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.