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.