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.