The tribal council is "promised" $471 million but no money is appropriated by Congress to pay the cash to the tribe. It means the tribe will have to hire a lobbyist to chase the money like the promises made to tribal voters at election time by tribal politicians. Blackfeet members get nothing-no per capita payments-no money to purchase cattle or fix up their homes-no money period! The money is for tribal projects that will hire relatives of council members and spent until it is gone. It is the end of all allotted land claims that date back to the murders of hundreds of original Blackfeet allottees who were starved to death by the BIA-Secretary of the Interior-Glacier and Pondera counties-white ranchers-and Blackfeet co-conspirators. It is a new day in Blackfoot country, the reservation is opened to white settlement and state law on the stolen Blackfoot allotments and the guilty parties now own "forever" the forged Blackfeet land titles taken in state courts from our relatives. I had two great-grandmothers who lost their original allotments to Joe Sherburne as well as other Blackfeet who lost their inheritances to the white robbers. What is left for the trust landowners? 897,000 acres of allotted lands still owned by tribal members but in jeopardy if the tribal council has any say in the leasing of allotted lands. What I mean is the current land swindles going on by the BIA and tribal council who are "colluding" with third-party Blackfeet leasers who lease our allotted lands for $5 per acre and pocket thousands of dollars paid by white ranchers for sub-leasing allotted lands and profit $67,000,000 by fattening their cattle on our grass and collect another $7,000,000 in federal subsidies from the Agriculture Dept. for not farming our lands. All of that money should go to the allotted landowners including owning the cattle that graze on our property. It is a treaty right in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five that Blackfeet ranchers have the right to graze their cattle on the reserved grazing lands of the Blackfeet Tribe. Chief White Calf got this provision in the agreement because he told the Secretary of the Interior the government had turned the reservation into "a white man's cow pasture." Now it is the tribal council that has turned our reservation into a big crime scene of stealing our grass and pocketing our money. That is why they want to fix up the water systems to serve the white man and themselves and make millions off of our water and grass. Trust landowners organization and mobilization is covered in the Indian Reorganization Act which was supposed to "cut out the middleman" meaning the white man and limit the reservation grazing and livestock to the Blackfeet Indians. We have to organize fast or we will get left behind again and the poverty will continue until we cannot get back on our feet. Tribal mobilization means that we, the trust landowners, must organize ourselves and develop cooperatives to force political actions that benefit ourselves instead of tribal council crooks. The Blackfeet Trust Landowners Association would run our own candidates for the tribal council and lobby the federal government to provide us with experts in business development and to formulate plans for the trust landowners to capture the profits that the tribal council, third-party leasers and white ranchers steal from us each year by fattening their cattle on our land. The rule of thumb for water quantification for grazing lands is one-acre foot of water for each acre of land owned by the landowners. That means we, the trust landowners, "own" 987,000 acre feet of water rights under the water compact as a minimum. You can see we are going to have a legal battle with the tribal council who claims all of the waters flowing on the reservation leaving us no water. I have requested a policy change in the Blackfeet Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs from the social welfare types to natural resource economists, business planners, loan experts, and corporate purchasers of allotted water products such as bottled water and beverages produced in a plant facility owned by the Blackfeet Trust Landowners who own the water, and for construction of bottled water plants located on the reservation to bring high wage jobs for the families of trust landowners and profits to the owners of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The first thing to do is to request that the Secretary of the Interior Rian Zinke to investigate the collusion between the tribal council, BIA and white ranchers who defraud us of our proper lease payments stolen the by cartel at the tribal office. We are still owed just compensation for our losses whether the payment comes from the water compact or the Congress. It would be good if the tribal council communists would meet with trust landowners to see what they desire for the development of the allotted lands, but they have the money now!! I talked with Bob Gervais and Leland Thomas, who both lost their inheritances in the forced patents cases and others who did not realize they were "extinguishing, forever" their family land claims by voting for the water compact approval. Let us get together and organize ourselves, soon! We can run our own candidates for the next tribal council election and take five seats, a quorum!
Bob Juneau Sr. trust landowner
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