HISTORY OF CYCLES OF DEMISE OF EMPIRES AND NATIONS

HISTORY OF CYCLES OF DEMISE OF EMPIRES AND NATIONS

            Genocide and Economic-Apartheid on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation

            Excerpted from “The Sacred Buffalo Vision” available on Amazon.com

                        By Bob Juneau Sr., Blackfeet Patriot

Historical Fact: The Blackfoot Nation is a treaty nation recognized by the United States Congress as a sovereign Indian nation in the 1855 Treaty. The United States Government promised to protect the Blackfeet Indians from ‘depredations and unlawful acts of white men living in and crossing their territory, may commit.”

Montana Territory Genocide Policy: United States Indian Agent, George B. Wright, Monthly Report, “Soon after my arrival at Fort Benton on the 28^th of September, 1866, there was seen on the opposite bank of the Missouri river eleven Paiegan Indians desirous of crossing over to the Benton side, whereupon a body of some twenty whites, residents of Fort Benton, returning [confederate gold] miners to the States, ran down to the bend in the river, and as the boat touched the shore, these men fired into them, wounding three and killing one. The Indians ran back to the opposite shore leaving the dead one with the whites, who immediately scalped him. On the following day, the whites chased Indians seen above Fort Benton, killing six, bringing the scalps into the town. I endeavored to get the scalps but was refused. [$50 Indian scalp bounty paid by territorial government]. It is well known that citizens carry with them a hostility towards the Indians, and spare no efforts in obliterating them from existence. A few Chiefs of the Blackfeet Tribe called recently to see me and strongly expressed a desire to remain in peace with the whites, and requested to remove the agency from Fort Benton. Governor Meagher’s Indian War in Montana is the biggest humbug of the age, got up to advance his political interest and to enable a lot of bummers who surround him to make a big raid on the United States Treasury by starting Indian wars. Parties, and hundreds of them were traveling from Helena to Fort Benton, some mounted, some on foot, and some in wagons, in squads of two, four, six and eight-some armed and some unarmed. None appeared to apprehend any more danger than they would in Washington City. The boat I came down the river on, the Yorktown, did not even load the guns furnished them by the War Department, and Indians were allowed on the boat when they wished to come on board, neither did I hear of a single boat that had been disturbed by Indians on the Missouri River. I am satisfied no trouble need be apprehended from the tribes, notwithstanding newspaper accounts, unless trouble is brought on by General Meagher and militia troops under his command.”

MASSACRE OF CHIEF HEAVY RUNNERS BAND: General P.H. Sheridan telegraph to General W.T. Sherman, “In compliance with your permission of November 4, 1869, to punish the Blackfeet Indians who have been robbing and murdering in Montana. I have the honor to report the complete success of an expedition sent against them, under the command of Colonel E.M. Baker, Second Cavalry, in which one hundred and seventy three Indians were killed, forty four lodges destroyed, a large amount of winter provisions destroyed, and three hundred horses captured. I think this will end the Indian troubles in Montana and do away with the necessity of sending additional troops there in the spring as contemplated.” INSPECTOR GENERALS REPORT, January 29, 1870: On the date of November 22, 1869 General De Trobriand makes a report on the condition of Indian Affairs, from which it will be seen that reports of Indian depredations are exaggerated, and also a second report of November 26, from  which it appears that the conditions of Indian affairs is by no means alarming.” Lt. Pease met with the Blackfeet Chiefs a week after the massacre and reported that only 15 of the dead Indians were of fighting age, the rest were elderly men, women, and children. The warriors were on a winter hunt for buffalo. The Indians were suffering from small pox, lay dying in their lodges, and burned alive in their beds by the drunken troops. 1300 horses and several thousand buffalo robes stolen by Montana Militia troops. A few little children hid in the brush and made it down to Mountain Chiefs camp in the forty degree below zero weather. It was Montana border-whites lies and the beginning of a campaign of genocide of Blackfeet people by massacre, starvation, small pox, whiskey trade and removals, Tribal population dropped from 7,800 in 1863 to 1,811 left alive in 1896.”  

A frontier newspaper reported, “The settlers simply danced with delight” when hearing of the massacre. The massacre site is now owned by white ranchers who call it “dead Injun coulee.” White ranchers report Blackfeet skulls and bones kicked out of bushes by their cattle as late as 1910. Some of the Blackfeet skulls ended up in the Cowboy Bar in Great Falls displayed for cowboy fun until the Spotted Eagle warriors liberated them in a fight with cowboy patrons, as Indian skulls tossed from Indian to Indian until they got out of the bar in a gruesome scrum with white supremacists.

 A young female skeleton was found at the University of Montana in 2001 that was picked up afterwards and placed in Hill County morgue and somehow ended up in the Geology Dept. A forensic exam by an Indian student showed she had a bullet hole in her forehead and injuries to her pelvic bones indicating rape. A newspaper reported, “The settlers simply danced with delight” upon hearing of the Indian massacre.

            Lt. John Meacom, stationed at Fort Shaw recorded the stories of Blackfoot Orator Nis-su’ kai-yo, but also wrote of the genocides of the Indians and the buffalo and all the other prairie animals the tribe depended on for food, shelter, clothing, and wealth, Lt. Beacom wrote, “Ni-su’ kai-yo was already an old man. During his boyhood his people his people had held sway over a vast domain extending from the Yellowstone to the Saskatchewan, and from the Rocky Mountains to the far Eastward; but before he had passed his prime their fortunes had begun to recede before the pitiless advance of another race, and he lived to see them 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.” He 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. He 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 his people in those days 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 greater calamity to the Plains Indian than has ever befallen to the lot of any other people, but such is the fact. 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 adapt themselves to such new and strange environment. My race had mastered his and had dealt harshly with him and all other dwellers of the plains. It doubtless occurred to him, that if the dead could rise again, they would choose the Indian and not the white man for their chief. He sat there calm and impenetrable as became one of his race and dignity.”    

 A CENTURY OF “SLOW-DEATH MEASURES BLACKFEET GENOCIDE

The “Slow-Death Genocide” campaign of economic and political apartheid 1896-2016, caused by the Montana Legislature enacting Glacier and Pondera counties within Blackfeet Reservation borders on a white land base consisting of stolen Blackfeet land allotments in complicity with the United States Congress and Executive Branch. Indian land frauds for over a century is causing 80% reservation unemployment rate and despair, hopelessness and poverty of an abused treaty people continuing to 2016 and beyond.

  When you drive through the reservation town of Browning it seems you have left the United States of America and entered a dead zone of impoverishment more akin to third-world nations, or the bombed out cities of Iraq.

            The 2015 water compact signals the end stage of a century of colonization of the Blackfeet Reservation and Blackfeet people by the Territory and State of Montana; despite treaty promises made in the 1855 Treaty. Ending political and economic apartheid on the Blackfeet Reservation  by border-whites is the only solution possible in making the Blackfeet people whole for their losses by the removal of the State of Montana and ending Montana border-whites illegal trespass on the sovereign Blackfeet Reservation.

            The Blackfeet Water Compact ends all of our political and economic gains as a sovereign nation forever. It “legitimizes” illegal trespass of border-whites upon stolen Blackfeet land allotments. Patent-in-Fee titles of border-whites and water rights have been legitimized by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council approval of the water compact. It ends “forever” a century of Blackfeet land claims for treaty violations. The Blackfeet Indians will be economically and politically colonized forever by the water compact because the border-whites have money power and political power.

The imperial tribal council has been corrupt for 75 years since tribal democracy was forced upon the Blackfeet people by the Interior Department in 1935. Interior Department lawyers drew up a tribal constitution with no separation of powers clause with a provision for Indian preference allowing elected tribal council members “preference” in leasing tribal property. That was the beginning of the “chain conspiracy” upon which all of the following criminal acts committed by the tribal council “continuing conspiracy” in place today, and justice denied to the people.  

 The inaugural tribal council in 1936 pointed the way for future tribal councils and a century of poverty of the Blackfeet people. The first Blackfeet Chairman Wright Hagerty leased tribal oil and grazing lands to himself and profited $500,000 in 1936, and nine other tribal council members had incomes over $100,000. Standard Oil and many other oil companies, and real estate sharks were on the reservation in 1936 buying votes with whiskey and cash payments to tribal council candidates, who in turn passed tribal oil leases favoring the oil companies when they were elected to the tribal council.  

James J. Hill and his son Louis Hill got tribal oil structures “patented” by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C. that produced over a BILLION DOLLARS worth of oil revenues from oil wells still pumping today for the profits of Wright Hagerty and the Hills. The modern day Blackfeet Tribal Business Council costs us $4,000,000 to support nine tribal council members over a four year term of office that we foolishly approved in a tribal referendum by council lies that a two year term was not long enough to get things done. Reform of tribal government is a sick joke on us. New Reforms of the Blackfeet Constitution calls for a Blackfeet President and Vice-President and fifteen district council members who will never agree on anything and will double the cost of tribal council administration. Who will have the guts to prosecute the President of the Blackfeet Nation and District Council members? Tribal Government is so corrupt and the constitution so weak it is unable to prosecute crimes by tribal government officials.

The United States Justice Department will not prosecute elected tribal government officials. Petty criminals are hauled into federal court with headlines that the U.S. Attorney for Montana is tough on crime. Bullshit for public consumption! The U.S. Attorney for Montana will not spend his resources to convict council crooks, but millions of federal dollars are routinely pilfered by tribal council members. Tribal Chairman Old Person and council members plea bargained to pay back millions in missing federal dollars with tribal dollars to avoid federal prison sentences.

Federal Funds on the Blackfeet Reservation amount to $192,000,000 annually to serve less than 8,000 Indians who actually live on the reservation, the rest are refugees. It would solve tribal poverty if the money was just given to the people and the federal government could leave the reservation. Poverty programs do no good; the people need cash. The Blackfeet people could elect tribal chiefs to oversee critical law enforcement.

Indian Property crimes that involved corruption by state officials and federal officials over the past century are “extinguished” by the water compact. Indian land thefts have not been prosecuted for a century because the United States Government would have to sue itself on behalf of its Indian Trust landowners. The United States Government is federal trustee of Indian property. President Reagan was chided by South African and Russian leaders for maintaining white-apartheid systems on Indian Reservations allowing corporate exploitation of the Natives. President Reagan responded by throwing out 17,000 Indian land claims, and calling the Indians “backward.”

A Special Federal Magistrate must be appointed by the Justice Department to prosecute on-going, in-house Indian ring of crooks in tribal government and in federal agencies serving Indian reservations. Why is the Blackfeet Tribe $16,000,000 in debt? Where did our money go? What will the council do with water compact money? We should even pay the special federal magistrates salary to serve our interests to send council crooks and federal officials to the federal penitentiary where they really belong.

Indian Health Service Officials in the Billings Area Office conspire with tribal health officials to kick back $350,000 in federal dollars to provide the Area Director with play money for trips and extra cash depriving the Blackfeet Indians of drug and alcohol funds needed at the reservation. Indian Health Service Hospital Inspections routinely passed by AREA OFFICE IHS Inspectors to hide real health violations in hospitals administered by “Indian” Service Unit Directors, a good old boy system.

IHS doctors told me the juvenile diabetes epidemic on the reservation is caused because our children are not getting three good meals a day and their lives will end by age of twenty if they do not get kidney transplants. They are losing their permanent teeth as teenagers because IHS dentists do not have the funds to repair teeth, they only pull teeth. It is a medical fact that rotten teeth lead to heart attacks, cancers, and lung disease. Where are the IHS funds to repair our children’s teeth? IHS is a rotten, corrupt system.  

Chairman Earl Old Person had a $350,000 tribal culture fund to pay his sex bills and to travel the nation with his concubines paid by tribal money. His niece walked out of tribal finance with $65,000. During the council civil war, he refused to sign tribal checks for welfare recipients and tribal government employees payroll while our people were sleeping in their cars in the winter because they could not pay their energy bills, and Glacier Electric shut off the electricity. Their children only had meals at school due to the fact they could not purchase food, the tribal food warehouse locked them out, and food trucks had to come from Great Falls and Missoula to avoid starvation. Hay and supplies for the tribal buffalo herd is stolen at night and sold to white ranchers. Everywhere there is corruption in tribal government.

In 1930, Mrs. Mabel Monroe-Bond wrote to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier to send an “Inspector Incognito” to catch the Agent and white cattlemen rustling Blackfeet cattle. She was our “detective incognito” traveling to Cut Bank to mail her letters to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier because the agent and agency postmaster were in cahoots. The agent and white men pilfering Blackfeet lease checks and cashing them at Joe Sherburne’s bank. She wrote, “”Who is Joe Sherburne? He is our local merchant for the last 35 years and owns the First National Bank (that explains it). All the money from the Office goes through his bank; that is how he comes to exert so much influence over the Indian Office. They are linked up like a log chain-Swift & Armor, the Great Northern Railway, the agent and Joe Sherburne. Results, they have built up a nice little Tammany Hall Clique at Browning. Graft is a hard thing to prove where members are handy at padding up accounts, but one can always put 2 and 2 together. Joe Sherburne doesn’t even stop to put on a mask. Sherburne’s political machine is secretly running the county and the Indian office. It was a great calamity to lose our lands.”

The old time Blackfeet Chiefs died for the survival of the Blackfeet Nation, and they starved alongside the people and sold their cattle herds to feed starving people until they too were in a starving condition. In 1980, Blackfeet Chiefs Willie Running Crane and Joe Bear Medicine were still fighting for our claims and they educated me on the Blackfeet land claims still outstanding in Congress. They asked me to help the people with their “land problems” which turned out to be the forced patents cases.

These are the same land claims our ancestors Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume, Black Weasel. Young Man Chief, White Calf, Mountain Chief, Rides-At-The-Door, and our genius tribal lawyer Robert Hamilton fought and won in defeating Senator Walsh of Montana’s Bill in Congress to open up our reservation to white settlement.

In 1913, Bureau of Indian Affairs Agents and Commercial Clubs in Cut Bank, Conrad, Valier, and other border-whites on the reservation borders were starving the Indians to force a land cession of 156,000 acres of irrigated farm lands and oil fields.

 In 1919, the white men got on the reservation by murdering hundreds of Blackfeet trust landowners for their allotted lands and oil rights. Mrs. Mabel Monroe-Bond was robbed along with her sister when they were teenagers by Joe Sherburne and the county attorney of their allotted lands, located at St. Mary Village and she led the fight to expose the massive land frauds to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier.

 Border-whites stole 325,250 acres of allotted lands that form the land base of Glacier and Pondera Counties inside of the reservation borders created by the Montana Legislature on stolen Blackfeet land allotments. Mrs. Monroe-Bond reported Blackfeet landowners were starved to death by withholding rations, and frozen to death in the unheated agency jail by Blackfeet Agency Superintendants and agency employees.

Blackfeet Chiefs were thrown in the agency jail until the train passed Browning, so the chiefs could not travel to Washington D.C. to go to Congress and expose the land frauds, and murders of Indian landowners. Robert Hamilton boarded the train in Cut Bank off the reservation and worked for six months in Congress to get Senator Walsh’s Blackfeet Land Cession Bill defeated to keep the white man on his own reservation in Glacier County and Pondera County across Cut Bank River and Birch Creek where the reservation boundary lies and where the border-whites really belong. Mass Murders and starvation in conspiracy is how the white man got on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

Robert Hamilton telegraphed Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume, White Antelope, Curley Bear, and Black Weasel 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 and the proceedings of the general council of the Black-Feet Indians, wherein we adopted the platform setting forth the reasons why our reservation should never be thrown open to settlement. In conclusion, the victory is ours, and you men 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.”

In 1944, Chairman John Sharp wrote Hon. James F. O’Connor, House of Representatives, Washington D.C. to report, “Patents-in-Fee were issued to Indians as early as the year 1918, in many cases the Indian not knowing of the issuance of the patent in fee of his allotment. Some refused to accept the patent, knowing they would be unable to pay the taxes assessed against the land. They were advised that they must accept the patent in fee from the office of the Indian agent, and whether or not they accepted the patent, their lands would be assessed and taxed, the taxes must be paid. This procedure was promoted by white traders who were trying to put the Indian landless. Under these circumstances many Indians, both full and mixed bloods, lost their lands through taxes, loans, mortgages, and transfer sales, not knowing the real value of their lands so eagerly sought by the avaricious white post traders, local white men, real estate sharks, and professional land traders, who flocked to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation making land deals, and foreclosing of their interests, receiving as low as $250 for a 320 acre allotment. About one-third of the Indians have become landless with the exception of 80 acre homestead allotments. Many of these lands are valuable oil lands. One tract in particular produced $3,000,000 in oil revenues for the white man. Louis Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railway, who was at the time one of the major oil lessees through his lobbyists in Washington D.C. was able to get major oil structures on Indian trust land patented in fee by the Indian Bureau. We feel that we are not asking too much when we ask that our lands be held in trust and non-assessable, and be given the opportunity to govern ourselves; after all we are citizens of the United States and protecting our country by our boys fighting for our country overseas, so when they return they may enjoy the heritage of land from their ancestors. All we ever wanted is a fair, just, equal, and unbiased deal for each and every Indian of the Blackfeet Tribe.”

In the 1980’s we discovered massive oil rights frauds by Glacier County Officials and oil men who robbed a billion dollars worth of oil from reservation oil fields. The tribal council passed a tribal council resolution in 1982 to pursue an oil claim for all of the oil stolen from the reservation, but once again, Chairman Old Person did not carry the resolution to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and we lost a billion dollar oil claim.  

Chief Earl Old Person is the only Blackfeet Chief in our history who is a proven traitor to the Blackfeet Nation. He is honored by white people, and dresses in the traditional ways and speaks the language and knows the old warrior songs, but he is no warrior. He has deprived the Blackfeet people of their treaty rights to recover their stolen allotted lands. A few years ago, I tried to bring the historical facts of the land frauds and murders of Blackfeet landowners to the Blackfeet College but I was rejected by President Kipp, the grand-daughter of Joe Brown. A white author was paid $5,000 to teach the students about Blackfeet history and he made fun of my book, “The Sacred Buffalo Vision” published on Amazon.com  and he denied the historical fact that hundreds of Blackfeet were murdered in 1913 and 1919-1922 by saying “dead Indians were seen walking around the reservation.” How does he know that and why was a white racist paid by the college to make a sick joke of our suffering and genocide? This author blamed the Blackfeet people for causing so much trouble that the tribal council could not do their jobs and make us prosperous. He only interviewed the tribal political families who also blame the Blackfeet people for their failures of the past 75 years. President Kipp hired her husband to give seminars. He is not an enrolled Blackfeet, but is an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, a violation of the hiring policy of the Blackfeet College.

The people wanted to know what the tribal council is doing with millions of tribal dollars, why the tribal council suppressed the Forensic Audit which found corruption in tribal government, and why the tribal council is in violation of the Blackfeet Constitution and corporate charter in not providing quarterly financial reports to the people.

The water compact was negotiated in secret and did not allow tribal members to testify. Tribal political families do not want the Blackfeet people to learn the truth of white encroachment on the reservation and tribal council history of corruption in tribal government that has kept us poor since Blackfeet Chiefs were replaced by political families. Complicity means being an accomplice in a crime and involvement in crime as principal or as accessory before fact, a conspirator, and a partner in racketeering.

Earl Old Person is the most hated Indian leader in the United States because he was found to be giving confidential information to the Bureau of Indian Affairs when he was co-plaintiff in the Cobell Case, and he was kicked out of the case by Mrs. Cobell for his treason. But that is only one of his many treasonous acts. I have told you before of his treasonous acts to the Blackfeet Tribe in stonewalling our forced fee patents claims.

 Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them.” We made progress on our claims when Chairman Allen Talks About and Chairman Bill Old Chief were leaders of the tribal council, but vicious rumors were started by Earl Old Person’s supporters to get these honest men defeated in tribal elections and the claims died when he took office again. In 2001, we got tribal council resolution #224-2001 passed by the tribal council unanimously and Earl Old Person was forced to sign it, but he never went to Washington D.C. since 2001 to request a senate investigation as ordered by Tribal Resolution #224-2001. In fact, he told the senate lawyer the Blackfeet did not want to pursue their land claims and once again the claims died in his office by his hand. The water compact is another example of his treason since it ends all of our land claims, “FOREVER!”

In the history of the cycles of the demise of empires and nations corruption from within is the cause from vice, theft, perversions, greed and corruption as crooks, perverts and cowards take over the reins of government and bring ruin to the people.

The United States Government is the original cause of our demise and co-conspirator in massive land frauds still unresolved.

In 1928, The Senate Indian Affairs Committee held hearings on the Blackfeet Reservation in a “Survey of Conditions of Indians in the United States” a nationwide survey by members of Congress, and they came to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Prior to the field hearings, Senator Lane of Oregon sent Investigator Liggitt to report on the conditions of the Indians, and found the Indians being starved by the agent and county officials to force another land cession.

Senator Lane testified to the Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs the Indians were eating prairie dogs and skunks to stay alive, “With me it has been merely a matter securing justice for a class of people whose affairs were intrusted to me to take care of for them. A while ago the Senator from Montana implied the effort on the part of the senators from other states to correct this was intended to be a personal affront to him. The Indians asked me if I would protest against the passage of this surplus land sale bill of Senator Walsh and the Commercial Clubs surrounding the reservation. They said if their lands had to be sold to keep them from starving, rather than starve to death they would sell their lands, but they would prefer not to sell them if they could hold onto them. They were starving and eating prairie dogs and skunks. Did you ever eat a skunk? It will keep you alive, but it is not good to eat. I said I would object to the bill for them, and that I would do so without prejudice to the Senator from Montana. I would be a dog if I did not voice the objections of these poor folk. The Senator from Montana had been on the reservation but a short time before I was there, but he did not go into the Indians homes, look into their grub boxes, or see how they lived. I did, and that is the different point from which we view the subject. He has said that I hurt his feelings that I reported the conditions and that I objected to his bill and that I deemed it my duty to report the awful conditions. These Indians are human beings. The white man might take a lesson in kindness from the Blackfeet Indians, he is a man who divides his food to the last bite and does it with no hope of reward. That is what has become of the Indian’s cattle. They are eating one another’s cattle and many are poor because they have been feeding their starving neighbors. Helen Clark, the well known Blackfoot woman, well educated, one of the finest women anywhere, told me she was feeding her cattle to the Indians and in two years would have none. It takes a good woman to do that. What an example for us! I have resisted these things; I have fought against them, and because I have fought them, I have brought the insulting letter from the parasites on the Indians, put in here by Senator Walsh, but I say unto you now that as long as I stay in the Senate, I am going to keep on protesting every time there is an opportunity, without fear of God, man, or the devil, for I will not stand for that kind of game!”  

There is quite a bit of evidence the tribal council has become cannibals on the people, eating their flesh, their subsistence grants, and getting fat on the proceeds. Millions of dollars of federal and tribal funds are robbed and no tribal council member has ever been prosecuted and sent to federal prison in 75 years. I talked to an Assistant United States Attorney for Montana and told that, yes, they knew all about the land frauds, but had no plans to prosecute the Indian land claims. In the water compact meeting I was thrown out of the meeting for bringing up the Blackfeet forced patent claims. There is no hope left on the reservation for justice. This is America?

Bob Juneau Sr. Blackfeet Patriot          

BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHING FAMILIES ARE AN ENDANGERED HUMAN SPECIES

BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHING FAMILIES ARE AN ENDANGERED HUMAN SPECIES

In the 1896 Agreement, the Blackfeet Chiefs “sold the rocks” to the United States for gold mining, but reserved the grazing lands, water and timber to guarantee the continued success of the Blackfeet Cattle Industry made of 25,000 cattle, 500 tribal brands, and cash for all needful things. No gold was discovered at Swift Current so the whites demanded the creation of Glacier Park and the Lewis & Clark National Forest in the ceded strip which fenced out the Blackfeet cattle ranchers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and former Montana governor Dixon, then appointed Secretary of Agriculture set the price for grazing fees on Blackfeet land at ten cents an acre for white ranchers, and in 1919 the Montana Legislature enacted Glacier and Pondera counties on the reservation, which land base was made of stolen Blackfeet land allotments called the “forced fee patents cases” the last remaining Blackfeet claim that will be extinguished by the water compact “forever” and signed by Chairman Old Person. The water compact will cheat the Blackfeet landowners and cattle ranchers out of their reserved water rights and give their water rights to white men living on stolen Blackfeet land allotments, and the remaining allotted water rights will go to the tribal council under the jurisdiction of a water board made of two tribal council members, two white men and one federal government trustee leaving the Blackfeet landowners and cattle ranchers out. This water compact forever extinguishes all past, present and future claims. It is a system of economic-apartheid that only benefits white men and tribal council political families. The Cobell Case land-fragment consolidation program is the final nail in the coffin of cattle ranchers and trust landowners because as soon as you sell your land fragments to the tribe, the in-house Indian ring of council third-party lease holders and white ranchers take control of your family land allotments. I read an account that Elouise Cobell felt her efforts were diverted into a land fraud situation and that she never intended it to happen, but that is what happens when tribal council politics corrupt a good thing and council greed takes over a good woman’s life work. Elouise Cobell deserves to be remembered as a tribal hero, but her heroic efforts are being corrupted by tribal council corruption. For instance, my great-grandmother Mary Black Horn-Juneau left an 80 acre homestead allotment, which is not alienable, but some of her heirs sold their shares to the tribe and it is now attached to a 6,000 acre tribal grazing unit and unusable for us heirs. It is leased by the tribal council policy for $5 an acre for the best grazing land in the west to a third-party tribal member who sub-leases to a white rancher and collects thousands of dollars on our land and tribal land. We even have to ask the third-party lease holder if we could build a home on our own property, how humiliating and disrespectful to us. This is an economic-apartheid system that leaves out tribal members and benefits third-party Blackfeet lease holders and white cattle ranchers. Yet, the Blackfeet allotted landowners still own over a million acres of trust lands but are the poorest on our own reservation because of the tribal council and BIA land leasing policies that favor white men. In the water compact allotted water rights to their family land allotments are given to the tribe and lost to the allotted landowners who will never get the value of their water rights. The water compact is sabotaging the future of Blackfeet allotted landowners and cattle ranchers. Do you think a water board of white men and tribal council members will change their sordid system of leasing policy that keeps the owners of a million acres of the Blackfeet Reservation the poorest in our own lands?  I was thrown out of a water compact meeting at the tribal office in front of federal, tribal and state government officials by Chairman Old Person. The BIA representative told us that we, the trust landowners, have no claims, and the tribal attorney screamed at us, “YOU PEOPLE DON’T OWN ANY WATER RIGHTS!” I think that is an accurate account of the reign of chief Old Person, who has been a puppet of the BIA and white man, and who never did testify in Congress for our forced patents claims.

INDIAN WATER COMPACTS COVER UP A CENTURY OF INDIAN LAND FRAUDS

INDIAN WATER COMPACTS COVER UP A CENTURY OF INDIAN LAND FRAUDS

No water compact can be approved by Congress until the century old Indian land claims concerning property disputes originally held by Indians are cleared up. The Supreme Court ruled that “retroactive validation” or “extinguishment” of Indian land claims must be preceded by a determination that “no fraud or imposition” had been practiced upon the Indian landowner from whom the deed was originally purchased, and that retroactive validation of tainted title is “destructive” perpetuating an injustice and defeating claims of swindled Indians. The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and Chairman Earl Old Person had prior knowledge of swindled Blackfeet Indians in the enactment of Resolution #224-2001 passed by the tribal council in August, 2001. The resolution called for a Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of the “Forced Fee Patents Cases” on the Blackfeet Reservation, the return of trust titles to the original Blackfeet Allottees and Heirs, and refund of all taxes and revenues originating from said Blackfeet lands, minerals and resources. The senate lawyer told us the amount would be $300,000,000 to the heirs of the Blackfeet allottees, which is now estimated to be $600,000,000. Chairman Old Person is well aware of the claims since he has served on the council since 1954 and we brought the claims to him in 1980, 2001, 2005, and 2013 prior to tribal council approval of the water compact. In fact, the tribal council throwed me out of the water compact meeting at the tribal office with federal, state, and county government officials when I tried to bring up our land claims. We met with Earl Old Person in his office on the land claims and he threatened to rescind the resolution requesting the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of our allotted land claims. Prior to approving the water compact the tribal council should have recommended that action be brought to set aside all sales, deeds, and mortgages of Blackfeet allotted land titles taken in Glacier and Pondera county courts and transferred to white men in void Patent-in-Fee titles now existent on the reservation by illegal land transactions. Criminal indictments by the United States Attorney for Montana should be brought against persons shown to be guilty of conspiracy in connection with these illegal Blackfeet land transactions including the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and Chairman Old Person, who had prior knowledge of the illegal land transfers and refused to request the senate investigations and he impeded the senate committee from holding hearings on the reservation violating resolution #224-2001, thereby violating the trust of the Blackfeet people that he represents. The Assistant United States Attorney told me that, yes, they were aware of the forced patents land frauds, but had no intentions of prosecuting the Indian land claims. The United States Government is a co-conspirator in the Indian land frauds, who not only swindled the illiterate Indian landowners, wards of the government, but prepared the applications for fee patents and prepared affidavits on which to base patents-in-fee applications with the intent to deceive the Secretary of the Interior and the General Land Office of the United States. There is evidence that hundreds of Blackfeet landowners, Indian wards were placed in the unheated agency jail, in forty degree below zero weather in 1919-1922, by the agency superintendant and died of exposure, or were made to sign papers to avoid being sent to the penitentiary on false charges, or sent to the state insane asylum by the superintendant, and the agent became his representative and sold his land to white men, and that children were starved and robbed by forcing them to make their mark on an application for a fee patent and robbed by the agency trader for bills, and absolute forgery in deeds signed over to white men for liens and tax deeds issued by Glacier and Pondera county courts to take Indian property. That is how the white man got on the Blackfeet Reservation. President Reagan tossed out 17,000 individual Indian claims in 1983 violating Public Law 96-217, Section 2, mandating the Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General of the United States to prepare legislative proposals to send to Congress to restore Indian titles, or to litigate Indian claims, but President Reagan decided to stonewall all Indian claims, and end the claims forever. Congress is well aware of this sordid history of Indian claims but has done nothing to protect the treaty Indians to this day, and therefore are co-conspirators to the century old Indian land claims. It is a world public spectacle and a diplomatic shame for the United States of America to travel the world pointing their fingers at dictators and human rights violators when these Indian land claims will be ended forever in the water compacts sentencing the heirs of the original treaty Indians to endless poverty caused by the Indian treaty promises yet unfulfilled. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell was on the Blackfeet Reservation last year and made remarks to the effect on the poor Blackfeet who seem to be suffering, but did not comment on her status as a co-conspirator in upholding the century old Blackfeet land claims. The Blackfeet people have been faithful to the United States since the 1855 Treaty was agreed to allowing settlers safe passage through Blackfoot Confederacy lands to Oregon Territory, and sent back small pox to the Indians. I cannot reach President Obama, but maybe the people of the world can shame the Congress of the United States to finally provide justice for a class of Indian people defrauded by the richest nation on Earth. Send your protests to THEWHITEHOUSE.COM, PLEASE!

Bob Juneau. Blackfeet Heir to stolen lands of my great-grandmothers E-MAIL, blkftpatriot@yahoo.com

AUTHOR: “The Sacred Buffalo Vision” History of Indian genocide in Montana, @ Amazon.com   

“CITIZENSHIP OF CATTLE”

“CITIZENSHIP OF CATTLE” is an issue on the Blackfeet Reservation because tribal grazing lands are reserved in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five for the “exclusive use and occupancy” of Blackfeet cattle ranchers. This special treaty right was negotiated by the Blackfeet Chiefs to kick white ranchers off the reservation and to allow the Blackfeet cattle industry to bring the people out of starvation after the buffalo were destroyed by border-whites. Chief White Calf, Three Bears, Black Weasel, Wolf Plume and a long line of chiefs protested white encroachment until chief Old Person was invented by the BIA to control the Indians beginning in 1954 until his defeat in the past tribal election. Corruption in tribal grazing policy allows tribal members to lease tribal land for $5 an acre [worth $270 per acre] and sub-lease to white cattlemen for a profit for themselves and block real ranchers from building up their cattle herds. In the water compact I tried to bring up the forced patents land frauds and I was tossed out by Chairman Old Person while tribal members yelled at him to let me speak. The tribal attorney yelled at our own landowners “you people don’t own any water rights” and was booed by the people. But, if you read the water compact all of the water rights go to white men and tribal council leaving out tribal landowners who own over a million acres of the reservation. Chairman Old Person signed the water compact leaving us out and the white man inside with our allotted lands and water rights ending the century old forced fee patents claims “forever!” That is why I protested the water compact; it leaves out all tribal landowners and preserves the fee patent land titles of white men on the reservation now called Glacier County. The Blackfeet livestock industry was successful by 1893 with 25,000 cattle, 500 tribal brands, and cash for all needful things. Compare that to the results of chairman Old Person’s 60 years on the tribal council. We are the poorest in our own land, yet we own over a million acres of land and water rights! If you look at the citizenship of cattle grazing on the reservation you will find white man’s cattle and few Blackfeet owned cattle. The battle is over who is going to determine the citizenship of cattle and collect the revenues and profits from our reserved grazing lands and water rights that produce the best beef in the United States. The difference in revenues between whites and Indians is pitiful as white ranchers collect $67,000,000 and the Indians practically nothing in the corrupt leasing policy of the BIA and tribal council. The profits go to white ranchers and beef processors. The water compact violates the 1896 Agreement/Article Five by sanctioning fee patent titles of white men living in Glacier County on stolen Blackfeet land allotments. In 1980 we had approval of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to come to the reservation and hold senate hearings on the forced patents but it was blocked by Chairman Old Person and Vice-Chairman Archie St. Goddard, who had 35,000 acres of tribal land leased to himself and sub-leased to white ranchers. That is why the tribal council refuses to change their leasing policy and the BIA leases allotted lands to third-party Blackfeet members who sub-lease to white men for profits that should go to the trust landowners. Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them” so just because Old Person is gone his corruption remains until we change it or we will continue to suffer the consequences of poverty for us and our future generations. I am not welcome at the tribal office because I have stood up for the treaty rights of the Blackfeet Indians. The traditional Blackfeet Chiefs asked me in 1980 “to help the people with their land problems” which turned out to be the forced patents land frauds and I have continued to protest and it cost me my job and I am looked upon as a troublemaker by the tribal council, but I have my dignity, unlike Old Person who is a dog for the white man. He has made us the poorest in our own land, and that is your chief, not mine. We will eventually win our forced patent claims and water rights with your support. We need to form a cattle ranchers association and trust landowners association. Who will help? Bob Juneau Sr.