BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS CLAIMS
[Note by Bob Juneau] A patriot is one who loves his country and zealously maintains its interests, and desires to serve one’s country. We are trying to be Blackfeet Patriots and defend our homeland against the forces of the state and speculators. The local whites in Cut Bank, Conrad, Valier, Choteau, and Havre coveted the Blackfeet land and water resources and Montana Senators manipulated the plenary powers of Congress vested in the Interior Department for the benefit of their constituents. It is still the largest land fraud in the history of Indian Affairs and the longest running Indian claim in the United States of America. We intend to end the suffering and injustice.
The 1896 Agreement sliced off the mineral belt discovered by reservation squaw men, Indian Agency Chief Clerk E.C. Garrett, Railroad Baron James J. Hill, Blackfeet Agent Cooke, his son Irvin, Agent Steell, his wife, J.W. Schultz, and George Bird Grinnell, and many others.
The Milk River and St. Mary River provided the foundation for the developing tribal cattle industry permitting the tribesmen to produce hay for sale and cattle forage. The Blackfeet Cattle Ranchers in 1896 registered 500 brands enabling the former buffalo hunters to become self-supporting cattle ranchers by 1896. In the 1896 Agreement the United States Treaty Commissioners recognized the success of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers in Article Five, which reserved the entire reservation as a “communal grazing tract upon which the tribal cattle herds may feed undisturbed.”
This is a Blackfeet Treaty Right Provision recognized for the exclusive benefit of Blackfeet cattle ranchers and the Blackfeet cattle industry. Inspector C.C. Duncan wrote in his Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs “With the allowance of one thousand dollars [the Indians] will be able to build lateral ditches as are necessary for the purpose of utilizing the lands alongside the main ditches, and there will be plenty of land and water to furnish a sufficiency of hay for all needful purposes. It is useless to expect any results from farming on any portion of this Agency except for a few small valleys favorably located, and the results of farming the present year show that with about five hundred acres in cultivation only five or six hundred bushels of grain were secured. THIS IS PURELY A GRAZING COUNTRY, ONE OF THE BEST SECTIONS IN THE WEST FOR CATTLE, ESPECIALLY TO FATTEN CATTLE. The Indians own something over 20,000 cattle, sold on government contract near half a million pounds of beef, shipped 600 head to Chicago, and will be well provided for in the next ten years to be on a self-supporting basis.”
As early as 1897, one year after signing the 1896 Agreement, government agents began talking of relocating the tribal cattle ranchers from the western reservation hay lands and grazing tracts to the eastern and southern reservation lands and building a large tribal reclamation project to replace the low-cost Blackfeet ditches dug by tribesmen to irrigate their hay lands. The Blackfeet Tribe would be charged over one million dollars from the 1896 Agreement land cession funds for the costs of the federal reclamation project which would carry reservation waters to non-Indian water users. The border-whites-government agents accomplished two objectives with their Blackfeet water projects-they killed off the successful Blackfeet cattle industry and diverted tribal reserved waters to off-reservation, non-Indian water users. The Blackfeet Indians paid the costs with tribal land cession funds and Blackfeet landowners have government liens on their property for the reclamation costs and maintenance whether they farm or not.
BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS CLAIMS
The demise of the Blackfeet cattle industry rests with the federal trustee [BIA], BIA Reclamation Service, the State of Montana and reservation border-whites who engineered the whole fraud on Blackfeet land, water and cattle resources. The Blackfeet cattle ranchers/heirs have claims for the destruction of family cattle ranch operations since 1896, and the treaty right to be made whole from the treaty violations. There is no question the Blackfeet cattle ranchers suffered devastating economic, social and cultural losses from the destruction of the tribal cattle industry from the federal taking of their most productive agricultural lands and waters, and that Congress has failed to make the Blackfeet cattle ranchers whole for losses arising from the takings.
PROCESS FOR EXAMING CLAIMS FOR BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS LOSSES IN THE TREATY VIOLATIONS OF THE 1896 AGREEMENT/ARTICLE FIVE.
PURPOSE: Establishment of a Joint Tribal-Federal Advisory Committee by Secretarial Charter to hear and evaluate the Blackfeet Cattle Ranchers/Heirs Claims arising from the relocation of the Blackfeet ranchers from western reservation lands to accommodate federal reclamation projects [St. Mary-Milk Rivers Diversion].
METHODOLOGY: The secretarial commission charter will allow the Blackfeet Indians to present lay and expert testimony regarding their just compensation claims in a comprehensive review essential for a reliable inquiry into the fairness and legality of the TREATY VIOLATION by federal agencies of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.
Testimony by natural resource economists, and related experts are needed to examine the Blackfeet claims, and to provide a valuation theory of Blackfeet lands and cattle industry that fulfilled the make whole standard of the Just Compensation Clause. Other expert testimony will provide the Commission with historical and sociological evidence of the violation of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five devastating effects on the Blackfeet tribal cattle ranchers, and Blackfeet tribal cattle ranching economy.
RESEARCH: The 1896 Agreement/Article Five concludes and agrees that the Blackfeet Indians were for all practical purposes self-sufficient cattle ranchers and selling beef to reservation markets and off-reservation markets, and that the reservation grazing lands were ideally suited to grazing and fattening cattle for sale, and that these reservation grazing lands represented the sole remaining economic base for the Blackfeet Tribe’s welfare and social existence. The natural resource economist will value these lost tribal lands by estimating the “flow of the land based earnings or income that was attributable to that resource.” These earnings and incomes are capitalized at the Congressionally mandated rate [interest] and then raise this amount to 2010 dollars. This is the nature and amount of damages to the tribal infrastructure [viable economic base] that was caused by construction of the St. Mary-Milk Rivers Diversion to the self-sufficient Blackfeet Tribal Cattle Industry on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
BACKGROUND OF THE 1896 SOVEREIGN BARGAIN THAT ESTABLISHED THE BLACKFEET CATTLE INDUSTRY
The Blackfeet Indians made full use of the available natural resources of their reservation: the wild berries helped to sustain life during the famine years 1881-1886 when over 600 of the Indians were starved to death by the federal government and border-whites destruction of tribal buffalo herds to cause Blackfeet land cessions of 17,000,000 acres in the Sweet Grass Hills; the wild game was destroyed by whites, and the railroad took whatever tribal resources it desired without compensation,
By 1896 the tribal cattle industry was the best hope of the Blackfeet Indians to establish a tribal economy in the new order of things and it became the primary treaty goal of the 1896 Agreement.
CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACTORS IN THE 1896 AGREEMENT
The Blackfeet land and people make up an unbroken social and geographic unit that cannot be compensated by a mere cash payment. The vast lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy had millions of buffalo and wildlife and the Blackfeet Indians material and spiritual lives were inextricably linked to both their lands and herds of buffalo. The reservation streams and lakes supported the buffalo grasses and wild game that lived in the river valleys, and cottonwoods and timber for domestic uses of the Indians, and lush vegetation for pasturage for their thriving horse herds. The Blackfoot Confederacy was a common defense against the enemies of confederacy tribes; which tribal confederation pre-dated the Constitution of the United States of America. It was the original law.
By the 1896 Agreement with the Blackfeet Indians the Congress of the United States had expressly guaranteed the Blackfeet Indians exclusive use and occupancy of their treaty lands. The “value” to the Indians is that the reservation represents the true homeland of the Blackfeet Tribe.
The Blackfeet Indians were never assigned these lands and forced to reside on the lands as prisoners of war, but the reservation represents the last holding of their Blackfoot Confederacy lands before the coming of the white man to Blackfeet Country. The economic losses were even more devastating as the Blackfeet ranchers lost all of their mountain hay lands and grazing lands to the white ranchers. The treaty purposes of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five would be frustrated by the loss of hay lands and reserved grazing tracts and the self-sufficient tribal cattle ranchers would have their social and economic base destroyed by the government reclamation project and the allotment of the reservation and the BIA land frauds, and would be reduced to dependence on the federal government for their future subsistence and maintenance.
THE IMPACT OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK AND LEWIS & CLARK NATIONAL FOREST ON BLACKFEET GRAZING AND TIMBER RIGHTS-DEPRIVATION OF GRAZING AND TIMBER RESOURCES
The loss of grazing and timber rights in these federal government public lands had a negative impact on the domestic needs of the Indians as well as the tribal cattle industry by reducing available resources to the reservation proper and the loss of the allotments by BIA fraud caused another loss of grazing lands and timber lands for the needs of the Indians. In Glacier Park the Indians deserve a fee for use of reservation roads and services to tourists and the loss of treaty rights in the Park and in the Lewis & Clark National Forest the Blackfeet reserved the grazing and timber harvesting rights.
SUMMARY OF BLACKFEET TREATY VIOLATIONS
The 1896 Agreement/Article Five was a sovereign bargain that established the Blackfeet Indian Reservation for the exclusive use and occupancy of the Blackfeet Indians and the establishment of a self-supporting tribal cattle industry by the reservation of tribal grazing lands and streams to achieve the treaty goal of economic and social independence of the Blackfeet Nation.
BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS ASSOCIATION NEEDED TO COMPILE HISTORY AND TREATY VIOLATIONS TESTIMONY
We need to organize a tribal cattle ranchers association to compile the history and losses of cattle, livestock, equipment, and machinery to the corruption in the BIA Administration of the Blackfeet cattle herds and the development of Blackfeet cattle ranchers.
RESEARCH NEEDS: List of Blackfeet ranchers & brands in the Federal Records Center in Englewood, Colorado, and information on Blackfeet forced patents. I have not been able to get those records but they are needed to document the successful tribal cattle industry in 1896.
This is good history for the tribe to follow in development of a successful tribal cattle industry based on winning the tribal land fraud claims and putting the original plan to production to successfully raise and process and market finished beef products to markets and to provide jobs and profits to tribal cattle ranchers and the Blackfeet Tribe.
Tribal farm lands will be put to use in raising grains to feed-lot cattle and livestock for slaughter and wholesale and retail markets.
The plan is in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.
BIA INDUCED POSTTRAUMATIC- COLONIAL POLICY STRESS DISORDERS OF BLACKFEET INDIANS-PAIN AND SUFFERING
White men now own over one-third of the reservation lands and lease 80% of the remaining agricultural lands. BIA leasing policies and allotment land frauds have encouraged whites to invade the reservation and discouraged Blackfeet Indians to use their own lands and have reduced the Blackfeet people to federal dependency. Most Blackfeet people feel that they lack open access to remaining Blackfeet resources and feel tribal and allotted lands are inappropriately controlled by excessive regulations and conversely lack of enforcement of BIA leasing regulations. The Blackfeet people get very little return from BIA leasing dating back to 1920’s and suffer BIA colonial era policies and practices causing posttraumatic stress disorders.
[Note by Bob Juneau] A patriot is one who loves his country and zealously maintains its interests, and desires to serve one’s country. We are trying to be Blackfeet Patriots and defend our homeland against the forces of the state and speculators. The local whites in Cut Bank, Conrad, Valier, Choteau, and Havre coveted the Blackfeet land and water resources and Montana Senators manipulated the plenary powers of Congress vested in the Interior Department for the benefit of their constituents. It is still the largest land fraud in the history of Indian Affairs and the longest running Indian claim in the United States of America. We intend to end the suffering and injustice.
The 1896 Agreement sliced off the mineral belt discovered by reservation squaw men, Indian Agency Chief Clerk E.C. Garrett, Railroad Baron James J. Hill, Blackfeet Agent Cooke, his son Irvin, Agent Steell, his wife, J.W. Schultz, and George Bird Grinnell, and many others.
The Milk River and St. Mary River provided the foundation for the developing tribal cattle industry permitting the tribesmen to produce hay for sale and cattle forage. The Blackfeet Cattle Ranchers in 1896 registered 500 brands enabling the former buffalo hunters to become self-supporting cattle ranchers by 1896. In the 1896 Agreement the United States Treaty Commissioners recognized the success of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers in Article Five, which reserved the entire reservation as a “communal grazing tract upon which the tribal cattle herds may feed undisturbed.”
This is a Blackfeet Treaty Right Provision recognized for the exclusive benefit of Blackfeet cattle ranchers and the Blackfeet cattle industry. Inspector C.C. Duncan wrote in his Report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs “With the allowance of one thousand dollars [the Indians] will be able to build lateral ditches as are necessary for the purpose of utilizing the lands alongside the main ditches, and there will be plenty of land and water to furnish a sufficiency of hay for all needful purposes. It is useless to expect any results from farming on any portion of this Agency except for a few small valleys favorably located, and the results of farming the present year show that with about five hundred acres in cultivation only five or six hundred bushels of grain were secured. THIS IS PURELY A GRAZING COUNTRY, ONE OF THE BEST SECTIONS IN THE WEST FOR CATTLE, ESPECIALLY TO FATTEN CATTLE. The Indians own something over 20,000 cattle, sold on government contract near half a million pounds of beef, shipped 600 head to Chicago, and will be well provided for in the next ten years to be on a self-supporting basis.”
As early as 1897, one year after signing the 1896 Agreement, government agents began talking of relocating the tribal cattle ranchers from the western reservation hay lands and grazing tracts to the eastern and southern reservation lands and building a large tribal reclamation project to replace the low-cost Blackfeet ditches dug by tribesmen to irrigate their hay lands. The Blackfeet Tribe would be charged over one million dollars from the 1896 Agreement land cession funds for the costs of the federal reclamation project which would carry reservation waters to non-Indian water users. The border-whites-government agents accomplished two objectives with their Blackfeet water projects-they killed off the successful Blackfeet cattle industry and diverted tribal reserved waters to off-reservation, non-Indian water users. The Blackfeet Indians paid the costs with tribal land cession funds and Blackfeet landowners have government liens on their property for the reclamation costs and maintenance whether they farm or not.
BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS CLAIMS
The demise of the Blackfeet cattle industry rests with the federal trustee [BIA], BIA Reclamation Service, the State of Montana and reservation border-whites who engineered the whole fraud on Blackfeet land, water and cattle resources. The Blackfeet cattle ranchers/heirs have claims for the destruction of family cattle ranch operations since 1896, and the treaty right to be made whole from the treaty violations. There is no question the Blackfeet cattle ranchers suffered devastating economic, social and cultural losses from the destruction of the tribal cattle industry from the federal taking of their most productive agricultural lands and waters, and that Congress has failed to make the Blackfeet cattle ranchers whole for losses arising from the takings.
PROCESS FOR EXAMING CLAIMS FOR BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS LOSSES IN THE TREATY VIOLATIONS OF THE 1896 AGREEMENT/ARTICLE FIVE.
PURPOSE: Establishment of a Joint Tribal-Federal Advisory Committee by Secretarial Charter to hear and evaluate the Blackfeet Cattle Ranchers/Heirs Claims arising from the relocation of the Blackfeet ranchers from western reservation lands to accommodate federal reclamation projects [St. Mary-Milk Rivers Diversion].
METHODOLOGY: The secretarial commission charter will allow the Blackfeet Indians to present lay and expert testimony regarding their just compensation claims in a comprehensive review essential for a reliable inquiry into the fairness and legality of the TREATY VIOLATION by federal agencies of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.
Testimony by natural resource economists, and related experts are needed to examine the Blackfeet claims, and to provide a valuation theory of Blackfeet lands and cattle industry that fulfilled the make whole standard of the Just Compensation Clause. Other expert testimony will provide the Commission with historical and sociological evidence of the violation of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five devastating effects on the Blackfeet tribal cattle ranchers, and Blackfeet tribal cattle ranching economy.
RESEARCH: The 1896 Agreement/Article Five concludes and agrees that the Blackfeet Indians were for all practical purposes self-sufficient cattle ranchers and selling beef to reservation markets and off-reservation markets, and that the reservation grazing lands were ideally suited to grazing and fattening cattle for sale, and that these reservation grazing lands represented the sole remaining economic base for the Blackfeet Tribe’s welfare and social existence. The natural resource economist will value these lost tribal lands by estimating the “flow of the land based earnings or income that was attributable to that resource.” These earnings and incomes are capitalized at the Congressionally mandated rate [interest] and then raise this amount to 2010 dollars. This is the nature and amount of damages to the tribal infrastructure [viable economic base] that was caused by construction of the St. Mary-Milk Rivers Diversion to the self-sufficient Blackfeet Tribal Cattle Industry on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
BACKGROUND OF THE 1896 SOVEREIGN BARGAIN THAT ESTABLISHED THE BLACKFEET CATTLE INDUSTRY
The Blackfeet Indians made full use of the available natural resources of their reservation: the wild berries helped to sustain life during the famine years 1881-1886 when over 600 of the Indians were starved to death by the federal government and border-whites destruction of tribal buffalo herds to cause Blackfeet land cessions of 17,000,000 acres in the Sweet Grass Hills; the wild game was destroyed by whites, and the railroad took whatever tribal resources it desired without compensation,
By 1896 the tribal cattle industry was the best hope of the Blackfeet Indians to establish a tribal economy in the new order of things and it became the primary treaty goal of the 1896 Agreement.
CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACTORS IN THE 1896 AGREEMENT
The Blackfeet land and people make up an unbroken social and geographic unit that cannot be compensated by a mere cash payment. The vast lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy had millions of buffalo and wildlife and the Blackfeet Indians material and spiritual lives were inextricably linked to both their lands and herds of buffalo. The reservation streams and lakes supported the buffalo grasses and wild game that lived in the river valleys, and cottonwoods and timber for domestic uses of the Indians, and lush vegetation for pasturage for their thriving horse herds. The Blackfoot Confederacy was a common defense against the enemies of confederacy tribes; which tribal confederation pre-dated the Constitution of the United States of America. It was the original law.
By the 1896 Agreement with the Blackfeet Indians the Congress of the United States had expressly guaranteed the Blackfeet Indians exclusive use and occupancy of their treaty lands. The “value” to the Indians is that the reservation represents the true homeland of the Blackfeet Tribe.
The Blackfeet Indians were never assigned these lands and forced to reside on the lands as prisoners of war, but the reservation represents the last holding of their Blackfoot Confederacy lands before the coming of the white man to Blackfeet Country. The economic losses were even more devastating as the Blackfeet ranchers lost all of their mountain hay lands and grazing lands to the white ranchers. The treaty purposes of the 1896 Agreement/Article Five would be frustrated by the loss of hay lands and reserved grazing tracts and the self-sufficient tribal cattle ranchers would have their social and economic base destroyed by the government reclamation project and the allotment of the reservation and the BIA land frauds, and would be reduced to dependence on the federal government for their future subsistence and maintenance.
THE IMPACT OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK AND LEWIS & CLARK NATIONAL FOREST ON BLACKFEET GRAZING AND TIMBER RIGHTS-DEPRIVATION OF GRAZING AND TIMBER RESOURCES
The loss of grazing and timber rights in these federal government public lands had a negative impact on the domestic needs of the Indians as well as the tribal cattle industry by reducing available resources to the reservation proper and the loss of the allotments by BIA fraud caused another loss of grazing lands and timber lands for the needs of the Indians. In Glacier Park the Indians deserve a fee for use of reservation roads and services to tourists and the loss of treaty rights in the Park and in the Lewis & Clark National Forest the Blackfeet reserved the grazing and timber harvesting rights.
SUMMARY OF BLACKFEET TREATY VIOLATIONS
The 1896 Agreement/Article Five was a sovereign bargain that established the Blackfeet Indian Reservation for the exclusive use and occupancy of the Blackfeet Indians and the establishment of a self-supporting tribal cattle industry by the reservation of tribal grazing lands and streams to achieve the treaty goal of economic and social independence of the Blackfeet Nation.
BLACKFEET CATTLE RANCHERS ASSOCIATION NEEDED TO COMPILE HISTORY AND TREATY VIOLATIONS TESTIMONY
We need to organize a tribal cattle ranchers association to compile the history and losses of cattle, livestock, equipment, and machinery to the corruption in the BIA Administration of the Blackfeet cattle herds and the development of Blackfeet cattle ranchers.
RESEARCH NEEDS: List of Blackfeet ranchers & brands in the Federal Records Center in Englewood, Colorado, and information on Blackfeet forced patents. I have not been able to get those records but they are needed to document the successful tribal cattle industry in 1896.
This is good history for the tribe to follow in development of a successful tribal cattle industry based on winning the tribal land fraud claims and putting the original plan to production to successfully raise and process and market finished beef products to markets and to provide jobs and profits to tribal cattle ranchers and the Blackfeet Tribe.
Tribal farm lands will be put to use in raising grains to feed-lot cattle and livestock for slaughter and wholesale and retail markets.
The plan is in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.
BIA INDUCED POSTTRAUMATIC- COLONIAL POLICY STRESS DISORDERS OF BLACKFEET INDIANS-PAIN AND SUFFERING
White men now own over one-third of the reservation lands and lease 80% of the remaining agricultural lands. BIA leasing policies and allotment land frauds have encouraged whites to invade the reservation and discouraged Blackfeet Indians to use their own lands and have reduced the Blackfeet people to federal dependency. Most Blackfeet people feel that they lack open access to remaining Blackfeet resources and feel tribal and allotted lands are inappropriately controlled by excessive regulations and conversely lack of enforcement of BIA leasing regulations. The Blackfeet people get very little return from BIA leasing dating back to 1920’s and suffer BIA colonial era policies and practices causing posttraumatic stress disorders.
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