Equal Opportunity Tyranny

© 2023 Concerned Citizens of Western Montana

Next year will mark a century since Congress passed the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, and the 90-year anniversary of the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. 

Through the lens of 2023, where hindsight is a bit clearer, it would seem that these legislative feats have not served to help the Indian people, and one could also argue that it is moving non-tribal members living in western Montana closer to a collision course with the exact same tyranny that has been imposed upon individual Indians at least since the treaty of Hellgate was signed in 1855.  

All one needs to do is to look around and see that tribal members are no closer to having the same freedoms and constitutional protections as afforded to all other American citizens. 

If non-Indians look honestly, we would have to admit that not only are Native Americans treated unfairly, but also that those very protections that we hold so dearly are now being denied to us as well.  Ironically, at the same time of this great denial, these same protections are being extended to the foreign invaders coming across our porous borders. 

At the helm of all of this are the political elite who have enriched themselves to the detriment of the people they “represent.”  “Esteemed” senators like Steve Daines and Jon Tester sit in their ivory towers, picking winners and losers, in a system that has been rigged to ensure there is no accountability for their failures.  

We’re not convinced that the tribal membership even see themselves as American citizens, because first and foremost, the Indian Reorganization Act relegated them to little more than members of a federally chartered corporation:

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes shall be a membership corporation. Its members shall consist of all persons now or hereafter members of the tribe, as provided by its duly ratified and approved constitution and bylaws.

To a large extent, the tribal membership numbers are the foundation for the determination of the amount of money received by the tribal government from the United States.  

At the time the Indian Reorganization Act was ratified, there were no federally recognized tribes, however in 2023, there are 574 and that number keeps growing.  There must be a reason for that, and we will be bold and say that the only beneficiary of the failure of federal Indian policy are the Federal Government and the Federally Chartered Tribal Government Corporations established by the Indian Reorganization Act. 

One only need to open their eyes to see that all of the tribal largesse is little more than a façade built with federal monies to give the impression that the tribal membership is self-determined and in control of their future.  

The tribal government corporation continues to be enriched by Congress, while for the most part, its membership remains in poverty.

Adding to this mess is the fact that all that free federal money has empowered the CSKT tribal government corporation enough to also want to control the future of non-members living in western Montana. 

The overreach written into the Flathead Water Compact, for areas of western Montana that exist inside of and outside of the Flathead Reservation, will give the tribal government the means to accomplish that objective via our water.

Follow the Money

The Indian Reorganization Act was a sleight of hand if you will, making the United States the trustee of  their newly created Federally Chartered Tribal Government Corporations, instead of the Indian people. 

The government now produces flyers such as this, offering tribes advice on all of the various business corporations they might want to organize as.  This really is all about the money, not the people.

The CSKT tribal government alone received a minimum of $2.1 billion dollars from the federal government over and 8 ½ year period between 2008-2016, averaging $247 million per year.  This amount averages out to be approximately $33,000 per tribal member per year.  These figures are very conservative and do not include any state payments from “revenue sharing agreements”, state-based services and welfare programs, private donations, casino revenues, timber sales, land leases, or monies and land received from “environmental mitigation” settlements to name a few.

The list goes on and on.  The CSKT are just one of 574 such federally recognized tribes.  It boggles the mind to even think about how much money is spent by the Federal Government to prop up and enrich all 574 of the tribal government corporations around the country.

In their own lust for financial enrichment, or perhaps their blind desire to reverse the Hellgate Treaty Article VI opening of the Flathead Reservation to settlement in the early 1900’s, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Corporation has been more than happy to go along with the United States for the ride.

On the other side of the coin, the tribal council minutes provide many examples of tribal members pleading with the council to use tribal lands for gathering wood, asking for money for emergency needs, or having to tow the tribal line in order to sustain a living with respect to leases on tribal land, or even to achieve employment within the many CSKT tribal corporations funded by U.S. taxpayers through questionable “contracts” for services provided.

How do any of these vast sums of money benefit a tribal member who for the most part is dependent upon their government for everything? To the best of our knowledge, tribal members cannot pass any of this wealth down to their children when they die.  If there is a share of the tribal inheritance, it flows back into the tribal government coffers.  We’ve often heard stories of non-member family members of a deceased tribal member being evicted from their family home.

The tribal government corporation continues to be enriched by Congress, while its membership remains in poverty.

Enter the Flathead Water Compact

The poverty levels experienced by many tribal members around the country may very well be about to spread throughout western Montana via the Flathead Water Compact.

The Flathead Compact stands out as a stark reminder that something has gone seriously wrong with the whole notion that the water settlement was for the benefit of tribal members as well as Montanans, or that it would forever resolve the water rights issues that exist in western Montana.

In our last article we asked the question:  Does the Flathead Water Compact benefit individual tribal members? 

We pointed out the fact that the compact was not a quantification of the Federal Reserved water rights for the Flathead Reservation. 

This is partially because the compact makes no provisions of water specifically set aside for tribal members, despite the fact that  Montana agreed to cede most if not all of the water in western Montana to the US / CSKT with a time immemorial priority date.  Instead of providing water for the needs of the Indian people, an astounding 99.7% of the water in the compact is for fish and wildlife. 

A quantification of the water abstracts in the compact as passed by the Montana legislature shows that the compact precludes the use of an astounding 55 million acre feet of water, nearly all of which is designated for fisheries:

The amount of water ceded by Montana in the Compact is two times more water than actually flows out of western Montana in any given year!

Even if the 18 million acre feet of Flathead Lake water that was awarded to the tribe in the compact is subtracted from the 55 million acre feet figure, to make a more apples to apples comparison, the amount of water remaining in the compact is 1 ½ times more water than actually leaves the western Montana each year through the Kootenai and Clark Fork River basins as noted by the map below.

This information makes  it easier to understand why the state never provided a quantification of the tribe’s water rights in the compact, and adds more context to a 2011 statement made by Compact Commission Attorney Jay Weiner, to the Clark Fork Basin Task Force when asked about quantification:

COMMENT – I have heard a rumor that the compact will not quantify the CSKT reserved water right. Without quantification, I am unsure how adverse affect will be determined.

QUESTION – Will the compact specify or cap the flow and volume of the CSKT reserved water right?

ANSWER BY JAY WEINER – Maybe. This is a complicated issue. IF THE RESERVED RIGHT IS QUANTIFIED NUMERICALLY  (either by volume or flow rate), IT WILL LIKELY BE LARGER THAN THE AVAILABLE SUPPLY.  The Compact Commission will seek sideboards on the use of the reserved right to protect existing water users.

Complete minutes in pdf file format can be found here:     02/09/11         08/02/11

How is that possible you might ask?  Surely the compact can’t give the tribe more water than Montana has available for use?

It is because the compact was designed to include multiple claims along most streams and rivers for the purpose of precluding the use of vast amounts of water by others living throughout western Montana. 

When you add to that the fact that most of the water in the compact claims carry a time immemorial priority date, you can begin to see that when all is said and done, the compact’s effects will be devastating to land values, and the local economy.  There will be no future growth and development. 

It also makes one wonder about out of state interests that will benefit from all of that water passing by the state of Montana. The compact virtually guarantees a steady stream of water flow into the Columbia River Basin, completely unhampered by future growth and development, because there won’t be any. Is it possible for someone to sell that water to someone situated downstream?  Only time will tell what all that water might be used for.    

The only thing we know for certain is that this “settlement” will not benefit individual tribal members, nor will it bring finality or certainty to the people of western Montana.  However it may indeed bring hardship to people as the reality of the compact sets in.

If the compact is cemented into perpetuity by the Montana water court, it will usher in a new century of restoration. 

Restoration of western Montana back to 1855.

You can rest assured this restoration will only be for the benefit of the United States and the CSKT Federal Corporation government. 

What the hell was Montana thinking?

Aside from the fact that tribal members are friends, family and neighbors, through our corrupt governments, we are connected in more ways than we can possibly realize.