Petition: Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke Investigate BIA Blackfeet Agency, Lease Frauds

PETITION: SECRETARY OF INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE INVESTIGATE BIA BLACKFEET AGENCY, LEASE FRAUDS Economist John Kenneth Galbraith described characteristics of Insular Poverty as “forces common to all members of the community that restrain or prevent participation in economic life at going rates of return.” Blackfeet trust landowners as a group cannot participate in the reservation economy at “going rates of return.” Defrauded by the $5.00 per acre grazing leases issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, federal trustee of Blackfeet allotted lands consisting of 897,000 acres of the best grazing land in the northwest. I calculate the value of BIA $5 per acre lease fee as ½ of one percent of lease revenues going to Blackfeet owners of the trust lands. The remainder of 99 and ½ percent of the lease revenue is robbed by Blackfeet “third-party” leasers of allotted and tribal lands in “collusion” with local BIA officials, Blackfeet Tribal Business Council members, and white ranchers. The factor common to all Blackfeet trust landowners is being cheated by the “cheap lease” policy issued by Blackfeet Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent. Economist Galbraith says insular poverty cannot be solved until the “specific frustrations” of the people on the ‘island of poverty” are removed, and then the people can enjoy a general advance of prosperity. Galbraith wrote, “For poverty does survive. In part, it is a physical matter; those afflicted have such limited and insufficient food, such poor clothing, such crowded, cold and dirty shelter that life is painful as well as comparatively brief [slow-death measures genocide]. The people are poverty stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the [surrounding white] community. They cannot have what the [white] community regards as the bare minimum required for decency; and [the Indians] cannot escape the judgment of the larger [white] community, that they are lazy and indecent. They are degraded, for, in the literal sense, they live outside the grades or categories which the [white] community regards as acceptable [tribal poverty].” Tribal council politicians pilfer federal poverty grants and tribal lease money but do not care about the tribal poor once elected, and they align themselves with crooked BIA officials, and third-party Blackfeet leasers [middlemen] who are the interface “colluding” with white ranchers to cheat trust landowners. Glacier County has 542 farms and 944,486 acres in ranching and farming. Market Value of Products sold with crop and livestock sales of $67,000,000 and Government Payments of $8,000,000 for a total of $75,000,000. BIA Reports show Glacier County ranchers & farmers generate 3 ½ times the amount of neighboring counties because of the cheap leases of Blackfeet allotted lands through the Blackfeet Agency lease program, which BIA employees set lease fees for trust lands @ $5 per acre embezzlements of hundreds of Blackfeet land allotments. The white ranchers and third-party Blackfeet middlemen lease trust lands cheap for $5 per acre & cheat hundreds of Blackfeet trust landowners of their lease money. There are many examples of cheap leases of BIA employees and third-party Blackfeet criminal schemes. The Many Hides Allotment was leased by a Blackfeet tribal member for less than $500 paid to the BIA lease program, and then sub-leased to a white rancher for $20,000, cheating the family of $19,500. Tribal grazing units are leased for $5 per acre and sub-leased for $68,000 to white ranchers through tribal council members land board. The Cobell Case buy-back program is used to get a share of allotted lands and then the tribal council takes control of your family land and leases it to third-party partners for $5 per acre. Our family lands now have tribal shares leaving us open to exploitation by the tribal council. PETITION: WE, BLACKFEET TRUST LANDOWNERS, HEREBY REQUEST SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE, TO INVESTIGATE THE BLACKFEET AGENCY LEASE PROGRAM LOW FEES AS FRAUDS TO DEVALUE BLACKFEET TRUST LANDOWNERS LEASE PAYMENTS TO $5 PER ACRE: Robert J. Juneau Sr.-UO7392.