POLITICAL ECONOMY HISTORY OF BLACKFEET TRIBAL RESOURCES

POLITICAL ECONOMY HISTORY OF BLACKFEET TRIBAL RESOURCES

                                    By Bob Juneau Sr. September, 2016

BREAKING ECONOMIC APARTHEID ON THE BLACKFEET RESERVATION

Chief White Calf protested to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp in 1890 on trespass of Texas cattle kings on the reservation, “These stock barons are compelled to seek new pastures for their cattle and sheep, and they look with covetous eyes on our land-our only inheritance and our only possession. The past summer we had our reserve fenced, at which we labored faithfully with the hope that we would see the last of hordes of range cattle that continually annoy us, when our hopes were dashed to the ground by the government turning our country into a white man’s cow pasture.”

Inspector Chubbuck argued, “The livestock industry is the one best suited to the natural conditions and 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. The creeks on the reservation would be capable of irrigating enough grass and hay land to feed 50,000 head if a combination of small ditches to water grass and hay land was developed for winter feed and summer grazing.”

  Chief White Calf protested the Indian Bureau ten cents an acre lease price for Blackfeet grazing lands rated as the best grazing lands in the west. Ten cent lease fees were set by former governor of Montana Dixon appointed to Assistant Secretary of Agriculture as a favor to Railroad baron James J. Hill who leased the entire St. Mary Valley for the Great Northern Railway subsidiary, the Park Saddle Horse Company for ten cents an acre and Blackfeet ranchers were removed to the eastern reservations lands.

NO PLANS FOR BLACKFEET  CATTLE RANCHING-OUR ONLY INDUSTRY

The tribal council set the price for reserved tribal grazing lands at $5 per acre to be leased by Blackfeet middlemen and sub-leased to white ranchers who gain a profit of $67,000,000 annually on tribal and allotted lands. The market value of  grazing lands is $270 per acre, but is lowered by the tribal council to $5 an acre for racketeering of white ranchers and Blackfeet sub-leasers. This underground reservation economy leaves out trust landowners and Blackfeet cattle ranchers and hands reserved tribal grazing lands to white men. Trust landowners and Blackfeet ranchers are victims in this century old land fraud scheme. White men collect $67,000,000 by grazing their cattle on leased tribal and allotted lands. Trust landowners are cheated by selling “fractionated lands” to the tribe that are attached to large tribal grazing units that take over their whole allotment.

For instance, my great-grandmother’s 80 acre homestead allotment is divided because the tribe purchased shares and now controls the whole allotment and attached it to a 6,000 acre tribal grazing unit leased to a Blackfeet “middleman” for $5 an acre and sub-leased to a white rancher for $60,000 while we landowners get $25 for our share. We have to ask the leaser if we can build a home on our own land.

The Cobell Case buy-back program is a land fraud used to consolidate allotted lands under the tribal council control by purchasing “fractionated shares” that allow the tribal council to control the whole family allotment. Blackfeet ranchers cannot build their cattle herds under this land fraud and corrupt BIA and tribal council leasing system. Trust landowners cannot get market value of trust land by BIA leasing systems and Blackfeet cattle ranchers cannot build their cattle herds in competition with rich white ranchers.   

WATER COMPACT SETTLEMENT=  $150,000,000  TO THE BLACKFEET TRIBE

Did Chairman Barnes tell tribal members about the $150,000,000 settlement? Blackfeet Reservation land leases and natural resources are “big business” and if they were private –sector businesses would be on the list of Forbes and Fortune magazines most valuable enterprises. The Blackfeet Reservation “gross reservation product” is about $850 million dollars annually but lease revenues paid to the Blackfeet Tribe amount to about $10 million and allotted land lease revenues amount to about $2 million. Trust landowners own 1.3 million acres of the reservation land base but revenues for tribal and allotted leases total $12 million compared to $67 million for white men. This corrupt system is the economic drain on the Blackfeet Indians and why we are the poorest on our own reservation and why white cattlemen profit $67 million by leasing Blackfeet grazing lands. It is a century old fraudulent corrupt system of leasing Blackfeet grazing lands.

NO BUSINESS PLANS EXIST TO FUND BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS

The reservation produces many kinds of business opportunities including tourism, outdoor recreation, oil & gas, cattle industry, crops, wildlife, wood harvesting, and water leasing. Wall Street Bankers and experts in water marketing placed a value on Blackfeet water resources @ $500 million in annual revenues, but the tribal council and BIA have no “business plans” to market quality Blackfeet products such as bottled water, food and beverage processing plants, beef products and grains to global markets.

A Hutterite Colony on the Blackfeet Reservation signed a contract last month with a grocery food chain for $38,000,000 to produce “free-range organic eggs” produced without locking laying hens in cages for their entire life cycle. Consumers want organic free-range agriculture products and pay high prices for such products. A Tribal member tried to develop a turkey farm on the reservation and was laughed at by the tribal council, who are clueless on the value of agriculture products.

CATTLE RANCHERS AND TRUST LANDOWNERS ASSOCIATION

It is of paramount importance for landowners and ranchers to organize and take control of negotiating tribal and allotted land leases and to acquire the financial resources through the $150 million water compact settlement to develop trust property and cattle ranchers to benefit themselves. There is no funding set aside in the Blackfeet water compact to re-start the self-reliant successful Blackfeet cattle industry or to purchase cattle for Blackfeet ranchers or to produce free-range, grass fed beef cattle or small livestock products desired by food corporations.

The choice is either to continue to lease our lands to white men or to build the Blackfeet livestock and farming industries to grab the $67,000,000 for ourselves. There is money to budget $50,000,000 for the cattle ranchers, $50,000,000 for trust landowners, and $50,000,000 for a per capita payment to tribal members who desperately need cash.

Glacier and Pondera County Profile of white ranchers and farmers on the reservation shows revenues produced by white ranchers and farmers from crops and livestock that include grains, vegetables, nursery greenhouse, sweet potatoes, Christmas trees, hay, poultry and eggs, cattle and calves, milk and dairy products, hogs and pigs, sheep, goats, horses, burros, donkeys, aquaculture, wheat, barley, field and grass seeds, layers, broilers, turkeys, and pullets to replace laying flocks that produce $61,000,000 in sales of crops and livestock plus another $7,000,000 paid to white ranchers & farmers in federal agriculture subsidy payments they collect leasing tribal and allotted lands. The Blackfeet Indians have a century old tradition of cattle ranching since 1893.

GLOBAL AND DOMESTIC MARKETS FOR BLACKFEET PRODUCTS

Chinese Government Purchasers brought to the reservation by Blackfeet council member and cattle rancher Hugh Monroe offered to purchase bottled water and beef products from the Blackfeet Indians. I was in full support of Mr. Monroe and I thought he was one of the most effective councilmen we ever had, but the council would not listen to him and his project was rejected. It would have made all of us rich! Las Vegas casino owners offered a deal to pipeline Blackfeet water to Las Vegas, a distance of 1,700 miles! Water marketing and cattle ranching will make us all rich forever, so long as the grass grows and the water flows as guaranteed in our 1855 treaty with the United States. 

BLACKFEET CHIEFS BANISH WHITEMEN FROM THE RESERVATION

The Agent reported in 1890, “The Blackfeet Indians are active, intelligent, progressive people. They are unusually polite and sociable people, and as far as manners and politeness go, have very little to learn from their white brothers. It is well known to this department, this is not an agricultural country, and it is but a waste of time to plant crops as frost will kill grains and vegetables from blizzards in July and August. This country is well adapted to stock raising and making hay. The Indians recognize this and are devoting their time and energy to making hay and raising stock.”

Usurpation means “unlawful encroachment or assumption of the use of property, power, or authority which belongs to another.” Who is unlawfully using Blackfeet tribal and allotted resources? Tribal council members and third-party Blackfeet leasers who sub-lease tribal and allotted lands to white men have turned the Blackfeet Reservation into a “white man’s cow pasture.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal council are conducting a criminal scheme to devalue tribal and allotted lands and resources and pocket lease money that should go directly to the tribe and Blackfeet trust landowners. The goal of white men is to make the remaining Indians lands “unusable” for Blackfeet cattle ranchers and trust landowners. The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a report in 1980 it would take a million dollars a year for fifty years to develop “dry” Blackfeet lands and build pipelines to water hay meadows to improve grazing lands or $50,000,000 total.

“CITIZENSHIP OF CATTLE” ISSUE IN BLACKFEET CATTLE IDENTITY

Our 1896 Agreement/Article Five outlaws white men’s cattle from the reservation and reserves the entire reservation grazing lands for the “exclusive use and occupancy of Blackfeet Indians and cattle where their herds may feed, undisturbed.” We need a set aside of $50,000,000 of water compact money budgeted for Blackfeet allotted land improvements to be administered by a “Blackfeet Landowners Trust Account” and a “Blackfeet Cattle Ranchers Trust Account” set aside in the Interior Department for Blackfeet cattle ranchers to purchase cattle and improve their ranch property, and set aside another $50,000,000 to be distributed to tribal members per capita to give them cash for some hope and subsistence.  

It is impossible for us to profit under the corrupt system of tribal council crooks in cahoots with BIA and white cattlemen. They are even stealing tribal hay that is supposed to feed to our buffalo herd, and selling it to white cattlemen. I pity our poor buffalo, they too will starve and be victims of tribal crooks along with trust landowners and tribal ranchers cheated by a council system of corruption. Federal prison is the only way to stop crooks. We need an “Inspector Incognito” to infiltrate the tribal council and BIA to catch the crooks who are stealing our land and hay. The rule of law is that only Blackfeet cattle allowed to graze on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, no white cattle brands allowed!

SALISH-KOOTNAI WATER COMPACT ENDS TRIBAL POVERTY

The Salish-Kootenai tribes negotiated a water compact- $2.5 billion, Kerr Dam, one-half of Flathead Lake, and an economic development plan to fund tribal members ranching and farming operations on irrigated lands, business loans, credit, and markets for tribal products and sales of power from Kerr Dam amounting to $25,000,000 per year forever! They had a 15 man water compact negotiating team of lawyers, hydrologists, biologists, and historians that proved they “owned” their tribal water resources. They got so much water they felt sorry for white landowners and “gave” them surplus waters.

Montana legislators laughed at Chairman Old Person’s “one-man tribal water department” that showed up in Helena to negotiate for the Blackfeet Tribe. Chairman Old Person kicked us out of the water compact meeting in Browning when we brought up our land claims and water rights. Chairman Barnes is clueless on value of tribal water.

THE SUCCESSFUL, SELF-RELIANT BLACKFEET CATTLE INDUSTRY OF 1893

            Blackfeet cattle ranchers are true tribal heroes because they saved the tribe from starvation caused by Texas cattle kings who destroyed tribal buffalo herds to make room for their vast cattle herds that reached the Judith Basin in 1863. It was the beginning of the physical genocide era that killed tribal populations from 7,800 in 1863 to just 1,811 Blackfeet left alive in 1890. Blackfeet Chiefs began “selling land for a living” in the 1887 land cession of 17,000,000 acres for $1.5 million to be paid in 10 annual installments of $150,000 in cattle, rations, equipment, supplies, and improvements that brought the tribe out of a starving condition by 1893. The Blackfeet cattle industry consisted of 500 tribal brands, 25,000 cattle, and cash for all needful things, and a general prosperity for all tribal members. How many cattle do Blackfeet ranchers own today?

BLACKFEET RANCH CHILDREN ARE AN ENDANGERED HUMAN SPECIES

            Studies show the loss of the role of children in systems of land use endangers their future when parents are forced off ranch lands and knowledge of cattle ranching operations is being lost. Professor Kenneth R. Young writes, “The primary social unit is the ranch household, which is often nearly self-sufficient in the production of basic foods. Complex networks of shared labor and barter organized around ranch households show the importance of children in these land-use systems and consistent with the historical need for large families in traditional families. Children are an important source of labor in subsistence agriculture and participate in almost all subsistence activities as soon as they are physically able. It is common to see 12 to 15 year olds working with adults in all activities except those that require the strength of an adult. Younger children often do errands or serve in auxiliary roles. The learning process is the critical link in maintaining knowledge and practices of the ranching operations that are only available through oral transmission or observation. Social interactions create social networks that lead to later marriages, friendships, and extended families formed through childhood experiences or critical information is lost forever.” Blackfeet ranch children may not become ranchers.     

BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS ASSOCIATION NEEDED FOR CHANGE

            To prosper Blackfeet landowners and cattle ranchers need cooperatives to advance and protect their interests. A non-profit cooperative is required by the Indian Reorganization Act to “cut out the white man” from tribal and allotted land leases and profits and to secure those profits for the Blackfeet Indians. Blackfeet Chiefs adopted the constitution and charter to organize tribal credit to develop tribal cooperatives for cattle ranchers, and Indian crafts sales to tourists and for retail businesses for tribal members.