Forgotten Founders Quote

Quote from Forgotten Founders by Bruce E. Johansen
These were the words of Canassatego. Brothers, Our forefathers rejoiced to hear Canassatego speak these words. They sunk deep into our hearts. The advice was good. It was kind. They said to one another: “The Six Nations are a wise people, Let us hearken to them, and take their counsel, and teach our children to follow it.” Our old men have done so. They have frequently taken a single arrow and said, Children, see how easily it is broken. Then they have taken and tied twelve arrows together with a strong string or cord and our strongest men could not break them. See, said they, this is what the Six Nations mean. Divided, a single man may destroy you, united, you are a match for the whole world. We thank the great God that we are all united; that we have a strong confederacy, composed of twelve provinces….These provinces have lighted a great council fire at Philadelphia and sent sixty-five counselors to speak and act in the name of the whole, and to consult for the common good of the people….
-Forgotten Founders by Bruce E. Johansen

Blackfeet Political History

The major problem in understanding Blackfeet political history is that the State of Montana has erased all knowledge of the land thefts of Blackfeet allotments in public school education curriculum. Tribal leaders do not understand allottee forced patent frauds and do not see the need to support tribal members individual land claims. Past tribal council Chairman Old Person was proud of his co-dependency on the BIA. He is the first chief to go against his own people. He ought to be banished, shunned and shamed.
The state-tribal water compact and the Cobell Case ignore the massive land thefts of Blackfeet allotments and oil wells. I advise tribal members to oppose settlement of water rights claims in the current Blackfeet water compact and $1,000 “compensation” in the Cobell case. It is arrogant and ignorant to ask us to sell out our forced patent claims to give white ranchers Blackfeet title to stolen land and water rights on the reservation forever.
The tribal council under Chairman Old Person protected the BIA and the rich white ranchers on the reservation. They ignored the Blackfeet victims of the BIA-white ranchers land frauds in the forced fee patents conspiracy. The evidence testified to in Congress is the truth because BIA Officials were under duress to tell the truth or face five years in federal prison for lying to Congress. In that testimony presented by Forest Gerard, Head of the BIA told of the crimes committed by the BIA against the Indian allottees, and the legal need for Congress to restore the title to the Indians.
Why didn’t the Congress restore the Blackfeet allotments? It was because of Chairman Old Person stonewalling the forced patent claims at the reservation level. I was told by the senate lawyer that Chairman Old Person refused the claims, and there was nothing they could do because the tribal council is the elected representative of the Blackfeet people. This is the visible head of the BIA conspiracy to extinguish tribal forced patent claims. The Cobell Case and the state-tribal water compact are void and illegal.
Before you accuse me of lying, why don’t you ask Old Person and Cobell to explain their proposed claims and settlements in plain language we understand? Did Chairman Old Person and Tribal Treasurer Cobell ever give you a Tribal Finance Report? Where is their concern about the 1,200 tribal members who hold legal claims for loss of 350,000 acres of Blackfeet allotments and oil wells? It would seem traitorous not to care.
What of $300,000,000 in compensation due us? Do we “settle” for $1,000 and give white rancher’s title to 350,000 acres of Blackfeet land, water rights and oil wells? The settlement offers are another BIA operative to extinguish the Blackfeet land claims. First return our land and money that the BIA helped to steal. Indian claims come first to a Blackfeet patriot. The reason there is a push to settle claims is the white man is covering his tracks.

Bureau of Indian Affairs Official Testimony

State of Montana in Wrongful Possession of Blackfeet Indian Allotments and Tribal Assetts on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation for the past 100 years working against the interests of the BlackfeetTribe and Blackfeet Indians.
By Bob Juneau and Robert C. Juneau, September, 2010

The land base of the Blackfeet Reservation in 1912 was 1,440,000 acres of allotted Blackfeet lands-By 1980 the reservation land base was diminished to 946,000 acres; leaving approximately 500,000 acres of former Blackfeet allotments in possession of white ranchers. The consequences of state encroachment on the Blackfeet Reservation are the Pre-1966 Indian claims.

“A great majority of the thousands of Indian claimants are heirs of deceased Blackfeet allottees or trust patentees. We are unable to locate many of them:”
Bureau of Indian Affairs Assistant Secretary Forest Gerard testified on Monday, December 17, 1979 concerning the Pre-1966 Claims of the Indians before the U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Indian Affairs. The Purpose of the Hearing is: To determine the status of the work of the Department of the Interior and Department of Justice in identifying and processing claims of the Indians that arose before 1966.
Forest Gerard, BIA Assistant Secretary confessed to “complicity” [partnership in crime] in the Blackfeet land frauds in a hearing on March 13, 1979 on the issuance of patents in fee and other encumbrances of the Indians property by the Interior Department.
BIA officials told committee members “you hear stories that there are thousands upon thousands of claims out in the misty mountains”, and “BIA Records are stored all over creation.” BIA officials also told Congress they felt the claims had “grown stale.” Mice turds were found in the BIA files.

BIA protects white invaders
The BIA was concerned “the claims program will affect a significant number of [white] citizens in this country because, in many cases, we are looking at the prospects of regaining title to [Indian] property, and many of these [white] individuals through no fault of their own, are holding void titles. We appreciate the claims program has, or will affect a significant number of [white] citizens in this country because in many cases, we are looking at the prospects of regaining [Indian] title to property, and many of these individuals [whites]-the defendants-through no fault of their own, are holding void titles.”

BIA “loses” thousands of Blackfeet Indians
The BIA aired the issue of heirship problems and the thousands of Indian descendants yet unidentified. The BIA revealed “that these Indians are potential claimants too, and our [federal trust] responsibility to them is legal and must be met. This is the heirship problem. As you know, on many of the allotments, if the original [Indian] allottee has died, the ownership has descended into literally hundreds of individuals. These are potential claimants too. We have difficulty locating these individuals, but our responsibility to them is legal and must be met.”
The BIA officials testified that if the claims did not survive the statute of limitations, there would be a “suit against the U.S. Government as trustee for failure to carry out a fiduciary obligation; a breach of the trust obligation to bring an action on their [Indians] behalf.”

The BIA “loses” the Blackfeet Reservation Water Holes
The BIA Agency Officials admit their entire agency administrative organization has lost jurisdiction and control over the most potent natural factor in the control of the use of the reservation range as a result of the loss of Patent in Fee lands and the subsequent loss of control of water holes on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. There is not enough Indian grazing land left in blocks big enough to administer, and the fragments are leased by white ranchers, leaving the Indian landowners with minimal payments.
The BIA is managing air. The alienated lands [Patent in Fee] to an extent far out of proportion to the allotted acreage control the watering places for stock. In the livestock wars of the early west, the control of watering places was the principle point at issue and it is this control of water holes today that is just as important and as essential to the efficient utilization of [reservation] range lands.

Loss of allotments an obstacle to proper management of range
The highly decentralized ownership of allotted lands is the “obstacle against which any but the most elastic and readily adaptable plan of grazing will shatter itself and become ineffective.” BIA grazing management plans are “obscured by the very pressing problem of the unified administration of a block of land divided by ownership into thousands of separate parcels.”

Loss of patent in fee lands an obstacle to tribal ranchers
The expression “Grazing Management” used in an industrial sense, presupposes the existence of a relatively large tract of land to which supervision can be given toward obtaining continued production and utilization of forage crops. The Patent in Fee lands [stolen Blackfeet Indian Allotments] are scattered over the entire reservation, every township having two or more Patent in Fee allotments.
The land status maps also indicate a pronounced tendency for the more valuable areas, particularly along water courses, to pass into a Patent in Fee status [white ranchers ownership] ahead of the less desirable, drier areas[Indian allotments]. This indicates a desire on the part of the white stock owner to acquire title to the watering places to be used in connection with the leasing of adjoining [Blackfeet allotted] range lands.
As is indicated by a study of the location of the Patent in Fee lands in relation to the areas under grazing leases, the owners of alienated lands [white ranchers] are in a position to greatly influence and in some cases to absolutely control the use of adjoining Blackfeet allotted range lands.

White ranchers own and control reservation livestock economy
The white ranchers and farmers lands, on account of the Patent in Fees, and the available range lands of the Indians, is distinctly a range livestock county within reservation boundaries and as such may be considered a distinct economic territory.
The livestock figures show that the livestock industry of the white ranchers on the Blackfeet Reservation annually produce three and one half times the income of their nearest county competitor because of the Patent in Fee lands and monopoly of adjacent Blackfeet allotted Indian range lands.
The Blackfeet claims issues are regaining Blackfeet title to Blackfeet Indian property, and removal of white ranchers and farmers from the alienated lands [patent in fee].
The jurisdiction of Glacier and Pondera Counties, as well as the State of Montana will recede to the exterior borders of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The tribal agricultural sector flows will increase to tribal ranchers and farmers and landowners. This will complete the treaty goals of the United States of America and the Blackfeet Nation in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five.

Self-Sufficient Blackfeet cattle ranchers now economically dependent
The formerly independent self-supporting Blackfeet cattle ranchers and the tribal cattle industry have been destroyed by the political and economic power of the white ranchers and farmers working in concert with corrupt BIA officials on the reservation.
There is no longer any treaty talk of bringing the Indians to self-support or to build the Blackfeet nation as a whole economy within the reservation borders because the reserved Indian grazing lands have been stolen by the patent in fee’s and white land grafters.
The political power of tribal treaty rights contained in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five have been diminished by encroaching jurisdiction of the state and county within the Blackfeet Indian Reservation boundaries in violation of the treaty, state constitution, organic act and Congress’ intent.


Blackfeet history must be re-written to change it
The history of the Blackfeet Indians is not the history of the Indian ranchers, and Indian cattle industry, but is the history of the looting, raping, murder and robbery of the Indians by Montana border-whites. The history of the Territory and State of Montana is the history of the border-whites despoiling the territory of the Blackfeet Indians.
This horrific history of exploitation can only be challenged by putting an end to the colonization of the reservation by white ranchers and farmers. We must de-colonize our selves [win tribal and allotted claims] in order to bring economic life back to the Blackfeet people and to restore political power to the Blackfeet Nation. De-colonization of the Indians reminds the border-whites “The last shall be first” as quoted in the Bible.

Note from Bob Juneau: I understand the tribal attorney is working to renew her contract with the tribal council at present. We will progress on the tribal resolution requesting a Congressional response to the Blackfeet Pre-1966 Indian land claims when we get the tribal attorney’s legal assistance in doing the tribal council resolution to Congress. This is the tribal gossip; I don’t know what the truth might be in this case. Let me know!

Notes from Mission Among the Blackfeet by Howard L. Harrod

Notes from Mission Among the Blackfeet by Howard L. Harrod
Table of Contents
Preface pg.vii
Introduction: Indian Missions And Social Change pg.xvii
Part I: Traditional Culture And Early Christian Missions pg.1
Chapter I: Buffalo Days pg.3
Chapter II: White Man’s Medicine pg.19
Chapter III: The Last Buffalo pg.39
Part II: Catholic Missions And Forced Acculturation pg.49
Chapter IV: Conflicts with the powers of Darkness pg.51
Chapter V: A Temporary Protestant Establishment pg.67
Chapter VI: Civilizing and Christianizing pg.82
Chapter VII: The Resistance of Satan pg.97
Part III: Protestant Missions Struggle For Identity pg.107
Chapter VIII: Short coats and Civilization
Chapter IX: The Church of the Little Sweet Pine pg.128
Chapter X: Short coats and Segregation pg.141
Part IV: The Shape of the present pg.153
Chapter XI: A Question of Social Justice pg.155
Chapter XII: Protestant and Catholic Responses pg.165
Conclusion pg.183
The Two Heritages Compared pg.185
Questions
What were the goals of the Methodists on the Blackfeet Reservation?
What was the Blackfeet response to being Civilized and Christianized?
What were the goals of the Catholics on the Blackfeet Reservation?
Introduction Indian Missions And Social Change pg.xviii
Representatives of Major Western Institutions.
1.The Fur Trader
2.The Indian Agent
3.The Soldier
4.The White Settler
5.The Missionary
Introduction Indian Missions And Social Change pg.xix
Two periods of history of Blackfeet relationship with white society.
1.Early decades of 1700’s to late 1870’s. This was the time of relative political, economic, cultural, and religious autonomy for the Blackfeet. From 1850 to the late 1870’s the Blackfeet main food source, the Buffalo, was destroyed and they became dependent upon white society operating through the soldier and the agent.
2.Late 1870’s to the present.
Began with the destruction of vast portions of traditional tribal culture and continues to
the present.
Questions
Why were the early decades of the 1700’s to late 1870’s a time of relative political, economic, cultural, and religious autonomy for the Blackfeet?
From 1850 to the late 1870’s how did the Blackfeet become dependent upon white society.
Starting in the late 1870’s and continuing to the present why were vast portions of the Blackfeet traditional culture destroyed?
Introduction Indian Missions And Social Change pg.xx-xxi
What were the anticipated and unanticipated consequences of the actions of the Missionaries for the Blackfeet?
Questions
What were the anticipated consequences of the actions of the Missionaries for the Blackfeet?
What were the unanticipated consequences of the actions of the Missionaries for the Blackfeet?
Why did Christian Missions have both a destructive and conservative influence on the Blackfeet?
Introduction Indian Missions And Social Change pg.xxi
Religion can be:
1.innovative
2.conservative
3.or destructive force in Human affairs

1.innovative-Mission churches may become the creative nuclei around which Indian life is innovatively reorganized.
2.conservative-missionary institutions may provide a needed center of social order and identity for Indians undergoing a rapid social change-a conservative, stabilizing function
3.destructive-missionaries may introduce innovations in ritual and ethics which are ultimately destructive for Indian life
Christian missions have been both destructive and conservative for the Blackfeet.
Buffalo Days pg.4
Blackfeet Men
Central economic activity was hunting. Only men could be hunters. Boys at age ten had to go on hunts where he would learn to hunt. By his teens he usually learned everything he needed to know to be a hunter. Men were expected to be generous to:
1.poor families
2.the aged
3.families without an able hunter
Blackfoot society condemned the stingy man and rewarded the generous one with social status and political power.
Blackfeet Social Institutions
Centered on the character and movements of the Buffalo. Celebrated the values associated with the hunt.
Blackfeet Political Institutions
Reflected the necessities of the hunt.
Blackfeet Economic Institutions
Hunting. Mainly Buffalo. Reflected the necessities of the hunt.
Blackfeet Religious Institutions
Buffalo was the source of life.
Buffalo Days pg.5
Blackfeet Political Organization
Was formed by the nature of the hunting economy, had to be small enough to make sustenance possible and large enough to make the hunt successful. The band chief was the political leader.
In order to become a band chief you had to:
1.have a impressive war record
2.be generous
3.preserve peace in the group
4.arbitrate conflicts in the camp
Ridicule was used by the group to control cases of personal misconduct.
Blackfeet Women
To become an attractive wife the skills Blackfeet women had to learn were:
1.the dressing of Buffalo hides
2.the making of clothing and lodges
3.the preparation of food
Buffalo Days pg.6
The life of the Blackfeet involved four periods:
1.the season of winter camp
2.the spring hunting and root-gathering season
3.the summer hunting and sun dance season
4.the fall hunting and berry-gathering season
Blackfeet Tribal Chief
Tended to be hereditarily chosen.
Only during summer camp did he have extensive political power and even then was only chairman of a tribal council composed of Band Chiefs.
The Blackfeet bands only came together during the summer hunt and the sun dance season. When they did they formed a Tribal Council with a Tribal Chief as the leader. Decisions were made through discussion and consensus. Each band leader was heard from before a decision was made. This was done to prevent inequality of power or control by a single person.
Catholic Priests
Father Giorda
Father Imoda 1875
Father Prando 1875
Conflicts with the powers of darkness pg.65
What the priests could not possible grasp were the unintentional consequences of their activities, for their attacks on traditional culture tended to weaken Blackfoot life even further and in a tragic way contributed to the historical forces which were destroying the Indian world.
Civilizing And Christianizing pg.93
Their attempt to Christianize the Blackfeet was destructive as well as constructive. Their efforts were destructive because they further undermined social order without fully convincing the Indians to adopt Western culture and constructive because Holy Family Mission became a center of order and meaningful activity for Indians who came deeply under its influence.

Forgotten Founders Quotes

Forgotten Founders Quotes
James Adair’s History of the American Indians (1775) “prefers simple Hebraic-savage honesty to complex British civilized corruption.” Indians, wrote Adair, were governed by the “plain and honest law of nature…”:
Their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty; and when there is equality of
condition, manners and privileges, and a constant familiarity in society, as prevails
in every Indian nation, and through all our British colonies, there glows such a
cheerfulness and warmth of courage in each of their breasts, as cannot be described.
Iroquoian notions of personal liberty also drew exclamations from Colden, who wrote:
The Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow of no Kind of
Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories. They
never make any prisoner a slave, but it is customary among them to make a
Compliment of Naturalization into the Five Nations; and, considering how highly
they value themselves above all others, this must be no small compliment…
The writer sought to refute assumptions that Iroquois women were “slaves of their husbands.” “The truth is that Women are treated in a much more respectful manner than in England & that they possess a very superior power; this is to be attributed in a very great measure to their system of Education.” The women, in addition to their political power and control of allocation from the communal stores, acted as communicators of culture between generations. It was they who educated the young.
Wynn R. Reynolds in 1957 examined 258 speeches by Iroquois at treaty councils between 1678 and 1776 and found that the speakers resembled the ancient Greeks in their primary emphasis on ethical proof.
-Forgotten Founders by Bruce E. Johansen

The Social Contract Quote

The Social Contract Quote
The right of the first occupant,’ although more real than the ‘right of the strongest,’ does not become a true right until the institution of property. Every man has a natural right to what he needs; but the positive act which makes a man the proprietor of any estate excludes him from everything else. His share having once been settled, he must confine himself to it, and he has no further right against the community. Thus we see how ‘the right of the first occupant,’ weak as it is in the state of nature, compels in political society the respect of all men. What this right makes one aware of is less what belongs to others than what does not belong to oneself.
As a general rule, to justify the right of the first occupant to any piece of land whatever, the following conditions must obtain: first, that the land shall not already be inhabited by anyone else; secondly, that the claimant occupies no more than he needs for subsistence; thirdly, that he takes possession, not by an idle ceremony, but by actually working and cultivating the soil – the only sign of ownership which need be respected by other people in the absence of a legal title.
It can, indeed, be said that tying ‘the right of the first occupant’ to need and work is stretching it as far as it will go. Can one really avoid setting limits on the right? Is it enough to put one’s feet on a piece of common land in order to claim it at once as one’s own? Is it enough to have the power to keep other men off for one moment in order to deprive them of the right ever to return? How could a man or a people seize a vast territory and keep out the rest of the human race except by a criminal usurpation – since the action would rob the rest of mankind of the shelter and the food that nature has given them all in common? When Nunez Balbao stood on the shore and took possession of the southern seas and of South America in the name of the Crown of Castille, was that enough to dispossess all the inhabitants and to exclude all the other princes of the world? If so, such idle ceremonies would have had no end; and the Catholic King might without leaving his royal chamber have taken possession of the whole universe, only excepting afterwards those parts of his empire already belonging to other princes. -The Social Contract, by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Forgotten Founders Quotes

Forgotten Founders Quotes
Cohen also found the influence of Indian thought in Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau,”and their various contemporaries.” Anticipating the arguments of Charles Sanford nine years later, Cohen implied that many of the doctrines that played so crucial a role in the American Revolution were fashioned by European savants from observation of the New World and its inhabitants.
The product of the intellectual traffic, the theories that played a role in rationalizing rebellion against England, may have been fabricated in Europe, but the raw materials from which they were made were, to Cohen, substantially of indigenous American origin.
Cohen, continuing his synthesis of a hundred years of suggestions that Indian ideas helped shape America’s and Europe’s intellectual traditions, asserted that “the greatest teachers of American democracy have gone to school with the Indian.”
Cohen also asserted that Thomas Jefferson freely acknowledged his debt to the conceptions of liberty held by American Indians, and favorably compared the liberty he saw in Indian politics with the oppression of Europe in his time.