Honorable President Obama,
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania
Washington D. C.
Attn: Kimberly Teehee, Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs
Native American Issue-Forced Fee Patents
Dear Sir,
My name is Robert J. Juneau and I am an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Indians
of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation surrounded by the State of Montana, Glacier National Park
and the Province of Alberta, Canada. We are a federally recognized Tribe bound by treaty with
the United States since 1855 to allow American emigrants to cross Blackfoot Confederacy lands
on their way to Oregon Territory.
My concern is the pre-1966 Blackfeet Tribal and individual money damage claims potentially
preserved under the Indian Claims Limitation Act identified by or presented to the
Department of Interior's Statute of Limitations program as required by Sec.3(a) of the
Indian Claims Limitation Act of 1982.
The Blackfeet claims are listed in the Billings Area Office, Director of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, but have not been processed or advanced since 1980 despite the admission of
complicity on the part of the department and Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1979 and Civil
Action No.82-2725, Covelo Indian Community v. James Watt, Secretary of Interior ordering
the department to either litigate the pre-1966 Indian claims or to send the claims to Congress
for legislative solutions.
It is the request of the Blackfeet Indians for the President of the United States to intervene
in this nearly 30 year stalemate between the Judicial Branch and the Executive Branch to
provide justice in the issue of the private property rights of the Blackfeet Indians violated
by the federal trustee and stonewalled by the Interior Department to prevent the Congress
of the United States to provide legislative solutions.
At bottom of this issue are the historical events and treaty violations practiced by the
Territory and State of Montana, and its political sub-divisions, to knowingly and deliberately
conduct land fraud conspiracies against the Blackfeet Tribe and Blackfeet Indians, in
violation of sacred treaty and agreement between such Indians and the United States, and to
manipulate the plenary powers of Congress over the Indians and their property for the benefit
of their constituents.
It is my personal belief and experience that the class of White people known as "border-
whites" and the State of Montana are involved in a nearly century old deliberate conspiracy
with department officials historically and presently to hold the Blackfeet claims within the
department until such time as they can be disposed of by letting the statute run, or by
political means. In any case, the fact remains that the Blackfeet Indians have had their
private property stolen from them by admitted perpetrators within the department and
co-conspirators outside the department, and it is also obvious the conspiracy is still up
and running so long as the issue remains unresolved.
Background and History of the Blackfeet claims: The 1855 Treaty/Article Seven provides.
The aforesaid nations and tribes of Indians agree that citizens of the United States may live
in and pass unmolested by them. And the United States is hereby bound to protect which
white men residing in or passing through their country may commit.
In 1896 the Blackfeet Indians ceded the mineral belt of the mountainous portion of the
reservation about 1.5 million acres for $1, 500, 000 to be paid over ten years. By some
miracle the Blackfeet Indians had used their grazing lands to build up a tribal cattle industry
and their success was recognized in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five: Since the situation
of the Blackfeet Reservation renders it wholly unfit for agriculture, and since these Indians
have shown within the past four years that they can successfully raise horned cattle, and
there is every probability that they will become self-supporting by attention to this industry,
it is agreed that during the existence of this agreement, no allotments of land in severalty
shall be made to them, but that this whole reservation shall continue to be held by these
Indians as a communal grazing tract upon which their herds may feed undisturbed; and that
after the expiration of this agreement the lands shall continue to be held until such time as
a majority of the adult males of the tribe shall request in writing that allotment in severalty
shall be made of their lands. In 1906 Senator Walsh of Montana introduced the Blackfeet
Allotment Act in Congress to break up the reserved tribal grazing lands guaranteed in the
1896 Agreement/Article Five into individual allotments. The Blackfeet Indians subsequently
became victims of an Interior Department deliberate conspiracy to force fee patents on the
Indians, who did not request such patents nor were they competent to receive such patents
under federal law and Interior Department guidelines. These Blackfeet forced fee patents
were issued during the period of 1917 and 1922 when the Indians were illiterate and unable
to manage their allotments.
In 1979 Forest Gerard, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs of the Department of Interior
testified before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 96th Cong., 1st Sess.
3/13 (1979) (Statement of Forest Gerard, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs): Litigation
was thought inappropriate in these cases [forced fee patents] because the government would
have to sue itself on behalf of the Indian claimants. In 1980 the Covelo Indian Community,
et al., plaintiffs filed Civil Action No.82-2725 in the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA against James Watt, Secretary of the Interior et al.,
Defendants, to secure declaratory and injunctive relief to secure rights and duties they claim
are owed them, and all others similarly situated, by the defendant federal officials.
The court ruled on November 17th, 1982 that the Interior Department was ordered to
submit legislative proposals to Congress for all cases that have not or will not be litigated
prior to December 31, 1982 on behalf of all Indians and tribes with pre-1966 claims subject
to 28 U.S.C. 2415 that have been identified by the B.I.A [Bureau of Indian Affairs], the
federal defendants, or any of their contractors, and that have not been, or will not be litigated
prior to December 31, 1982, and that have not been the subject of legislative proposals
submitted to Congress. It was further ordered by the court for defendants to institute
protective litigation to cover those claims not the subject of legislative proposals and to
notify members of the plaintiff class, individual or tribal, where appropriate, as to the current
status of their claims and the nature of the forthcoming statutory deadline of December 31,
1982 for the institution of litigation.
I have worked on the Blackfeet forced patent claims since 1980 and have been stonewalled
at the agency level by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Interior Department. The Blackfeet
Tribal Business Council requested an investigation of the local county governments and the
State of Montana involvement in the Blackfeet forced patents conspiracy as well as the BIA
in 2001. It is unclear that the individual Blackfeet patentees and their heirs have an
adequate advocate or federal trustee within the Interior Department in view of the
confession of "complicity" in these cases by the BIA and Interior Department. What are we
Indians to think of the federal trusteeship when the BIA has confessed to the crimes, but has
refused to move the claims to Congress since 1979?
There are 605 Blackfeet allottees listed in the class-action suit for forced fee patent
violations as well as hundreds of other claims involving the crookedness of the Interior
Department and BIA. These claims involve the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of the
Blackfeet Indian Reservation held by treaty in the 1896 Agreement/Article Five in communal
grazing tracts for the successful tribal cattle industry.
We, the Blackfeet allottees, and heirs of the original Blackfeet allottees declare that only
the return of our treaty held lands and just compensation to return the lands to their use in
cattle ranching and related businesses, will ensure that the Blackfeet Indians and their
rightful heirs will be able to finally fulfill the governmental and economic goals that were
contemplated by the 1896 sovereign bargain between the United States and the Blackfeet
Tribe of Indians. In U.S. v. Frisbee et al, the Judge ruled that all of the minerals underlying
the Blackfeet reservation, including coal, oil & gas, were reserved by treaty and federal law
by the United States for the exclusive benefit of the Blackfeet Indians.
In U.S. v. Glacier County the Judge ruled the state could not extend jurisdiction over the
Indians or their treaty right to tax free lands even after fee patents were issued until the trust
period had expired. My people, the Blackfeet Indians, have suffered a century of epic tribal
poverty for no good reason except for government corruption in conspiracy with land grafters.
Therefore, I request that the Blackfeet forced fee patent claims be sent to Congress for
legislative solutions with the recommendation that Indian title be restored to stolen
Blackfeet land and minerals with just compensation.
Sincerely, and with great respect,
Robert James Juneau, Blackfeet Tribe, Blackfeet Tribal I.D. #U07392
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