BLACKFEET LAND OWNERS LOSE $11.5 BILLION REVENUES IN WALL STREET
WATER MARKETING DEAL
As tribal water planner in 1987 I
brought Wall Street bankers to the Blackfeet Reservation and the bankers told
the tribal council they would invest
$50,000,000 in water development funds to bring revenues of $500,000,000 annually to the Blackfeet Tribe and Blackfeet
landowners in “Money for Water” deals. There was no financial risk to the tribe
because it was an investment, a “guaranteed market.” I also met with state of
Montana water attorneys who offered to “settle” Blackfeet water quantification
@ one million acre feet of water for the Blackfeet Indians that would have paid
Blackfeet landowners a share of $11.5 billion in water leasing revenues in
global water markets. The tribal council water compact signed away tribal water
rights “forever” on a promise of $479,000,000 of which they got $800,000 and now
will have to pay millions of tribal dollars to hire a lobbyist to chase the money.
Western states congressmen sit on the committees controlling federal dollars wish
to delay Blackfeet compact money until the state and white man drills water well
aquifers draining our property. The council lost $11.5 billion dollars of our water lease money in projected
revenues offered by the Wall Street firm in 1987. The $500 million dollar Wall
Street offer gave us a “valuation theory”
for Blackfeet water resources in global water markets probably exceeds a
billion dollars per year in today’s water markets. Valuation is an estimation
of the worth of our water rights. Wall Street investors agreed with $500
million but none of us know that exact dollar amount but we should find out how
much our water is worth before we sign water leases. Tribal council voted blind
on the water compact and we voted blindly on the word of blind leaders. The
$479,000,000 water compact settlement would not amount to one year of Blackfeet
landowner’s water leasing revenues of $500,000,000 on global water markets. What
is scary about the water compact is that it turned white landowners loose on
the reservation to drill our aquifers like the Starr School Bench which is an
ocean of fresh water underlying Indian lands, but white landowners can drill
directionally under Blackfeet landowners and drain our aquifers. There is
already water well drilling at Kalispell where adjacent landowners to a water
marketing business lost in state court to stop the drilling due to a law called
“rule of capture.” This law was used to drain a billion dollars of Blackfeet
oil reserves. The BIA held up oil drilling until the white’s drained Indian oil
fields. Now we are in a position of weakness because we have no funding to
drill our own water wells.
The United States Government
Climate Change Study confirmed the destruction caused by pollution of the earth
atmosphere will result in drought, fires, food shortages, wars, livestock and
crop reduction, and most of all drinking water shortages. It means the
Blackfeet are sitting on the most valuable mineral on the planet and the cost
of water is rising with the droughts. Forest fires will cloud the skies causing
crop destruction and breathing problems respiratory illness in lungs. The
vision we are living in today is the prophecy of Chief Seattle who foretold of
the day the white man would die in his own trash and pollute the planet earth.
Blackfeet chiefs told the people to never sell the land or be overrun by
border-whites “flooding our reservation.” Chief Rides-At-The-Door testified to
Congress the Indians own this reservation by the allotment, and deserve justice
and the right to use our property as we wish, and asked why the white man has
all the “say” of what happens on our reservation and why do we not have the
same rights as every American. We have to move fast to claim our water rights
for business and economic purposes for which the reservation was enacted-to
make the Blackfoot Indians self-sufficient in the new economy. Everything of
value has been stolen from the Blackfeet landowners.
BLACKFEET WATER
RIGHTS OWNERS NEED NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR PROTECTION The
remaining question is-do we trust the
Bureau of Indian Affairs to negotiate water leases of allotted lands? The
other big issue is Bureau of Indian Affairs administration, operations,
methods, and trusteeship of individual trust lands and water rights. At present,
the Blackfeet Agency land lease program returns only one-half of one percent of
revenues produced on allotted lands. Blackfeet/Cree lessees sub-lease to white
ranchers and they share 99.5 % of our lease money. Blackfeet/Cree lessees are
now claiming ownership of water rights on leased land owned by Blackfeet
allottees and they want trust landowners to relinquish shares of ownership to
the tribe. They want to claim your water rights and collect water lease
payments amounting to millions of dollars per year. In the water compact
meeting at the tribal office with state and federal government officials
present the tribal lawyer yelled at us landowners, “YOU PEOPLE DON’T OWN ANY
WATER RIGHTS!” President Teddy Roosevelt issued the Proclamation of 1903 that
preserved Blackfeet water rights over Montana settlers and he vetoed Montana
Senator Walsh’s “Surplus Land” bill to open up the reservation to white
settlement. The tribal leadership at the time was led by Chief Wolf Plume, who
sold his cattle to get money to travel to Washington D.C. to present the
starvation of Blackfeet allottees to sell their land to whites. Tribal lawyer
and interpreter Bob Hamilton spent months in Washington D.C. on a three and a
half week train ride from Browning to get in line with other tribes to present
his case before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. These men gave of their
personal property and risked their lives to end the starvation of over 200
Blackfeet people of all ages and slow deaths by throwing reluctant Indians into
the unheated agency jail in forty degree below zero weather to freeze to death
and claim his estate by forgery in the BIA
and in Glacier County Court Records as legal transactions or better
known as “Patent-In-Fee” lands owned by border-whites within the borders of the
reservation. That is how the white man got on the reservation by deaths and
forgeries of Blackfeet allottee trust land titles approved “forced fee
patents.”
1934 INDIAN REORGANIZATION
ACT ALLOW BLACKFEET COOPERATIVES TO OPERATE PROGRAMS
The role of the Non-Governmental Organization
[N.G.O.] is to interface with official government bureaucracy on methods of
business management of 3,600 individual allotments of Blackfeet land with original
water rights. Water District Cooperatives authorized by the Indian
Reorganization Act, protected under the tribal constitution, and elected by landowners
will negotiate water leases under “Blackfeet Water Owners District Cooperatives”
that will organize landowners in the Starr School Bench Aquifer, Two Medicine,
Badger, Cut Bank Creek and other groundwater sources. We lack district
organizers. Never believe the BIA or tribal council who will tell you no water
is under your land it is the tribe’s water, it is our water guaranteed in
treaty and laws. Chief Wolf Plume and Bob Hamilton saved our reservation
because they gave their all for the people and for independence as Bob Hamilton
told the chiefs from Washington D.C. after they won the judgment to keep the
reservation closed to white settlement, You men who have stood by the right and
are not under the control of the agent will be remembered as tribal heroes.
Chief Wolf Plume died broke of money as did all of the patriots but in the end
they saved our reservation from being overrun by border whites. We still have a
chance of success if we can organize chapters and cooperatives together with
people and to research the water issues and find out the worth of our water
rights. We are blindfolded and our hands tied behind our backs and a tape over
our mouths and to be thrown in the river like a bag of kittens. Community
leaders are needed.
