HUNGER AND MALNUTRITION CAUSED BY TRIBAL POVERTY

I live in Missoula, a University town, where it seems everyone is happy and content, that is until the poverty statistics revealed the truth of a bad economy. Missoula has the highest suicide rate in Montana, and there are over 500 homeless school children in Missoula Public Schools, and the Missoula food bank is overwhelmed with poor white people who cannot feed their families. I left Browning because I could not get a job because I would not stop investigating the land frauds and tribal chairman Old Person banished me from tribal government employment. I soon became homeless in Browning and I had a young son to care for so I had to leave the reservation. The forced patent claims was our last chance to get our stolen land back with $300 million in compensation for the heirs of the original Blackfeet allottees robbed by white men in Glacier County. That is how the white man got on the reservation by robbing our relatives and we proved it. The water compact signed by chairman Old Person awards the stolen Blackfeet lands to white men and "extinguishes" all past, present, and future Blackfeet claims, FOREVER! The tribal council will receive $15 million per year for 10 years under the water compact from the state of Montana. The Salish-Kootenai tribes get $2.5 billion dollars, Kerr Dam, one half of Flathead Lake, and water for their ranchers and farmers, FOREVER! The Salish-Kootenai tribes had water attorneys, hydrologists, biologists, and historians who proved the tribes owned the water and had been robbed by the state of Montana. The Montana legislators and tribal chairman were laughing on state t.v. at the "one man water department" of the Blackfeet Tribe and their old, broke down NARF attorney, who screamed at the Blackfeet landowners in the water compact meeting-"you don't own any water!" while the tribal council kicked me out of the meeting for bringing up the land frauds. There is no plan to develop Blackfeet cattle ranchers or to help trust landowners to improve their family lands in the water compact. Our children are suffering like the homeless white children in Missoula, but the white children do not own 1.3 million acres like the Blackfeet children do. Chairman Old Person had a $350,000 culture fund to spend on his concubines while our children had no money to spend at Indian Days or to build a tribal culture center where traditional people could enjoy tribal culture and our youth could play basketball in a gym owned by the Blackfeet Tribe. An old lady told Old Person, "you made bums out of all of us" and she would not go into his tribal office because he raped too many young girls on that conference table for a tribal check to pay their electric bill or buy food for their hungry children. The 1896 Agreement banished the white ranchers from the reservation and the tribal council brought them back under the lease and sub-lease policy that leaves out the Blackfeet ranchers to whom the reservation belongs. The Blackfeet cattle ranchers brought the tribe out of a tribal famine caused by white ranchers killing off the buffalo for their cattle herds to graze. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 was adopted by the Blackfeet people to reserve tribal grazing lands for Blackfeet ranchers and to market steers to Chicago Stockyards from the herd of 25,000 Blackfeet cattle. today the tribal council allows white ranchers to graze on reserved grazing lands and it is the white ranchers who market 10,000 head of steers fattened on Blackfeet grazing lands. The reservation can graze 55,000 head of cattle and if the "citizenship of cattle" were Blackfeet owned we would be rich overnight by capturing the $67,000,000 profits that white men get each year they graze their "white cattle" on reservation lands, a treaty violation. Hunger and malnutrition will continue until we wise up and organize a Blackfeet cattle ranchers association and Blackfeet landowners association as authorized by the 1896 Agreement and 1934 Indian reorganization Act. I will be over to Browning in November to meet with landowners and ranchers to start the process of getting on our feet by our own efforts by cutting out the white ranchers and their Blackfeet middlemen from robbing our grass and profits that belong to the Blackfeet Indians. Bob Juneau Sr. Blackfeet patriot.