$350,000 TRIBAL COUNCIL "CULTURE FUND" UP FOR GRABS

Since the defeat of Earl Old Person on the tribal council his use of the $350,000 culture fund for his personal uses is up for grabs; it was set aside originally for Blackfeet traditional crafts people to organize the Blackfeet Crafts Cooperative to sell crafts to Glacier Park tourists. Blackfeet women were the founders of the Blackfeet Crafts Cooperative. Ethel B. Arnett, Director of the Works Progress Administration wrote in 1937, "The movement began when a small group of Indian women on the Two Medicine River-Mary Little Bull, Mary Little Plume, Angeline Williamson, Cecile Horn, Nellie Buel, Cecile Tailfeathers, Rose Big Beaver, Margaret Middle Calf, and Nora Spanish were encouraged by Mrs. Jessie Schultz, local welfare official, to make costumes to be sold at the Sun Ceremony encampment. Their experiment turned out well and three other women in Browning-Louise Berry Child, Gertrude No Chief, and Annie Calf Looking were pioneers in the Blackfeet crafts movement that organized local crafts groups, and paved the way for the formation of the Blackfeet Crafts Cooperative Society in April, 1937 to encourage Blackfeet Arts & Crafts Culture and Traditions. The $350,000 Blackfeet Culture Fund controlled by the tribal council was supposed to fund self-help efforts of traditional communities to make a living on the sale of crafts to Glacier Park tourists. Mrs. Jessie Donaldson Schultz wrote, "The Indian women come to work laughing always, always cheerful, because they were doing something they could do well. The thought kept coming to my mind, just give them a chance. They can do anything if they have a chance to use the skills they know!" I brought the idea of building a culture center in Browning and St. Mary many times to Chairman Old Person and showed him the statistics of over a million Glacier Park tourists passing through Browning but only stopping at Bob Scrivers Museum, and the Museum of the Plains Indian. Earl paid Bob Scriver $68,000 to do sculptures that should have been done by Blackfeet traditionals. Bob Scriver was a white supremacist who sold sacred bundles to a Canadian museum for over $2,000,000 and wrote racist letters about the "dirty Blackfeet" that are in the Montana Historical Society in Helena. Bob Scriver led the Indian Days Parade for many years at the request of Chief Old Person and was holding sacred bundle openings for his rich friends back east in his teepee and wearing his coonskin cap taught by Chief Old Person. Earl Old Person has sold many sacred bundles for big money he got from museums across the United States and the rest are stored at his ranch at Starr School. Surveys of Glacier Park tourists show they want to experience Blackfeet culture and purchase Blackfeet crafts. There is an opportunity to showcase Blackfeet culture with dance exhibitions if we build a culture center in Browning and St. Mary. There is room across the highway from the hotel/casino to build the culture center where 1,355,000 tourists drive by in July and August, and in St. Mary Village where 957,000 tourists enter the reservation in St. Mary Village. The Old Person era is over and a new era is possible if the traditional people in Starr School, Heart Butte, and Moccasin Flat in Browning band together to do what our ancestors accomplished in 1937, to build a Blackfeet Crafts Cooperative Culture Center. It is time! Bob Juneau Sr. Blackfeet patriot.