BLACKFEET RANCH CHILDREN ARE AN ENDANGERED “HUMAN SPECIES”

BLACKFEET RANCH CHILDREN ARE AN ENDANGERED “HUMAN SPECIES”

Ranch Children Are The Critical link To Sustainable Blackfeet Cattle Industry:

Isn’t it more important to save our species of Blackfeet ranch families and our reserved grazing lands, as it is to save the Badger Two Medicine and wild animals? I agree conservation of endangered species, sacred lands, and ecosystems in the Badger Two Medicine is important, but loss of the cattle ranching economy and reserved grazing lands brought death to the Blackfeet Indians. The loss of the Blackfeet cattle ranching economy ended our self-sufficiency and wealth, to a welfare system of endless poverty done deliberately by white ranchers. The white ranchers got our grazing land and cattle industry, the BIA employees got government jobs, and Blackfeet ranchers got poverty.

 The Blackfeet Indians were self-reliant cattle ranchers in 1893, and are now an endangered human species. Blackfeet cattle ranchers have knowledge of subsistence land use that will sustain us forever on the Blackfeet Reservation. The BIA and council leasing policy to white ranchers is endangering the only successful tribal industry-our cattle ranching industry-that preserves the Indian grazing lands and ranching knowledge passed on generationally by Blackfeet ranchers to their children. Are they “sacred” too?   

  Kenneth R. Young, Conservation Biologist wrote in 2002, “Knowledge about use of the biophysical environment would be of little utility without collaborative social structures. The primary social structure is the [ranch] household, which is often nearly self-sufficient in the production of basic foods and complex networks of shared labor or barter among organized households in terms of kinship or settlement patterns. These systems have proven adaptive and adaptable as accessibility, prices, legal frameworks, and political realities have shifted over recent decades. The importance of [ranch] children in land-use systems is palpable and consistent with the historical need for large families in traditional societies. Children are an important source of labor in subsistence agriculture. Children participate in most subsistence activities as soon as they are physically able. In rural communities, it is common to see 12-15 year olds working with adults, and younger children doing errands or serving in auxiliary roles. The child’s learning process is the critical link maintaining traditional knowledge and practices.”

Blackfeet ranch children are dispossessed of their inherited ranch traditions:

I had the experience of working at the boarding school built for ranch kids so they could attend public school after the country schools closed, and every ranch kid was herded into the massive public school systems. Conserving Blackfeet cattle ranchers families, the human species, is overlooked, even after over a century of Blackfeet cattle ranching experience since 1893. Cattle ranchers in building a self-reliant cattle industry, brought the Blackfeet out of the tribal famine of 1881-1887.

STARVATION OF THE BLACKFEET INDIANS FROM 1881-1887

The sale of 17,000,000 acres of Blackfeet treaty lands brought $1.5 million for the purchase of cattle, equipment and support to build the new tribal economy after the destruction of millions of tribal buffalo by 1881. The sale of the ceded lands in the “mineral strip” in 1896, was forced on the Blackfeet by the greed of whites for gold, but the Blackfeet Chiefs reserved grazing lands and timber for the continued support of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers economy, guaranteed in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.

            Preservation of the Badger Two Medicine is a good thing, but what about our “human species” Blackfeet ranch children? The reserved grazing lands set aside in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five for “exclusive use and occupancy” of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers, who remain the only successful tribal businesses since 1893.  Blackfeet ranchers of today do not get financial support from the tribal council, BIA, or U.S. Agriculture Department like white ranchers.

Blackfeet cattle ranchers have been very clever in using the rivers and streams of the reservation to water hay meadows by small ditches watering natural plants and rich buffalo grasses to produce natural feed producing the best quality beef cattle in the west. The tribal council and BIA destroyed the Blackfeet family ranchers by leasing tribal and allotted reserved grazing lands to third-party Indian leasers, who sub-lease to white ranchers for cash and cows for themselves, leaving out the ranchers and landowners.

Blackfeet ranchers have no help to continue their 120 year old tradition of cattle ranching on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, yet it was the Blackfeet cattle ranchers who saved us humans from “extinction” in ending the famine of 1881-1887.

BLACKFEET CATTLE INDUSTRY AND WATER COMPACT PRESERVE US

The cattle ranchers and compact money will rescue us from extreme poverty and economic slavery of tribal hotel/casino businesses that uses cheap labor of tribal members to pile up money for the council pleasures. The council are economic parasites on the Blackfeet ranchers and Blackfeet allotted landowners in economically exploiting us.

            Blackfeet ranch children are an endangered human species on the Blackfeet Reservation, who have had no opportunity to live on and operate family cattle ranches. If we do not save Blackfeet cattle ranch families from extinction, the consequences will be “loss of knowledge” gained over a century by Blackfeet cattle ranchers.

We have significant hunger issues on the reservation that can be solved by getting the cattle ranchers back on their lands with proper financial support from the tribal council and occupying reserved grazing lands with federal agriculture dept. subsidies.

Blackfeet cattle ranchers have to have outside jobs just to keep the lights on and feed themselves. Anybody who has lived on a ranch knows work is never done, and no days off. They would laugh at you if you brought up vacations or leisure time.

Treaty reserved  buffalo grasses were conserved by the Blackfeet Indians for 15,000 years, as the dig at the boarding school brought moccasins stained black from the burning of dry prairie grasses in early spring to allow the new grasses to grow quickly to replenish the feed for horses and buffalo. That is Blackfeet Indian biology just being recognized as new science by modern conservation biology because whites destroyed natural ecosystems and natural habitat by plowing up rich buffalo grasses.

 White ranchers and Blackfeet sub-leasers cattle eat the natural grasses down to dirt endangering our tribal grazing lands. Knowledge of Blackfeet Indian people in using the land and conserving it for future generations proven over centuries is a tribal value and tradition. One of the Blackfeet landowners told me the BIA leased out his land and the white ranchers grazed his grasslands down to the rocks and dirt, and the BIA told him he would get no lease money for seven years until the grass came back. Blackfeet allotted lands are leased for $500 from the BIA by third-party middlemen and sub-leased for $20,000 to white ranchers and Blackfeet “fronts” get cows instead of cash to build herds. That is fraud on the trust landowner, a racketeering conspiracy of white-collar crimes. 

“Conservation Biology” is a science term describing traditional practices of the Blackfeet Indians in teaching their children to take care of the land and rich buffalo grasses that produce the high quality beef sought by Las Vegas casinos and Chinese Government Purchasers. Blackfeet cattle rancher Hugh Monroe brought to the tribal council a Chinese  Government Buyer, who told the council the cattle Hugh showed him were better quality that any cows all over the United States. He said the cows were fat in the middle of winter. He told the council it would cost $100 for such a steak in China.

 Chairman Earl Old Person and Archie St. Goddard killed every business deal that would bring the people out of poverty. In 1983, I brought a Wall Street Security Firm to the reservation that offered a $50,000,000 Economic Development Fund to the Blackfeet Tribe. The Wall Street business owner said the Blackfeet Indians should be profiting $500 million a year on their land, water, cattle, and tourism.

Archie made a comic sign of throwing the deal in the trash can because he had 35,000 acres of tribal land for himself. Earl said it would look bad when we went for our federal poverty grants. There is the real truth! Poverty of people is the council’s treasure, to sit on their fat butts and do nothing except perpetuate federal poverty grants. The Blackfeet people have become political prisoners of the tribal council.

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act authorizes Blackfeet ranchers and trust landowners to organize cattle ranchers associations and landowners cooperatives to “cut out the middleman” as it is stated in the regulations. These tribal organizations would provide political power to put an end the “poverty council” and begin anew successful, self-reliant Blackfeet cattle industry and Blackfeet ranchers of 1893. It is up to you.

THE TEXAS CATTLE KINGS ARE RETURNING TO THE RESERVATION:

            By 1860, the Texas cattle kings reached the Judith Basin, and they commenced a campaign of extermination of the Blackfeet Indians from 1863 to 1890 that reduced the Blackfeet population from 7,800 in 1860 to just 1,811 Indians by mass murders, starvation, small pox, whiskey trade, and removals to where we reside today.

In 2013 it was documented by climate change scientists, “Almost the entire south plains region of Texas is in “extreme drought” or “exceptional drought.” Texas cattle towns in the Panhandle and across North Texas will be pushed out of existence. Texas cattle ranchers will be forced north as the first “climate change migrants.” They are to blame for the ravages of “climate change” as surface ponds and streams dried up, and the Ogallala Aquifer is drying it across plains states, driving the Texans north” like original Texas Cattle Kings who nearly exterminated the Blackfeet people in 1860.   

In 1974, I was a G.S. 12 employee in the Department of Health & Human Services in Denver. A study was done on mass migrations of millions of people out of the plains states, migrating to the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. That is the human juggernaut headed our way. The council will sell us down the river, as Texas billionaires write million dollar checks to lease up our tribal grazing land and water resources. You will be the Texans ranch-hands instead of ranch owners. Migrants never leave, they are looking for the best grazing land and water in the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier County. The weakest link is proven to be BIA, and tribal council greed for money, selling the ranchers out, leasing tribal grazing lands to whites. The time is nigh, and the end is near, for the complete subjugation of free Blackfeet treaty Indians, it is reality, it has happened to us before, but this time greed of the council is the means of our destruction.