© 2024 Concerned Citizens of Western Montana

NOTE:  When we refer to the “Tribe” in any of our articles, such reference is intended to be the CSKT tribal government corporation, and not individual Indians or tribal members.  With the exception of their membership in the tribe we consider tribal members to be separate and distinct from their tribal government, as are we from our own very corrupt government entities. 

We realize that the traditional ways of  protecting  our  property and property rights have not worked. And so we turned to innovative means, of protecting, preserving and enhancing our homeland. This approach benefits all the residents of the reservation. It also provides, all types of civil remedies, and provides for governmental participation by non-tribal members.

The primary responsibility of any government is to regulate the conduct and the activities permitted within the government’s jurisdiction. On the Flathead Reservation, we’ve taken steps to protect the health, safety of persona on the reservation, and to encourage productive enterprise, while attempting to protect natural resources. We’ve also taken many steps to ensure that non-members have the opportunity to play an active role in the promulgation and implementation of government regulation, and ordinances.

Rhonda Swaney, CSKT Attorney September 24, 1996 Congressional Hearing on Tribal Sovereign Immunity

We have a tremendous amount of heartburn concerning Ms. Swaney’s statement mainly because such an approach implies that the tribe has jurisdiction over the entire Flathead Reservation, but being the magnanimous sovereigns they think they are, they are willing to include non-Indians in the tribe’s endeavors.  It is as though she is trying to make it appear to be common practice that the tribe allows non-Indians to participate in tribal decisions and that non-Indians willingly participate in and have a say in anything the tribe does.  

This couldn’t be further from the truth.  If it exists at all, the “shared participation” she speaks of exists mainly because of state and federal government overreach in the form of forced agency / citizen participation in tribally controlled boards which effectively enables quasi tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians.

Some examples include state / tribal memorandums of understanding as well as the Flathead Compact forced Unitary Management Ordinance and Board.  Just a couple of years in, we can already see that the current makeup of the Flathead Water Management board is tribally controlled.  How well do you think that will go for current and future uses of water by non-Indians if the water court approves the compact?

Repercussions for Those Who Speak Out Against the Tribe

On 07/08/2014 at the Montana Water Policy Interim Committee, then Mission Irrigation District Commissioner Tim Orr (also a CSKT tribal member) expressed his concerns about tribal retribution against people who oppose the Flathead Water Compact giving examples of actions taken against those who opposed it.  His testimony was very powerful:

Mr. Chairman and committee Members, My name is Tim Orr, ORR, I farm in St. Ignatius MT.  We raise Cattie, oats, barley, some wheat some weeds, My family has been farming and irrigating here since 1873, My wife and I bought our farm from my Dad in 1975, we’ve went through many irrigation season’s, non thankfully yet with the restrictions of the CSKT compact in place. I have no doubt it will severely limit our ability to raise crops and cattle within the Flathead Irrigation Project.

With these compact restrictions there wiII no doubt be disputes far into the future about the amount of water we’ll receive, it will give less than necessary amounts of water historically used to raise crops and cattle. There has not been one State official show up at a Flathead joint Board of Control meeting to talk water or policy. The Irrigators put the Joint Board back together three months ago. The Tribe and Governor seem to think they can communicate, but without the irrigators, nothing will be solved.

We have came here for a year with volumes of law, filed in our Lake, Missoula, Flathead, and Sanders county court houses, since 1904.. We have tried for over two years to get into the Flathead Project vault to get historic flow and diversion recording data that .has been recorded since 1904, even with freedom of information requests the project manager still refuses access. Just so you know, the Flathead Project has recorded flows and diversions every day, during the season since 1904- We promise you, we will keep digging and bringing law and historic documents, to these great halls of justice, with some hope we will receive some.

We are here today to talk about the UMO-( Unitary Management Ordnance)- No matter how you look at it it’s a political board. This takes my friends and neighbors out of the Montana court system. This is totally unacceptable. We have a God given Constitutional Right to State and Federal courts, with jury’s of our peers. Judges who can be voted on. With the Governor appointing and the Tribal council appointing this board, Ask yourself what type of individual will be chosen, it will be someone with their political views, and they most likely won’t know any thing about, farming, ranching or irrigating. There’s also a good chance to be prejudice against agriculture. Some how these days, fish, and worse than that, fish that can’t be harvested like Bull Trout have precedence over the real staples of life, grain, meat fruit, and vegetables.  Our Grand parents can tell you the importance of irrigating and food.

I want to share with you my concern with this political board, perhaps a prejudice board. I gave you a handout of my testimony, on the second page you will see some Council minutes, bring your attention to (3) highlighted and read that statement,

(3) “There are two bidders that are members of the Water Users Association. Prior council action required a member of the Water Users Association to publish an advertisement in the newspaper announcing that they are no longer a member of the association and go to the courthouse and obtain an affidavit verifying the disassociation before the individual could be awarded a bid. Council would like to follow those same procedures. TLD will find out if one of the individuals filed the affidavit.”          CSKT Tribal Council Minutes June 17, 2014.

On the previous paragraph (in the minutes) a lessee was delinquent and they are going to work with him, but, a lessee who associates with his neighbors and thinks for himself and works to defend his property rights is outcast and deprived of the land he’s made his living from the last 20 years, these individuals have paid leases on time, and took good care of the land, what more could a land owner ask?, The CSKT Council has made it clear here they are going to make policy with prejudice. This UMO board will not work for this reason alone. No other compact has a UMO. We won’t be the first. 

I will not as a Mission District Commissioner on the Flathead Joint Board of Control subjects my Irrigators to this type of prejudice. We, 28,000 proud Western Montanans’ have a Constitutional Right to a fair Water Court or any other State or Federal court.

I am the Tribal Member on paragraph 3, my lease has not been renewed, I came to you last year saying I irrigated 305 ac, I did not get 75 ac lease renewed last year so I only Irrigate 230 ac this year, look like it will be less next year. 

I ask you who are writing this new law that will affect my grand children who are the 6th generation to raise cattle in St. Ignatius Montana. What kind of future will this law you are so eager to pass bring them- Is it full of hundreds of years of pervious law and historical protections for delivery of the water that truly feeds the world? Can they 20 years from now feed this hungry worl4 like their Dad, Grandpa, Great and Great Great Grandpa’s has done

I’m Old and Grey enough to give you some advice, a wise man from Kalispell, stood in these Great halls of justice a year and a half ago and asked for 2 years, time to make this right, you are not even close, things like this UMO will not be accepted, put yourself in our shoes, this CSKT compact will be contested because it goes against 110 years of law and history. Irrigators and the tax payers in our community’s deserve a fair deal. What the problem with taking 1 or 2 or 5 years if necessary to make this agreeable, don’t try to force it down our throats. A11 we have heard is legal threats from the Tribe, and the compact commission, the ball is truly in their court, their demands are truly unacceptable.

May God give you wisdom, thank You for you Time and I hope you take it.

Note:  Tim was far more gracious to the tribe than they were to him.  He did not mention to the Water Policy Interim Committee that he also lost his job with the Flathead Irrigation Project because he opposes the compact.  We would also like to note this is just one of many other examples of tribal retribution.

Rhonda Swaney, CSKT attorney followed:

I reside on the reservation and so do most of the people who testified here today. And because it’s a reservation, it’s different than other lands in the state of Montana. It was reserved by my ancestors through a treaty, before the Montana Constitution was even written. Yes, we represent a small portion of the population, but we own 64% of the land. Water rights are property rights, and are associated with land. They’re not associated with the number of people residing in a geographical area. I ask you to remember that. I’ve heard a lot of complaints here today about the Unitary Management Ordinance, and I’d like to say that’s the way we do business on the reservation.

Chas Vincent later gave Rhonda an opportunity to clarify that her statement was in the context of the many “shared boards” that the tribe has with non-members, and not Tim’s testimony.  

The fact remains that in 2013 the tribal council had taken action to require tribal members associated with the Western Montana Water Users, to publish an advertisement in the newspaper announcing that they are no longer a member of the association and go to the courthouse and obtain an affidavit verifying the disassociation before the individual could be awarded a bid for tribal leases, for logging business, and possibly other tribal business related interests. Here are a couple of examples.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Western Montana Water Users Association, it was formed in opposition to the compact and they filed lawsuit against the irrigation districts to stop the commissioners from approving the overreaching and unconscionable Water Use Agreement.

No one should  be surprised by this, when you consider the fact that the CSKT government is communist, and communist governments allow no dissent.

As as we all now know, Tim Orr’s testimony was ignored, just like everyone else’s, and the compact was passed in the Montana legislature in 2015.

three monkeys

See: Censorship by Consensual Agreement?

Lake County Files Request for FERC to Consider Operational Changes for Hungry Horse and Kerr Dam

We don’t have much patience for folks that have worked themselves into a frenzy about Flathead Lake levels while at the same time ignoring the Flathead Water Compact.  The Flathead Compact, coupled with the tribe’s ownership of the dam is responsible for the Flathead Lake levels, and if the compact is ratified, it will allow the tribes to manipulate water shortages in Flathead Lake and the Flathead Irrigation Project forever into the future. 

What a powerful thing to be able to manipulate the water supply via Kerr Dam and the Flathead Irrigation Project and to also have the ability to make call on your political enemies because of your unlawful and fraudulent “time immemorial” water rights awarded in the compact.

Manipulations of water supplies will continue to go unbridled as long as there is a drop of water for the tribe to profit from or a political enemy left to destroy.  This is simply because there are no provisions in the compact or anywhere else for oversight of the tribe, except perhaps its advocates in the Department of Interior and Steve Daines. 

Tribal advocates such as Daines, Zinke and the DOI are not overseeing the tribe by any stretch of the imagination.  Instead, they are working very hard to expand the CSKT tribal empire even further by passing legislation to make it easier to put in additional dams and possibly adding crypto currency data center that will cause even more harm to the people of western Montana. 

At this point in time it is reasonable to expect FERC to oversee the operations that effect Flathead Lake levels, and with that in mind, on March 4, 2024, Lake County filed a request with (FERC) Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting them to consider Hungry Horse and Kerr Dam operational changes based upon public safety concerns related to Flathead Lake levels during wildfire season.

On March 20. 2024 the Tribe / Energy Keepers, Inc. rather aggressively responded.

Quite simply, the County’s Petition is nothing more than an effort to ensure a constant summer lake level to benefit a small group of lakefront dock owners—forcing the Licensees to curtail revenue from, and stream flows benefiting Tribal fisheries and other natural resources below, the Project. Importantly, all revenue generated from the Project is used by the CSKT to provide essential governmental services to its members and the residents of the Flathead Indian Reservation, including wildfire prevention and response, a significant portion of which are administered in Lake County.

Kerr Dam is the crown jewel of the tribe’s infrastructure annexation “acquisitions” and true to form, not the public, or even a government entity like Lake County are allowed to express concerns or to ask for solutions to a problem that in fact the tribe had manipulated through excess water releases in early May of last year.   

We’d also like to know what essential government services the tribe is providing for non-Indians on the reservation aside from their government contracted wildfire program?  

Helping relieve us of our land and water?

See Also: 

We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

See how this goes?  The tribe sees itself as having jurisdiction over us all. 

CSKT Mission Statement

The tribal system simply is not workable in a representative republic. 

Each and every tribal member is a citizen of the state of Montana and the United States and it’s long past time to have a serious discussion about the harm Federal Indian Policy causes to all citizens of the United States irrespective of one’s membership in a federally chartered corporate tribal government.  

See: The Human Cost of Federal Indian Policy

If you think the tribe is bad now, just wait until the compact is approved by the water court and is fully in effect and is being fully enforced. 

There will be little if anything stopping the tribe from moving on to their next big encroachment on the property, rights and protections of unsuspecting people.

The tribe is not a sovereign nation.  Period.  It is a ward of the federal government and we are all paying dearly for it.  

The CSKT tribal government has overreached with this compact, and they need to be held accountable for it. 

For starters, the Flathead Water Compact needs to go.  

See:  What Tribal Sovereignty?  The Lloyd Meeds Dissent