WHY DO MAJORITY OF BLACKFEET PEOPLE SUFFER INSULAR POVERTY?

WHY DO MAJORITY OF BLACKFEET PEOPLE SUFFER INSULAR POVERTY?

The causes of Blackfeet poverty are characteristics of “insular poverty” which is defined by economist J.K. Galbraith as “forces, common to all members of the community, which restrain or prevent participation in economic life at going rates of return.” The majority of Blackfeet people have become “islands of poverty” amidst general prosperity. The people are “frustrated by some factor common to their environment.” The Blackfeet reservation has the “best grazing lands in the state of Montana” and is a well watered land with timber reserves, oil & gas reserves, millions of tourists passing through Browning, who spend $168,000,000 each summer, and the reservation receives $192,000,000 in federal treaty obligation money for tribal government, public schools, BIA and IHS, but still poverty remains, and it is growing. The Blackfeet people live in a shared sense of hopelessness as the tribal council has resisted every attempt at reform of tribal government, including a forensic audit that showed corruption in tribal council expenditures of tribal and federal poverty funds. This is why the people live in rural slums. The resulting demoralization causes disintegration of family life exhibited in the drug and alcohol abuse among the youth and young families causing the grandparents to raise their grandchildren. There were over 90 deaths since January, and even facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg noticed the poverty of the Indians and pointed to local corruption as the cause of tribal poverty. Think of the $192,000,000 of federal and tribal dollars lost to corruption in tribal government. The truth is that the tribal poor are the product of the political families who control tribal council elections, and see the tribal poor as “gold” in maintaining the poor in “mining federal poverty grants”. I had an investment firm meet with the tribal council, who told the tribal council the Blackfeet Tribe should be producing revenues of $500,000,000 per year on resources, and the tribal council said, “that would look bad when we go for our poverty grants.” There could be a billion dollars of federal poverty grants and there would still be a majority of tribal poor. HOW DOES THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS ROB THE BLACKFEET LANDOWNERS? The Blackfeet agency lease policy for the “best grazing lands in Montana” are leased for $5 per acre which violates every guideline of the Interior Department for leasing public lands. Yet the local BIA, who are enrolled Blackfeet members, require no public bidding for the allotted lands, no automatic renegotiations clauses in raising the lease fees, no percentage of revenues produced by allotted lands, and a system of collusion between the tribal council-BIA-and third party Blackfeet lessees who defraud the allottee trust landowners of millions of dollars every year. The drought is causing a rise in the value of grazing lands to the highest prices for the “best grazing lands in Montana” but the owners of those lands, Blackfeet allottees, will not profit from their own lands because it is a crooked leasing system. We have met the enemy and it is our Blackfeet Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, all enrolled members of the Blackfeet Tribe. That is a fact! The Blackfeet landowners need to E-Mail Department of the Interior Ryan Zinke to investigate the criminal conspiracy conducted by the BIA officers to defraud the Blackfeet trust property owners of their lease money. We are helpless under the tribal council dictatorship, but President Trump would love to prosecute Indian crooks, since he hates the Indians. Attorney General Sessions will bring federal investigations if we demand justice. I have already E-Mailed Secretary Zinke about BIA corruption at the Blackfeet Agency and so should you if you want to end the poverty of the Blackfeet people. Our water rights are the next to be stolen if we sit back and let the same tribal council and BIA collude to defraud us of billions of dollars in allottee water marketing leases. The saying, “if it is to be, it is up to me” IS THE TRUTH!! Bob Juneau Sr. a Blackfeet patriot.