Damage Claims affecting lands held in trust or restricted status, have been materially injured by wrongful, unlawful agency action.

Blackfeet Original Allottees Forced Fee Patents Cases included in Class Action Suit

 Plaintiffs number 30 in the Covelo Indian Community Class Action Lawsuit are members of the Blackfeet Tribe in a number of claims identified as 1,200 Forced Fee Patents Cases, 37 Secretarial Sales of Deceased Indian Lands, Old Age Assistance Claims defrauding elderly Indians of their property, and century old rights-of-way, trespass, harmful use of Indian property, breach of contract, wrongful transfer or alienation of Indian property, usurpation of Indian water rights, and property damages.

James Watt, Secretary of the Interior determined that none of these Indian claims presented any basis for litigation or resolution by legislative proposals to be sent to Congress by the Secretary of the Interior and the United States Attorney General.

The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has met directly with President Obama annually for eight years and never brought up the unresolved Blackfeet claims won in the class action lawsuit. We have brought these claims to the attention of Chairman Old Person many times since 1980 and he laughed at us, mocked us, and said nothing can be done about the massive land frauds. Is it any wonder we are beggars in our own land?

President Reagan contends ”constitutional infirmity” in Section 2 of P.L. 96-217

Defendants’ contention that the Executive branch’s discretion as to whether or not to propose legislation can never be constitutionally limited in light of Article II, Section 3, is simply erroneous. By signing P.L. 96-217, the President authorized and approved the requirements of Section 2. If the Executive’s discretion was thereby restricted, it was done by his own hand, and is, therefore, beyond a charge of constitutional infirmity.

See Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 441 (1977)

Federal Defendants Cite Laches for Dismissal of all Pre-1966 Indian claims

 President Reagan’s Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior contend, as a final argument for dismissal, that plaintiffs’ action is barred by laches.  They claim that plaintiffs had enough knowledge concerning their decisions not to litigate and not to propose legislation, to institute a lawsuit much earlier in time. This argument lacks merit since defendants did not make public many of their final decisions until the Congressional Oversight Hearings held September 16 and 23, 1982.

Moreover, the Sampsel Report [throwing out 17,000 Indian Money Damage Claims], which defendants contend satisfies their obligations under Section 2 of P. L. 96-217, was not submitted until October 21, 1982, making this case truly ripe at that time. If anyone has been guilty of foot-dragging in pursuing this matter, it has been defendants. Their equitable defense must, therefore fail.

5 U.S.C. 702 provides: A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof.

President Reagan Slams the Door of Justice for all Pre-1966 Indian Claims

            Judge: “In the course of the hearing it was brought out that plaintiffs intend to press the upcoming lame-duck Congress for an extension of the statute of limitations.

Defendants, on the other hand, stated that they will not join in that effort-that the letter of October 21, 1982 expresses their final position.

We fully expect that an expedited appeal will be taken by federal defendants from our ruling today. We would not presume to predict the outcome, but in light of the fact that December 31, 1982 is the present cut-off date, we do foresee difficulties if litigation is carried forward for any substantial period, and if our ruling is ultimately affirmed.

We cannot, of course, order a change in attitude but, considering the pressures of time, we do not deem it inappropriate to suggest that, to avoid chaotic conditions at years end, it might be prudent for all parties to join in an urgent request to Congress to extend the statute of limitations for a reasonable period beyond the date of ultimate decision in this litigation. If the federal defendants prevail, no prejudice will result to them; if plaintiffs prevail the federal defendants will have ample time to formulate reasonable, workable proposals, keyed to due process, for the consideration of Congress.

CONCLUSION AND ORDER

            Judge: “Defendants’ wholesale disposition of thousands of Indian claims through the Sampsel Report, after more than 10 years and countless dollars have been spent identifying and evaluating pre-1966 Indian claims, does not comport with the statute. The statute imposed a mandatory duty owing to plaintiffs and to Congress.

We hold that defendants have breached that duty. Our review of the plain language of Section 2 of P. L. 96-217, the relevant legislative history and the factual record herein, convinces us that defendants have both unlawfully failed to carry out a duty imposed on them by Congress and the President, as well as unreasonably delayed submitting the only legislative proposal contained in the Sampsel Report [Three Old Age Assistance claims]. Due to this conduct, plaintiffs’ chances of getting favorable resolutions of their claims have been seriously prejudiced.

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that mandatory injunctive relief is appropriate in this case. Accordingly, it is, this 17^th day of November, 1982,

ORDERED that this case be, and hereby is, certified as a class action on behalf of all Indians and tribes with pre-1966 claims subject to 28 U.S.C. 2415 that have been identified by the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], the federal defendants, or any of their contractors, and that have not been or will not be litigated prior to December 31, 1982, and that have not been the subject of legislative proposals submitted to Congress; and it is

FURTHER ORDERED that defendants shall submit legislative proposals to Congress designed to resolve all those claims held by the plaintiff-class, that defendants will not litigate before December 31, 1982, and it is

FURTHER ORDERED that if defendants cannot make the necessary legislative submissions by that date, they shall institute protective legislation to cover those claims not the subject of legislative submissions, and it is

FURTHER ORDERED that, to the extent not already accomplished as evidenced in the record herein, defendants shall notify members of the plaintiff class, individual or tribal where appropriate, as to the current status of their claims and the nature of the forthcoming statutory deadline of December 31, 1982 for the institution of litigation.”

JUDGE, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

                        Civil Action No. 82-2725

                        Filed November 17^th, 1982

James F. Davey, Clerk

ARTHUR LAZARUS Jr.  ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN INDIAN AFFAIRS, LEGAL MEMORANDUM ON H.R. 5494 and S. 2089, identical bills titled the ‘Ancient Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1982, CONTENDS: “Retroactive Validation” of Indian land transfers and for extinguishment of claims arising from transfers not previously approved by either Congress or the appropriate Executive official may be Constitutionally Invalid. The Supreme Court emphasized retroactive validation should be preceded by a determination “no fraud” had been practiced upon the Indians from whom the deed was originally purchased.”

Blackfeet Water Compact “Constitutionally Invalid” by “Determination of  No Fraud”

The BLACKFEET WATER COMPACT SETTLEMENT ACT ENACTED BY THE BLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCIL, STATE OF MONTANA, AND THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR HAS ILLEGALLY  APPROVED RETROACTIVE VALIDATION OF “FEE PATENT TITLES” IN TRANSFERS OF RESTRICTED BLACKFEET ALLOTTED TRUST TITLES  OWNED BY BLACKFEET LANDOWNERS.

THE BLACKFEET WATER COMPACT SETTLEMENT APPROVED  “EXTINGUISHMENT OF ALL PAST AND FUTURE BLACKFEET CLAIMS” WITHOUT ANY LEGAL DETERMINATION THAT ‘NO FRAUD” HAD BEEN PRACTICED UPON THE BLACKFEET INDIAN ORIGINAL ALLOTTEES FROM WHOM THE DEED WAS TAKEN FOR TAXES AND LIENS IN GLACIER AND PONDERA  COUNTY COURT JURISDICTIONS AND TRANSFERRED TO WHITE MEN UNDER STATE OF MONTANA JURISDICTION ON THE RESERVATION;

THEREFORE PRIOR TRANSFERS OF BLACKFEET TRUST LANDS WERE ACCOMPLISHED BY MASSIVE LAND FRAUDS.

THE BLACKFEET WATER COMPACT SETTLEMENT APPROVED BY THE BLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCIL IGNORES PROVEN FACTS THAT ALL OF THE BLACKFEET ALLOTTED LAND FRAUD TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING 1,200 FORCED FEE PATENTS WERE MADE WITHOUT ANY DETERMINATION THAT “NO FRAUD” HAD BEEN PRACTICED UPON THE BLACKFEET ORIGINAL ALLOTTEES DESPITE MOUNTAINS OF EVIDENCE PRESENTED TO CHAIRMAN EARL OLD PERSON AND VICE-CHAIRMAN SASSY RUNNING CRANE AND PRESENT CHAIRMAN HARRY BARNES THAT THE BLACKFEET INDIANS ARE VICTIMS OF “FRAUD” IN HUNDREDS OF BLACKFEET LAND THEFTS BY WHITE MEN IN GLACIER AND PONDERA COUNTY ACCOMPLISHED IN COMPLICITY WITH THE UNITED STATES INDIAN AGENTS TO FORCE BLACKFEET SIGNATURES ON FEE PATENTS.

TRIBAL COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVES OF THE BLACKFEET INDIANS HAVE COMMITTED A FRAUD OF SUCH MAGNITUDE DESPITE AN OATH OF OFFICE SWEARING TO  PROTECT BLACKFEET TRIBAL MEMBERS AND TO MAINTAIN SOVEREIGNTY OF THE BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION.

How do we calculate the losses of Blackfeet Original Allottees and Blackfeet Tribe

            Mr. Ray Cross, University of Montana Law School Professor won three Supreme Court Decisions on behalf of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arickara tribes. One suit concerned the flooding of tribal lands by Garrison Dam and reservoir located on tribal homelands. He claimed “Institutional Equity” the right of the Indians to be heard and share in settlements. North Dakota claimed just compensation for Federal Reclamation Service construction of the dam and reservoir. It was found that the Indians paid the social and economic costs of Garrison Dam and reservoir while white farmers and the state benefitted economically from the federal reclamation project on Indian lands.

Mr. Cross proved that it was the tribes who suffered devastating social, cultural and economic losses due to the federal government’s taking of their most productive agricultural lands, and that the Indians were not compensated for their losses. Congress directed the Indian’s trustee, the Secretary of the Interior to hold administrative hearings to determine just compensation for social and economic losses in tribal claims concerning the loss of the successful, self-reliant tribal cattle ranching industry.

Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel of the Reagan administration in 1985 established the ‘Joint Tribal Advisory Commission’ [JTAC] by secretarial charter to hear and evaluate the Indian’s claims arising from the takings of their reservation lands. The hearings before the JTAC provided the organizational catalyst for tribal members to join together and present personal testimony and other evidence regarding the devastating effects of the 1949 taking on tribal culture, economy and cattle ranching industry.

Testimony by natural resource economists and related experts aided the JTAC in its examination of the Indians claims. The natural resource economists provided the JTAC with a “Valuation Theory” of Indian lands that fulfilled the “make whole” command of the Just Compensation Clause. Other expert testimony provided historical and sociological evidence of the taking’s devastating effects on the social and cultural life of the Indian people. The Bureau of Indian Affairs strenuously opposed the Indians “claims in equity” of the Indians just compensation claims for their losses.

The JTAC hired Dr. Ronald Cummings, a leading natural resource economist to do an assessment of the Indians economic losses imposed by the taking, and to use the valuation standards as the means to capitalize the stream of income the Indians would have received from the lands, and to provide “lieu lands” in comparative quality and sufficient in area to compensate the tribes for tribal land flooded by Garrison Dam and reservoir. In addition, the tribes were awarded a share in the revenues produced by Garrison Dam and reservoir and hydro-power receipts paid into accounts in the Treasury Department on behalf of the tribes. The award of $149 million could not be spent by the tribal council, only the accumulated interest from the principal could be drawn down but only after a social and economic recovery plan was developed and approved. Tribal members now governed the expenditures by the tribal council. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arickara people control the tribal council by referendum votes on expenditures of the claims award money. Per capita payments need approval by vote of tribal members. The cattle ranchers and agricultural enterprises have a permanent source of capital and loans and credit established to serve ranchers and tribal members for business loans to re-develop the tribal cattle ranching economy and to process raw products like tribal beef processing plants to generate high paying jobs and profits for tribal members. Where is the Blackfeet council social and economic recovery plan for Blackfeet tribal members?       

CORPORATE CONQUEST OF ALL AMERICAN’S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

CORPORATE CONQUEST OF ALL AMERICAN’S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

Origins of Economic Apartheid Systems on Indian Reservations in the United States  

The common factor initiating Indian land frauds is complicity of Congress enacting bills introduced by western states congressmen targeted to destroy treaty protection of Indian property managed by a federal trusteeship. State legislatures enacted “reservation/county” exclusive white jurisdictions upon Indian reservations. County court judges severed Indian land titles that provided void Patent-in-Fee titles to border-whites. The “Code of the West” maxim means no white man would testify against another white man in cases involving Indians. Cattlemen’s courts and judges decisions in Montana created “reservation/county” white territories on sovereign Indian reservations.  

Blackfeet property rights usurped by the Montana Legislature, Farmers Union, National Cattlemen’s Association, All Citizens Equal and Montanan’s Opposing Discrimination white supremacy organizations whose stated goal is to repeal Indian treaty rights. Glacier County government officials, United States Indian Agents and border-whites murdered hundreds of Blackfeet landowners 1913-1922 on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Glacier County border-whites own patent-in-fee allotments in every township on the reservation checker-boarded with Indian lands for political/economic control of the entire Blackfeet Reservation economy by white economic-apartheid.  

Breaking Glacier County Economic-Apartheid on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation        

President George Washington sent the Indian Trade and Non-Intercourse Act of 1790 to the Continental Congress to protect Indian treaty lands from depredations [“to plunder, to despoil, to lay waste”] of “states and speculators” prohibiting purchase of Indian property without prior approval of Congress and consent of the Indians.   

Glacier County is a white-apartheid “reservation/county” enacted by the Montana Legislature on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in 1919 to provide Patent-in-Fee titles to border-whites squatting on hundreds of stolen Blackfeet land allotments held by treaty.

Mrs. Mabel Monroe-Bond was a teenage Blackfoot girl in 1919, robbed along with her younger sister by Joe Sherburne, licensed agency trader, James J. Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railway, and Glacier County Attorney Frisbee. The Monroe sisters owned land allotments located at the eastern entrance to Glacier Park, providing a right-of-way from the Blackfoot Highway to the entrance of Glacier Park at St. Mary Village.

The United States Government breach of fiduciary duty to Indian Wards in connection to corporate racketeering in real estate scams of Indian lands is documented in many Investigations and Hearings of Congress since 1904. Federal trusteeship is the highest legal standard for protection of Government Wards. A treaty signed by the United States Congress provided self-rule for Blackfeet Indians on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation under protections contained in the Constitution of the United States. Indian treaty rights are special contracts and agreements to accomplish economic goals in fulfilling treaty promises made by Congress in exchange for Indian land cessions.

In 1922, United States Senate Indian Committee Investigator Walter W. Liggett reported, “Scores of patent fees were issued to the Indians without the Indians having made applications for the same in clear defiance of the law. The issuance of the patent meant that the Indian was defrauded of his land consisting of 312.250 acres of the most valuable acreage of the reservation carried out by government agents and local whites.    

President Reagan trashes 17,000 individual Indian land claims to 100 million acres

In 1944, in U.S. vs. Glacier County and U.S. vs. Frisbee, Indian property frauds by real estate sharks, government officers, state legislatures, western states congressmen, corporations, individuals, and federal trustees of Indian property were charged in Federal District Court, and found guilty of illegal transfers of Indian titles to land and minerals.

In 1983, Covelo Indian Community, Plaintiff, vs. Secretary of the Interior James Watt and Attorney General of the United States, Defendants; Plaintiffs won summary judgments in class-action lawsuits to restore alienated Indian land trust titles for 17,000 individual Indian landowners claims to one hundred million acres of Indian lands.

Blackfeet lands robbed by Louis Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railway include 1,200 Blackfeet Forced Fee Patents, Secretarial Sales of Deceased Indian Lands, and tribal oil structures on the Blackfeet Reservation that produced one billion dollars.

. President Ronald Reagan violated Public Law 96-217, Section 2, passed by Congress in 1983 to provide Just Compensation for Indian landowner’s loss of land, minerals, revenues, and future income. Just Compensation and Institutional Equity would seem to provide legal muscle to enforce the rule of law in massive land frauds of Indian property by federal trustees and corporate racketeering of reservation land and treaty rights of the Blackfeet Indians. The treaty is the sacred word of the treaty partners. President Reagan trashed President George Washington’s law to honor Indian treaties.  

United States Congress Complicity in Centuries of Indian Land Frauds

 The Indians could not violate treaties without suffering massacres and prisoner of war status. My grandmother’s tribe, the Oneida, brought corn to starving Revolutionary War soldiers at Valley Forge, and an Oneida woman, Polly Cooper taught the soldiers how to prepare the corn and cook it properly. Martha Washington invited her to the White House after the Revolutionary War and presented her a shawl. The Oneida tribe has land claims originating to the Indian Trade and Non-Intercourse Act of 1790.

President Lincoln in 1865 wrote, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that un-nerve’s me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As result of the [Civil] war, corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption in high places will follow and the MONEY POWER of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people.”

President Teddy Roosevelt, no “injun lover” agreed with the frontier maxim “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” nevertheless vetoed a Bill introduced by Senator Walsh of Montana, enacted by Congress that would have deprived the Blackfeet Indians of their reserved water rights on the Blackfeet Reservation. Mr. Roosevelt explained the bill would only benefit corporate “trusts” and not the Indians who owned the water. Great Northern Railway owner James J. Hill was given 400 million acres of public lands of the United States as he chugged westward toward Indian Country in the 1880’s.

The Blackfeet people survived 30 years of massacre, small pox, famine, whiskey trade, and removals in physical genocidal attacks by Montana Confederate’s policy of “extermination” of the Blackfeet Indians. Tribal population dropped from 7,800 in 1863 to just 1,811 Blackfeet treaty Indians left alive by 1890. The Blackfeet ceded 17,000,000 acres to the United States in 1887 to be paid in cattle and equipment over ten years.

The Blackfeet cattle ranchers brought the tribe back from near extinction in 1893 by a self-reliant cattle industry of 500 cattle ranchers, 25,000 cattle, shipping steers to Chicago Stockyards, building homes, barns, chicken coops, fencing, vegetable gardens, root cellars, selling beef and hay to the agency generating cash for all needful things.

 A gold rush developed in 1895 that did not find placer gold in the mountain lands of the reservation, but the tribal land cession of one million acres turned into Glacier Park tourist gold rush for James J. Hill’s hotels in Glacier Park that generate $168 million.  

A tribal genocide to force the Indians to sign away their lands from 1913 to 1922 murdered hundreds of Blackfeet landowners frozen in the unheated agency jail in forty degree below zero weather, and child landowners deaths caused by the agent died of malnutrition related diseases, and lymphatic tuberculosis epidemics in boarding schools.

One hundred and fifty Blackfeet soldiers, “Doughboys” fought on the Fields of France in World War One. Twenty veterans returned home to find their aged parents being starved by the agent, Great Northern Railway owner James J. Hill, Swift & Company, and Glacier County officials to force Blackfeet signatures on trust lands, and they joined their parents in dying by the roadside for want of food and medical care.   

Louis Hill, son of James J. Hill was diligently pilfering Blackfeet oil structures in 1944 while my father was fighting as a rifleman in General Patton’s Tank Corp. killing Hitler’s Nazi’s in World War Two. He helped to save Jewish death camp victims.  

Congress and the Executive Branch fail to provide Just Compensation for the Indians

In 1979, President Carter sent his Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs to testify under oath to Congress, “Litigation was thought inappropriate in these cases because the United States Government would have to sue itself on behalf of its Indian wards.”

In 1983, President Reagan defied Public Law 96-217, Section 2 passed by Congress to provide Just Compensation for 17,000 individual Indian landowners on Indian reservations across the United States to recover 100 million acres of Indian lands stolen by “speculators and states.” James Watt, Secretary of the Interior notified Congress President Reagan opposed extensions of the statute of limitations on all of the Indian claims thereby extinguishing 17,000 individual Indian claims.

Senator Cohen, Chair of the Select Committee on Indian Affairs noted, “If the Reagan administration Interior and Justice Departments are allowed to succeed in their plan to let the statute of limitations run out, the remainder of 17,000 Indian claims covering land, minerals, and water rights of the Indians will be extinguished.”    

I was in Washington D.C. in the 1980’s trying to resolve century-old land frauds of Blackfeet landowners like my great-grandmother’s lands stolen by the Montana Legislature, Glacier County, Bureau of Indian Affairs, General Land Office of the United States, white ranchers, and corporate vultures like James J. Hill, Swift & Armor, Texaco.

            President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel was in Browning last week to encourage the Blackfeet Indians to sell land fragments to the tribe instead of taking responsibility for Executive Branch Conspiracy in defrauding thousands of Blackfeet trust landowners in complicity of the Secretary of the Interior.

Sally Jewel is a billionaire developer of outdoor recreation properties near national parks, but she never uttered a word to support Blackfeet cultural tourism industry development. Why should Sally Jewel enforce the rule of law on an Indian reservation adjacent to Glacier Park? It might set a legal precedent for all tourism developers.

A Century of  Economic Apartheid of the rich one percent ”Trusts”     

In U.S. Senate Hearings in 1912, held to examine the issue, “Trusts vs. the Populace” documented in the book, The Titanic by Wyn Craig Wade tells the story of the disaster of the sinking of the Titanic. The senate hearing concluded the “House of Morgan Trust” could not be held economically responsible for corporate negligence in the drowning deaths of 1,500 Titanic passengers drowned at sea when the ship struck an iceberg plowing full steam ahead despite several warnings of an ice field in its path.

I am the Last Treaty Indian fighting for my great-grandmothers stolen land to the  end

I am a dead treaty-Indian. For over a century my people starved to death, each generation in turn suffering famines inflicted by white supremacists squatting on the reservation. The United States Government chose to protect the corporate thief, and now that corporate thief is a threat to destroy the constitutional rights and privileges of all Americans, as though it is just another Indian tribe in the way of corporate greed.

The Indian water compact settlements forced on Indian tribes by Congress ends FOREVER, all past, and future Indian claims. We are dead Indians, no longer free treaty Indians living on our own reservations. Corporate power over Congress ended my great, grandmothers century-old land claims, and we, her heirs are welfare people now. Donald Trump, billionaire is the tip of the corporate iceberg history of economic domination by robber barons James J. Hill and his son Louis Hill, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller etc.   

“Slow-Death Measures” Suicide Genocides hit the American Middle-Class

The AARP Bulletin of June 2016 reported, “A surge of suicides in recent years, especially among boomers and Generation X  has raised concerns that many middle-aged Americans are suffering from financial despair in the wake of the Great Recession. Government figures released in April show that suicide rates soared from 1999 to 2014 and accelerated after 2006 when the nation was jolted by a housing crisis followed by a long period of joblessness. Rising sharply among nearly all age groups except those 75 and older, the suicide rate grew by 24 percent to reach an average of 13 for every 100,000 people, the highest rate in 30 years. The biggest increase in suicide rates for both women and men was in the age group 45 to 64. The data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics found a rising sense of hopelessness among middle-aged Americans, especially those with limited education and skills. Increased suicides are related to job loss, foreclosure, and bankruptsy-not related to the recession.”

“Past is Prologue” etched above the National Archives Building in Washington D.C.

            Origins of the rich one percent are stored in the national archives in the Records of Indian Affairs. “Bankers more despotic than monarchy, systematically corrupt the United States, the Earth to be their inheritance.” Indian people are genocide survivors, the Indian reservations set aside by the rich, exploited for profits through the centuries.  Oceans are garbage pits, the land is sterile except by pouring fertilizers and pesticides onto crops that produce higher yields with less protein, unpolluted water is scarce, topsoil in Montana is less than an inch deep, forests are rotting from insects unknown just a century ago spawned by climate change, humans worked like animals in minimum wage bondage, providing more money for rich corporations. Slow death genocide is upon us.         

WHY INDIAN PEOPLE FEAR DONALD TRUMP’S RUN FOR PRESIDENT

The goals and origins of Indian genocides by the United States Government

            Benjamin Franklin, one of the original founders of the United States did not intend to share the bounty of the new world with savages, “And, indeed if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast.”

Political history of  Blackfoot genocides by the Territory and State of Montana

The Sacred Buffalo Vision documents the history of Blackfoot genocides in Montana. “At a council of the Blackfeet, Blood, and Piegan Tribes of Indians an election was held on April 20, 1875 adopting laws outlawing whiskey in Blackfoot Confederacy lands. The council opened with prayers and songs to the Divine Father, the Indians all kneeling. Agent Wood opened the meeting saying, “Before commencing on any great and good work, we have been taught by the word of the Great Spirit to invoke his blessings, and all we said and done would be heard and remembered by him, and we would be held accountable. If we did not intend living up to our pledges, we had better not make them. For many years, you have been without unity, without a Head Chief, and without laws, roaming over the prairies in small, unfriendly, if not hostile bands, killing each other under the influence of whiskey. During the last year, you have killed one hundred and thirty one of your own people through whiskey. I want you to elect a Head Chief who does not drink whiskey and who will care for and control his people.”

Small Pox epidemics inflicted on the Blackfeet Indians reduced tribal populations further in 1874 to 1890 when the government finally supplied the agents with vaccine.

William Bradford of Plymouth Colony described Small Pox epidemics on eastern tribes, “A sorer disease cannot befall [the Indians] they fear it more than the plague. For usually they that have this disease have them in abundance, and for want of bedding and linen and other helps, they fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep.”

Chief Heavy Runner’s band was suffering a small pox outbreak in the winter of 1869 when the Montana Militia led by General Meagher, who lied that the Indians were murdering settlers, massacred 173 Indian women, children, babies, and old people as the warriors were on a winter hunt for buffalo. The cowards knew this and waited for the opportune time to launch their attack in 40 degree below zero weather, shot the tops off the teepees with cannon that collapsed the teepee onto the occupants burning them alive. The drunken soldiers chased the children into the bushes raping and murdering them.

An intact skeleton of a 14 year old girl was discovered in the University of Montana Geology Department by an Indian student. He proved forensic evidence of massacre of children, a bullet hole in her skull just above the eye sockets, her pelvic bones crushed indicating rape by confederate soldiers chased up the Missouri River by the Union Army in 1863. American citizen’s protests to Congress finally ended physical genocide but economic genocide continues in exploitation of Indians by corporations.

A campaign of economic-genocide white-apartheid systems on Indian Reservations

The Montana Legislature enacted reservation/county jurisdiction in 1919 to provide border-whites Patent-in-Fee land titles out of stolen Indian land allotments in complicity with the Secretary of the Interior, the President, and Congress creating plantations on Indian reservations. A secret campaign of “economic genocide” began instigated by corporate greed. Blackfeet landowners were starved by Great Northern Railway owner James J. Hill and his son Louis, State of Montana, Glacier County, and United States Senators from Montana passing bills robbing the Blackfeet Tribe.

This is the corporate/congress lobby that gives marching orders to Congress. Corporations own senators, who introduce legislation to plunder Indians, so corporations reap the profits thereof. The Great Northern Railway owner, James J. Hill and his son Louis, escaped criminal prosecution for plundering the oil, grass, water, timber, gravel, and prime locations in Glacier Park for profitable exploitation of Blackfeet treaty Indians.

 Louis Hill’s corporate progeny still collect oil royalties from their 1920’s plundering of oil structures on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and white ranchers collect $125 million in sales of cattle and crops including millions in federal subsidies. Tourism industry on the western reservation lands collect $168 million each summer. Economic-apartheid usurpation of tribal lands leaves the Indians in poverty.

American citizens “trumped” by corporate/congress economic apartheid system

The American citizen is now subject to usurpation of their “reservations” and “Wampum” evidenced by the Wall Street Bankers rape of millions of Americans retirement funds and mortgages. No citizen was massacred in the physical form, but the bank frauds brought “slow death” economic-genocide of middle class Americans. The Americans are not immune to mass migrations we witness in the Middle East caused by President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Drought is on the march across the United States. The social and economic consequences of corporate pumping the Ogallala Aquifer dry underlying Great Plains states causing mass migrations of millions of drought refugees to the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Utah. A Texas billionaire is buying up water rights to pipeline water to Dallas costing municipal governments millions raising water rates for citizens. In Montana, the Carlyle Group, President Bush’ s corporation has purchased the water system of Missoula, Montana, the town I live in, and the city council has spent millions in legal fees to assume ownership of the municipal water system. The group was caught overcharging Missoula residents a million dollars. Private ownership of public utilities is the next target of corporate America under economic policy of Reaganomics.     

Donald Trump is one mad billionaire beat by Indian casinos. The Indians are working overtime to defeat this mad tyrant. The planet earth and its inhabitants are afraid, very afraid, that the floods and fires of unrestrained greed will envelope their lands like the Koch brothers rivers of poison, only worse. Donald Trump is a financial calamity of greed unleashed on the world economy with a real army at his command.  

The end of normal will be President Trump’s announcement from the oval office, very serious expression, evacuating the entire Midwest states, marching the drought refugees toward Montana where a few buffalo still roam and water is still a dollar and Indians still have land. Drought refugees are coming to your state.

President Trump will build his wall, to keep you in; looking out wistfully at the free world over in rich Mexico. He unleashes his army of corporate raiders impoverishing American leftovers from President Bush’s religious war for oil.

Bush did not get the Iraq oil and the price of world oil dropped on his base in Dallas from billions to millions watching in dismay at their boy wonder, who nearly destroyed the world economy, just now rising from the ashes of Bush’s Armageddon.

Blackfeet Indians genocide survival manual-The Sacred Buffalo Vision  

Congress passed legislation to open the Blackfeet Reservation to civilize and Christianize the Indians. General Grant of Civil War fame sent captured confederate soldiers to Montana to “advance the metamorphosis of the savages” or to kill them.

The Blackfeet chose to live although there were times when they requested the army to finish them off to end their misery of six-year famine eating the inner bark of the cottonwood tree to keep alive. Maggots were a luxury.

In 1887 the Blackfeet sold 17,000,000 acres for cattle to live on the reduced Blackfeet reservation lands. In 1896 United States treaty commissioners came to tell the Blackfeet Chiefs hordes of gold miners were headed their way and another million acres were sold for protection from depredations [murders] of white men living in or passing through their country, may commit.

In the 1920’s Chicago crime boss Al Capone followed the delicious steaks back to the reservation, and set up his bank in Browning, loaned money to the starving Indians, set the “vig” high interest rates and foreclosed on the loans prior to shipping and filched 10,000 head of Indian cattle. The underworld and overworld had negotiated a “détente.”

Your instructions to survive economic genocide is: ‘The Sacred Buffalo Vision’ my Blackfeet history book available on Amazon.Com. Shawn Hannity can’t save you with his rations and bunker. I will teach you to assimilate Trump’s minimum wage slavery. You will be free in a century or two, but who’s counting, not me!

Hurry to buy a book as I am near death and wish to die, unless you make me rich, and then I can feel superior after two hundred and forty years of unrelenting civilization that gets more violent daily, especially at Trump’s rally.  

Fear “The Donald” the Anti-Christ arising from Trump Tower resurrecting angry Christians called by God to “Make America Great Again”

Signed, one broke Indian, Bob Juneau, my civilized name.          

TRIBAL COUNCIL HAS TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ECONOMIC LOSSES

TRIBAL COUNCIL HAS TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ECONOMIC LOSSES

            Supreme Court Decision on “breach of trust holding” requires tribal governments to “act on their own behalf in the assertion and protection of their unique rights and entitlements.” It is the tribal council’s exclusive responsibility to protect Blackfeet treaty rights and negotiate fair deals with state and federal officials and business corporations.    

The Salish-Kootenai water compact settlement, $2.5 billion, one-half of Flathead Lake, ownership of Kerr Dam and economic development of tribal ranchers and farmers. The SKC tribes negotiating team of water lawyers, hydrologists, anthropologists, cultural experts and treaty lawyers defeated the organized opposition of white landowners.

BLACKFEET COUNCIL WATER COMPACT NEGOTIATING TEAM, “A JOKE”      

            The Blackfeet Water Compact negotiating team was “Earls” one man tribal water department and “cost-free” Native American Rights Fund Attorney, who screamed at the Blackfeet members in the water compact meeting with federal, state, tribal officials, “you people don’t own any water rights!”  I tried to testify for Blackfeet landowners  “Just Compensation” settlement claims for loss of allotted lands and revenues, but Earl nodded his head and tribal security pushed me to the wall. Tribal members yelled, “let him talk” and booed the council. A week later the tribal council sent their one man water dept. with donuts to hold a landowners hearing with no federal, state, or tribal council members present to satisfy the legal requirement for Institutional Equity “all parties treated equal.”

BLACKFEET TRIBAL COUNCIL REFUSED TO HEAR TRIBAL MEMBERS

The council refused to hold tribal water compact hearings with Blackfeet people to record Blackfeet trust landowners and Blackfeet cattle rancher’s testimony. The tribal council approved the Blackfeet water compact without any economic recovery plan to rebuild the Blackfeet cattle rancher’s economy or to provide trust landowners funding to develop their family lands or to start small businesses. The people’s last stand is the tribal referendum vote to approve the water compact without even knowing what is in the compact. Chief Old Person, Chairman Barnes, and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council don’t know what they signed except it brings money for the council to spend. The water  compact ends all past, present, and future claims of the Blackfeet Tribe and Blackfeet trust landowners, FOREVER! What about our children’s future. Did they consider them?

            Inspector Chubbuck reported in 1903, “The livestock industry is the one best suited to the natural conditions and the inclinations of the people, and if developed along intelligent lines can be made to yield comfortable support to all the people of the tribe to whom the reservation belongs. The reservation could carry 50,000 head of cattle annually, permitting the Indians to market 10,000 head a year and the creeks on the reservation would be capable of irrigating enough grass and hay to feed 50,000 head by irrigation ditches watering hay meadows developed for winter feed and summer grazing.”

WHITE STOCKMEN MONOPOLY  OF BLACKFEET CATTLE INDUSTRY

Glacier County Profile “Market Value of Products Sold” Crops and Livestock Sales.

GLACIER COUNTY RANCHERS & FARMERS: 542 farms and ranches, government payments $9,108,000, and $67,000,000 annual sales of crops and cows in 2015

Livestock Inventory cattle and calves, hogs & pigs, poultry and eggs, wheat and barley.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH TRIBAL COUNCIL MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES?

In the 1896 Agreement the Blackfeet Chiefs negotiated a self-reliant, successful Blackfeet cattle industry under the management of Blackfeet cattle ranchers, who “owned” 55,000 cattle, 500 tribal brands, shipped steers to Chicago stockyards, ranch homes, barns, fences, chicken coops, vegetable gardens, root cellars, milk cows, poultry, eggs, hogs and pigs, sheep, horses, grain crops for winter feed, and cash for all needful things. What is the modern day 2016 tribal council social and economic recovery plan to rebuild the self-reliant, successful, profitable Blackfeet cattle industry?

U.S. Forest Service, “Present production of every kind of output from the national forests, so far below the economic potential, and at such excessive cost is a poor record. Even when all outputs made available to the public or to parts of it at minimum prices are evaluated at their full economic value, the return on the huge capital value of the national forests is but ½ of 1 percent with a value of forests @ $2 billion. A resource management record of this kind is unacceptable for either privately or publicly owned natural resources. More serious than the record of the recent past is the damage that the future performance will be equally bad unless positive measures are taken to change it.”

WHAT IS THE BLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCIL PLAN?

What is the tribal council economic recovery plan for Blackfeet cattle ranchers and farmers with water compact money to develop 1.3 million acres owned by the Blackfeet Tribe and Blackfeet allotted landowners on the Blackfeet Reservation?

Why are not the Blackfeet Indians the rich people on our own reservation? The one man tribal water department and amateur lawyer cost us a billion dollars in the compact.

NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMIST NEEDED TO VALUE ECONOMIC LOSSES

            We need a Natural Resource Economist to advise the tribal council and allotted landowners on the value of tribal resources lost in allotted land claims and cattle ranchers industry to make the Blackfeet “whole” for the devastating social and economic losses caused by Glacier County white ranchers, Federal Reclamation Service, St. Mary canal project and Sherburne Dam diversion of Blackfeet waters to Canada and northcentral Montana irrigated farmers, municipal, recreation, industrial, and corporations. Where is the tribal council plan to develop tribal and allotted economic plans for “exclusive use and benefit of the Blackfeet ranchers and landowners, to whom the reservation belongs.”

  

VALUATION THEORY TO MAKE INDIANS WHOLE FOR THEIR LOSSES

Water attorney Ray Cross of the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arickara Tribes won $149 million for the Indian ranchers displaced by Garrison Dam flooding rich resource tribal bottomlands. Congress directed Dr. Ronald G. Cummings, a leading natural resource economist to do an assessment of the Indians economic losses imposed by the 1949 taking of their rich bottomlands and cattle industry. He used known and accepted valuation standards as the means to “capitalize the stream of income the Indians would have received from those alienated lands.” Such a valuation standard required the government to provide the Indians with “in-kind” replacement of their lands comparable in quantity and quality sufficient in area to compensate tribes for tribal land on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation inundated by construction of Garrison Dam. The claims included traditional use of the natural plants, berries, and forest in spiritual-medical use.

ECONOMIC VALUATION THEORY TO COMPENSATE BLACKFEET INDIANS

            The white men stole the productive grazing lands of the reservation. That is a proven fact recognized by Congress due to Blackfeet Chiefs testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee since 1904 when the white cattlemen trespassed on the reservation and rustled 25,000 head of Indian cattle that decimated the self-reliant, successful Blackfeet cattle industry. What is the value of the Blackfeet cattle industry since 1904 when the Indians were robbed and had no cattle due to white ranchers and Indian Agents massive Indian land frauds and rustling of the Blackfeet cattle industry?

In 1928 the Senate Indian Affairs Committee recommended canceling the Patent-in-Fee titles of white men or if that was impossible “lieu lands” be provided to replace stolen Blackfeet allotted lands. In 1980, when we brought the Blackfeet Forced Fee Patents Cases to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee their lawyer estimated $300 million just compensation paid to Blackfeet trust landowners and cattle ranchers losses,  a sum grown to $600 million today to compensate Blackfeet landowners and cattle ranchers.

PROCLAMATION OF 1903 BY PRESIDENT TEDDY ROOSEVELT

 President Roosevelt proclaimed the reserved treaty rights of the Blackfeet Indians to grazing, hunting and gathering, timber, and sacred sites remained in place in the 1896 Agreement land cession that became Glacier Park and Lewis & Clark National Forest. The whites got a bill to create Glacier Park in 1910 fencing out the Blackfeet Indians, but the Blackfeet retain their reserved treaty rights in the Lewis & Clark National Forest. The forest service officials asked Chairman Old Person if he wanted tribal game wardens in the forest to provide enforcement of tribal and federal game laws, he said no, Blackfeet game wardens could not do the duty and he refused the offer to use a tribal treaty right. My brother-in-law went to Choteau to the District Forest Service office and got a free permit to cut lodgepole pine for fence posts and corral posts and he got a post & pole company started but the tribal council took it away from him and ran it into the ground like they always do. Blackfeet Traditional people could still go there and cut teepee poles for Indian Days, that’s if Chief Old Person did not give that away to white men too.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT SAVES BLACKFEET  IRRIGATED LANDS

President Roosevelt vetoed a Blackfeet Surplus Land Bill by Montana Senator Thomas Walsh to draw the reservation line at Seville severing 156,000 acres of irrigated farmlands and the newly discovered oil fields in the northeastern section of the reservation, stating, “The [Blackfeet] Indians will derive no funds from the sale of their surplus lands for several years if this bill becomes law. I think it will be found that a very large part of the waters of the reservation will at once or within a very short time, be appropriated by white settlers living outside thereof and that irrigation works will be constructed for their use. When the time comes when the Indian allottee is ready to appropriate water it will in all probability have been completely appropriated and fully used by white settlers who have expended large sums on their irrigation works and other improvements in making homes for themselves. True, under the terms of this bill the Indians seem to have a right to take water from the white settlers, but the difficulties against doing this, in light of what has just been said, are, in my opinion too obvious to require extended comment. I am anxious to favor in every way the actual bona fide homesteaders of northern Montana, and I will gladly sign any bill which will thus favor them, provided, that it, explicitly and unequivocally, guarantees to the [Blackfeet] Indians their water rights-that is the right of each Indian to a sufficiency of water to make his allotment of real use to him. Subject to this guaranty, and also to, of course, to the certainty that the action of the Government will redound not to the benefit of one individual or corporation [James J. Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railway, and white settlers Conrad-Valier Investment Company] who wishes to exploit the water rights. I will gladly approve any bill which may be drawn to achieve the purposes of this bill without containing its defects.”

BLACKFEET CHIEF’S ARRESTED BY JOE BROWN, AND SHERIFF RICHARDS

            Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume, Young Man Chief, Black Weasel, and tribal lawyer and interpreter Bob Hamilton were selected by the vote of 300 Blackfeet people to go to Washington D.C. to represent the Blackfeet Tribe in protesting the opening of the reservation to white settlement for sale of irrigated lands after allotment of the reservation in 1919. Robert Hamilton testified to the Joint Commission of Congress, “Superintendent McFatridge had me arrested and returned to the reservation with Oliver Sanderville, Wolf Plume, Young Man Chief, and Black Weasel upon the telegraphic order of Arthur E. McFatridge at Cut Bank, a railroad town off the reservation. We were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Richards and agency employee Joe Brown. The agency police took the Blackfeet Chiefs back to the agency where Superintendent McFatridge held them in custody in the agency jail under the guard of the agency police. He held the chiefs overnight until the eastbound train passed and then he released them.

Wolf Plume, the Blackfeet Chief, sold his cattle to meet the travel costs and necessities. He wished to go to Washington to tell of the condition of his people, how poor they were, and how he would, in a time, be poor also if his people were not given an opportunity for something. This man has given of his means for the care of his people and wished at his own expense to tell the commissioner and congress what their condition was. Wolf Plume will tell this Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs, and the President, that his people are getting worse off each year.

ROBERT HAMILTON WHIPS THE COMMERCIAL CLUBS IN CUT BANK

            Robert Hamilton wrote the Blackfeet Chiefs from Washington D.C. “My Dear Friends, I beg to acknowledge receipt of your joint letter setting forth the reasons why you object to the McFatridge delegation, and upholding my attitude concerning our affairs. Yesterday the Blackfeet matters were discussed by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, we adopted a platform setting forth the reasons why our reservation should not be thrown open. I am now trying to appeal the act of 1907 providing for the allotment of the reservation so the lands may never be thrown open to settlement by whites. The victory is ours, and you honorable gentlemen, who have stood by the right and by your own people, will always be highly respected by the members of Congress who have been with us in this fight. And, those of you who have stood by the right may justly consider themselves the leaders of their tribe, and not among those who are controlled by the Indian Agent. Very sincerely yours, Robert J. Hamilton.”

WHERE IS CHIEF OLD PERSON IN THE FIGHT TO SAVE OUR RESERVATION       

I have fought for our forced patents claims since 1983 when tribal elders Joe Bear Medicine and Willie Running Crane asked me to help the people with their “land problems” which are the same land claims fought for by Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume, Young Man Chief, Black Weasel, and Bob Hamilton. We would not have 1.3 million acres of land unless the chiefs fought for this generation to have an opportunity for something. Chief Old Person has obstructed attempts to win our forced patents claims.