August 1977 Interview with the Chairman

Agency Tribal Offices August 22

On Friday, August 19 I called Jack Plumage and made an appointment with him for Monday morning at 11:00. I told him that I wanted to talk to him about the research I was doing on the reservation.

Susie and I went to Jack Plumage’s office for a formal interview session in the afternoon after lunch. We sat around a large table in his room, and the atmosphere was very informal. The interview lasted from 2-5. Jack’s secretary came in a few times with checks for him to sign and with papers and memos for him to read. The phone also rang quite often. But all these interruptions did not hamper the interview. Jack was very good about returning to an idea and finishing his thoughts most times without Susie or I having to remind him. Jack seemed very comfortable during the interview and was candid in his responses. Jack gave very complete answers, and he expanded his answers on his own. He elaborated extensively without any prompting.

The tribal office is on the first floor of the tribal building. Jack’s office is through two other offices, Joe McConnel’s and the recreation and secretary’s office. His office is fairly large. He had a bookshelf along one wall with only a few books and papers and reports scattered all over the room. There was one of Clarence’s paintings on the wall, and there was a large table in the center of the room with three leather chairs around it. There was a telephone on the desk behind the table.

He said hello to us without leaving his chair and asked us to sit down. The entire time that we talked with him, the phone rang every ten minutes, and the secretary came in and out of the office with a message or report about once every half hour. Later Jack said that this was a slow day.

I introduced Susie and myself. We knew Jack informally from seeing each other at meetings, pow wows and other activities, but we were never formally introduced.

I told Jack that I was an anthropologist and I was doing research with the Gros Ventre on the reservation. Jack remained quiet and listened to what I had to say. We explained that Susie and I were volunteers at the mission, but that we came primarily to do the research. 

I am a graduate student in the anthropology department at Ohio State University, and I’m working on my dissertation research. We wanted to provide a service in the community while we did the research and we were able to do this through St. Paul’s Mission. I taught 5^th through 8^th grade social studies, helped supervise the kids in the evening recreation program, drove the school bus, took care of the mission garden, taught GED and I also taught two semesters at the Intertribal Education Center, the Urban Rural program. I taught physical and cultural anthropology. Susie taught music in the grade school, she runs the Hays arts and crafts program and runs the school breakfast program.

My study involves culture change, the way the Gros Ventre culture has changed since the days of buffalo hunting. I’m looking at the acculturation process and the changes in Gros Ventre values, from the traditional times to the present.

Jack said that he was at the University of Montana and received his BA in sociology. He took a lot of anthropology classes so he said I should feel free to use the jargon.

I’m interested in the rate and direction of change in Gros Ventre culture, and the acculturating agents in this process, such as the federal government and the mission. I’m looking at the changes that took place from the times Kroeber, Flannery and Cooper wrote about.

Susie and I have been here since August 9 of 1976. I spent the whole year collecting general ethnographic information and the present existing Gros Ventre culture and also started collecting information about the acculturation process.

I asked Jack if he had any questions about my research and he said that he didn’t. He understood what I was doing and it was fine.

Jack said that his wife was a Flathead and that she grew up off of the reservation. “Before we came back here I told her that my people here would always be my first love. She said that she understands that, but I don’t think she really did. She didn’t know what it involved. But she has accepted it. Now my son is my first love.”

Susie: Are there any women on the tribal council?

No, there aren’t any women on the tribal council, but there has been in the past. I believe that the reason why is that a qualified woman hasn’t run in a while. I just heard a rumor that there was a coalition of six women this year who are going to run. They are all going to vote themselves in. I don’t think this is politically feasible. I think they’re making a mistake, because not all of them could get elected and some of the qualified people aren’t going to get elected, because all of them are running together. What I mean by someone qualified is someone who is knowledgeable about tribal business, and know the concerns of the people and the tribe. It is someone who is sympathetic to the needs of the people. And a person needs common sense, not degrees. But not in a coalition. If they want to get into the council, this is a mistake. It’s not one’s gender, it’s what’s in a person’s head.

We used to hold council meetings upstairs in a small meeting room. But the people started to complain that we were holding our meetings in secrecy, and that we were doing everything secretly. So, the council decided to do something about the complaint. We set up quarterly council meetings and decided to meet on Saturdays when the community people could come. And we hold these meetings in all the districts. We switch around between Hays, Lodge Pole and here at the Agency. These meetings have been successful from the standpoint of the council. The councilmen go to these quarterly meetings. But these quarterly meetings haven’t been successful from the standpoint of the community. The people are just not there. They don’t come to these meetings.

A lot of people from the reservation go away to school and then they say they’re coming back to help their people. It’s the same old song and dance. But I think there’s a difference between myself and the other people who have been returning to the reservation after schooling. I have a lot more maturity than most of these people. My background is different. I was out of high school in 1964, and I went to school at the University of Montana in Missoula. I was there for one year and then I flunked out. I was too young, and I didn’t take school seriously. So, I left Montana and the reservation and I went to California for a while. I applied for readmission to school in January 1967 but after I applied to school, I got a job at the Cow Palace in the state of California. I was working at rodeos, and I was making $2.43 an hour. I thought it was a great job, and I stuck with it for a while. I stayed in California until March 1967. Then in December, my father went to see my draft board to find out for me what my status was. I got drafted right after that. I was drafted about a month later. I got my draft notice on valentine’s day. I went home to be with my parents for a while and then I went into the service. I was in the service for two years. I spent some time overseas, but I also spent some time at Fort Mead. That’s where I first heard of Spiro Agnew. He was the governor of Maryland. In 1968, King was shot and killed. I was sent on duty to Washington DC. It was riot duty. Agnew said that Baltimore would not become a Washington DC. Just after he said it, there were riots in Baltimore and we were sent there on riot duty. I was about to be sent back to Washington DC on riot duty, but I got my orders to go home. On my last day in the army, the poor people’s campaign was about to march on Washington. It was going to start the next day.

After I was discharged in 1968, I went back to California. I had a chance to go back to school at San Francisco State College, but I didn’t. I got a job at the college, and they arranged my schedule so that I could take classes at the college. It was during that time that they were having trouble there, student troubles. I was working there in March. With all of the troubles they were having, the enrollment went down, and the college wanted students and they wanted graduates. I decided not to go to school then. I thought I would go back sometime, but I didn’t want to go back then because I didn’t want to get a degree like that. I didn’t want it just given to me.

So, I left California and I traveled around a little and finally came back to Montana. It was just about this time that Indian awareness started. I went to the University of Montana in Missoula. They had a black studies program but they didn’t have an Indian studies program. We worked really hard to get the Indian studies program at the university and finally we were successful. There are a lot of people here now who helped get the Indian studies program started at Missoula. Besides myself, there is Kenny Ryan, Bob Swan and others, all worked on it.

From March 1969 until August 1973 I’ve been back in Montana, mostly at Missoula at the University. I got my degree in sociology and took a lot of anthropology courses. But there’s a difference between myself and the other people who have come back to the reservation after being gone and at school. I have a lot more maturity than most of them have. I spent my summers during those years back at home, and I kept in close contact with the people. A lot of others who come back to the reservation have the ‘savior complex.’ They’re gone for seven years or more and then they come back and they think they’re going to bring their people out of poverty. After I came back to the reservation, in that fall, I ran for the tribal council. I had no big promises in my campaign. I was elected to the council, and for the first six months that I was on the council, I sat back and watched and I learned a lot. This was a learning period for me. I was 27 years old when I was first elected as a councilman. John Allen was the tribal chairman at the time. He was very knowledgeable.

About two years later he told me that he wouldn’t run again. The people on the council approached me and asked me to run for the tribal chairman. I wasn’t enthused about the idea. I didn’t want the political hassles, and I didn’t want to play the games. I’m not a politician. I don’t like politics. And I had a good job, and I was making $16,000 a year. The chairman was only making $12,000 a year. It would mean a cut in salary and I was just married. I thought about it and I finally told them that I would run if there would be a raise of $2,000 a year. I ran and was elected to the chairman with a vote of 8 to 4. Then after I won the election, they told me that they wouldn’t just give me the raise. I would have to be in the office for a while, and I would have to show them that I deserved it. It was nine months later that they finally raised my salary to $14,000. Now my salary is $15,000 a year. The council set up scheduled steps for raises and that’s where I am now.

I have more additions to my family. We have a young boy, and we have another one on the way, so we do need the money. I’m the youngest chairman of a recognized tribe in the United States. I’m thirty years old, going on 31. This is really uncommon, that I’m so young. In the last 18 months I have finally learned the authority of my position, the tribal chairman. I use the word authority. I don’t like the word power, because it has too many misunderstandings associated with it. I’m not power hungry. I am learning now that there is a lot of legal authority in the chairman’s position.

I have a lot to offer the people here. I have a year and a half of experience as the chairman of the tribal council. That’s why I just won’t run for the council. I will run for chairman or I won’t run for the council at all. It would be unfair for the community people, and it would be unfair for the council if I was just on the council and not the chairman. I have the experience now. I am familiar with the bureaucratic hassles, and I can do a lot to cut through the bureaucracy to get things done faster and more efficiently. Because of my age, the Area people (Billings) and the superintendent don’t take me too seriously. They think I’m a flash in the pan. They don’t consider me a proven statesman. If I’m reelected, it would be for the next four years, and the people around me are informed. I have a good staff. If I’m elected, we can write our own ticket of our goals here on the reservation. According to the Area Office though, I’m still unproven. I’m incompetent in their eyes. One of the first things I would do if I were reelected is to get rid of the Area Director and the Assistant Area Director. They’re insensitive to our needs. Their ears aren’t open, especially to Ft. Belknap. We’re too small. The big reservations, like Crow and Ft. Peck and Browning get what they want. They’re big and he answers their requests. They get what they want from the Area Office. Because we are so small, we have to be better organized to get the things that we need and want.

There are reasons why I am accepted here. A lot of councils are jealous of the educated Indian. I think education is important, but it’s not a necessity and I don’t make it such a big deal. We have a very well-educated staff though. Rudy Buckman is our Administrative Assistant, and he has a master’s degree. Kenny Ryan, our ONAP Director, has his master’s degree. Bob Swan, our educational consultant, has his PhD. The director of our Indian Action Program has his BA. But I don’t give everyone the song and dance about the education.

A lot of educated Indians with degrees come back here, to the reservation, and they offer to work for us. But they ask for salaries of $25,000 a year. They wouldn’t ask anyone else for that kind of salary, and they wouldn’t get it, but they ask us. And when they ask for the $25,000 they want it from the tribal income, the $92,000. We call these tribal funds, the Class B funds. They don’t want the money from the government programs, they want it to come only out of the Class B funds, from the tribal income. It’s the same song and dance with these college educated Indians.

The people here are always complaining about the directors of programs and the council and chairman. They want to tell what the director’s and chairman’s salaries should be, and they don’t want us to have any vacations. They want us to be available 24 hours a day. My phone rings at home all day and all night with people who want to talk about tribal business. They don’t complain about the BIA superintendent or the head of the IHS, their salaries or vacations, and I have to make more decisions than both of them put together. Because I have to be concerned with both the BIA and with health, while they have only the one agency or department to be concerned with. And I have other departments to be concerned with besides these. They complain about my $16,000 salary but they don’t say anything about the superintendent being gone for 10-30 days a year on vacations. There are a lot of inequities of my position. There’s a double standard. They complain because I’m one of them. I’m a tribal member and the BIA superintendent and IHS director are not members of tribes here.

What was the Ft. Belknap Builders? What was the problem that resulted from it and whatever happened to it?

The Ft. Belknap Builders was started by an outsider who came onto the reservation, and he started this project that sounded just too good. It was helped along by the Economic Development Administration, and was a program that was organized and operated by HUD, the BIA and the tribe. The Ft. Belknap Builders set up as Economic Development Consultants and they set up a board of directors which included a few councilmen from the tribal council. They built a lot of the low rent homes in the River District and a few other homes in other places on the reservation. They also built this building (the one where the tribal offices are located), the Builders Building. They built the prefabricated homes in this metal building, and we use it now as a warehouse and for the tribal offices. This project, the Ft. Belknap Builders, put a lot of people to work. There were a lot of community people working. But there were too many loose ends, and everyone knew it. Everyone could see that there were a lot of problems with money, but they kept going with it. These councilmen who were on the board of directors could see the problems coming with all these loose ends, but they let it go on. They didn’t want to stop it. A lot of them had relatives working for the Builders, making $7 or $8 an hour as carpenters.

Finally, in 1972 the well ran dry. They ran out of money. Now, there are damage suits against us (the tribe). We went 1.3 million dollars into the hole, and we have a damage suit against us for 3.5 million dollars. The reservation people lost all of their confidence in the tribal council because of what happened with the Ft. Belknap Builders. They said that it was all of the council’s fault. At the next election, the Ft. Belknap people put in a whole new council. They voted out the old members, and they put in six new council members. They didn’t vote in any of the incumbents. The man who came here to start the Ft. Belknap Builders is down now with the Southern Cheyene in Oklahoma doing the same thing down there that he did here.

The Ft. Belknap Builders stopped operating about two or two and half years ago. The housing contracts from the low rent homes came from HUD. They also planned on getting into other facets of the housing industry. They were going to manufacture fiberglass bathroom sinks and bathtubs. They were going to manufacture insulation and other things, too. And they were planning on markets in Florida for those products. They had all kinds of big plans for the Ft. Belknap Builders, but these markets fell through and they ran out of money. There’s a Congressional Report on the Ft. Belknap Builders. There was an investigation of the program. The program existed here for about four years.

The Indian is different from what he was 20 years ago, and he’ll be different 20 years from now. There was a common bond that allowed us to call ourselves Indians, but we’re losing this common bond. We’re losing those bonds. I’ve read about Black Elk, and he talks about the Indian life being a hoop and a circle. Well, I’ve worked out some of those ideas for myself. The tribe had three things in this hoop. There was a social-economic system, a religious system and a political system. Gradually, we lost this hoop existence. We’re moving away from it. It will continue to be lost, too, and it will be this way until somebody stops this movement away from the Indian ways, until somebody presents it as a life and death thing of the tribes. Someday, the Ft. Belknap Reservation is just going to be a place, an area of land where individuals live. There won’t be tribes to identify with or belong to. Just individuals. It will be this way unless these changes can be stopped, unless we can stop the complete loss of the Indian ways. If we don’t stop this loss, the reservation will be nothing more than a place where individuals live, and they’ll have a county commissioner government, not a tribal government.

We’re losing our values, too. Our value system is what makes the Indian unique. Our of our unique values was the way we looked at time, Indian time. Indian time means any time. We just don’t do something to be busy. We do things just when it is important to do it. Not when you’re supposed to do it. For the non-Indian, there’s a time to eat and a time to sleep and a time to pray. The non-Indian world is so regimented and now we’re going that way.

I explained the idea I had about compartmentalization of American culture vs the integration of Indian culture, the different government-related agencies and departments, PHS, HUD, Manpower and the church and religion and schools for education and how these may be involved in this change in values in the directions he was talking about.

He shook his head and said that he thought that this was a big part of the change and the reasons for the changes.

In the old way, there used to be different chiefs in the tribe, and each of these chiefs had a different area of expertise. But now we have the councils and councilmen, and they are involved in so many different areas. We can no longer have uninformed people on the councils. We can’t afford to. The council is big business. Now the tribal income is only $92,000 but we have the potential for a multi-million dollar business in the tribe. An Indian expert is not necessarily an expert Indian. Those who are experts on the Indian traditions are not necessarily experts on the tribal business and laws. People should start thinking seriously about who they elect to the councils. With all that the councils are doing and with all of what they are involved in, people can no longer distrust the tribal councils. The reservation people should be there are the council meetings, because they are affected by everything they do. We must have an informed council, people can’t afford to vote uninformed people onto the council.

Can the reservation support the present population here with jobs and other economic programs? Can the tribe operate enough programs to employ the entire reservation labor force?

The reservation could support the present population if we went back to communalism. It would be similar to communalism, a socialist society, that the tribe had in the past. I would like to see a twenty-year plan, and the US government would have to make a commitment to this plan. After twenty years, the tribe would be off of the federal welfare rolls. We’d be on our own, and we’d be self-sufficient. But we would have to change away from our present individualism and return to tribal communalism, a communal society. We would be a sovereign entity. First, we would need about a billion dollars from the government, and the tribe would buy back all the land from the individual land owners on the reservation. All the reservation land would revert back to tribal ownership. It would be communally owned by the tribe, the way it was before the 1921 allotment. And then we would pay off all of our outstanding loans, like the HUD loans to build all the new homes. We’d get all of these loans paid off first.

Then the tribe would have economic development, developing farming and ranching on the reservation. Right now, this is limited by the individual, this couldn’t be done so long as there is individual ownership of reservation land. The land would have to go back to tribal, communal ownership before we started any large tribal enterprise. It would really be a lot of work to accomplish this, but once we started a tribal enterprise on the reservation, we could pay out per capita dividends to all the people in the tribe, both on and off the reservation. The land and the enterprise would be tribally (communally) owned and operated. If the people here want to develop coal, oil and gas on the reservation, that is just too short term a project. I know we have coal on the reservation, but I really don’t want to see these things developed. They are all too short time and short-term projects. We need long-term projects on the reservation, and we need this for employment and job security. We have also found a uranium reserve on the southern part of the reservation, but after twenty years, all of this uranium would be gone. It would take five years to explore and develop the uranium project. Then for about ten years there would be peak employment while the uranium was being removed. But then they would start closing it down and during a five-year period, they would close down and phase out the uranium mines. That’s not really what we need here on the reservation. Developing those mineral resources are only short-term projects without employment security. We need long-term projects that create a lot of employment here and job security.

We want to plan for the future, and that’s why the tribal program I’m talking about is so good. We should exploit the land, but in its natural state, developing cattle or even buffalo on the reservation, and it would be owned by the tribe. I don’t want to see the land torn up without reclamation. We ought to develop the land in the natural state. There’s also more timber on the reservation than most people think and we should be developing the timber industry. There should be no heavy mineral development.

I’d like to see light industry attracted to the reservation. And it is possible to bring light industry here, and it would bring jobs here, too. We could get involved in manufacturing the solar panels that are going to be used for collecting solar energy. A place like this could hire between thirty and forty people. I’d like to see light industry come there to the reservation.

But the best economic development would be a tribal ranch. We could also develop related industries like a packing plant. Then maybe we could get a contract with a place like McDonalds. We could then get involved in the trucking industry and ship the meat ourselves.

All of these programs could be developed. The biggest problem in doing it will be getting the  people here to believe in us (the tribal council) and in the program. I may not be on the council after November but most of my staff will be here. They will stay. So even if I’m not on the council to push this idea, there will be people here who will try to get a program like this started. I have good people around me.

What is the relationship between the tribe and the BIA and the other government agencies on the reservation, and does anyone have a handle on all these programs; are they coordinated in any way.

The Indian Health Service, the BIA and the tribe sometimes makes agreements together or work together on certain projects. These are called the Tri-Agency Agreements. Also, you will sometimes hear of HUD included in the Tri-Agency Agreements, like the tribe, IHS and HUD. These agencies have different responsibilities. But not all of these agencies live up to their obligations. We have had some problems with our unemployment and employment figures and the Labor Department program, and the Manpower Program are involved in this. The BIA is involved also. A lot of times the BIA writes reports and makes themselves look good. And the other government agencies accept the reports of the BIA as gospel, and they don’t take the tribal reports as seriously. Some of these reports are costing us a lot of money. On June 20, 1977, Ed Azure, the Manpower Director, received a letter which involved employment and unemployment figures concerning the reservation population that was reported by the BIA. The BIA reported that in March 1977 there were 520 people seeking work. Well, these figures are not correct, and Mr. Farmer and Elmer Main looked at the tribal figures for the reservation employment situation. These figures are very different from the BIA figures. The BIA report makes them look good, but it is hurting the tribe. Elmer said that there are about 66 people in his office every week actively seeking work. The correct figure for unemployment on the reservation is 58% for the month of March 1977. The BIA figure was very low according to our Manpower office and the Indian Action Program. This BIA report is hurting us because the report is used by Congress to determine funding for one year for the reservation and the future training programs of the Manpower and Indian Action Office are affected by this report. Also, the anti-poverty program will use this report. The incorrect and low unemployment figures reported by the BIA are going to hurt our support from each of these areas. The BIA is costing us money with this report. Leo Brockie had something to do with the employment records on the reservation, and he didn’t complete his work before he left here in 1974 (he’s currently the BIA superintendent on the Rocky Boy Reservation). These figures were received by Ed Azure on June 20 at the Manpower Office (He read the BIA letter to us). Then one month later (July 1977) the planners compiled a report with the BIA employment assistance program. The BIA figures are also wrong in this report. The BIA reports that in July 1977 there were 33 people and this was their total, 33 people on the reservation seeking employment. And the BIA also reported that there were 1,000 people on the reservation in the labor force. This figure is also low, and this hurts us because we’re trying to attract industry and jobs for the reservation and I know that our labor force is larger than this BIA figure.

The BIA makes themselves look good in this reports, but it hurts the reservation. And the BIA reports will be taken more seriously than the tribal report. I know that unemployment is much higher on the reservation than the BIA reports. The tribal unemployment figure is 50% plus. It is higher than 50%. The BIA figures for the labor force are too low. Also, in the winter months on the reservation, the unemployment figure is between 84% and 90% in some years, and in some months. I know that our unemployment is this high in the winter.

Susie: What is the incidence of rape on the reservation?

The incidence of rape on the reservation is more than what is reported. I don’t think that shame is a factor on why rape isn’t reported. I think that the reason rape cases aren’t reported is that the individual, the woman, is afraid of repercussions by other individuals. Let me give you a case. Let’s say you’ve been raped here, and you reported it and went to court. But the man got off. The next time, it’s four or five guys instead of one. It’s not worth it. She figures it is not worth reporting it. One of the reasons why major crimes aren’t reported or why they aren’t prosecuted in the courts is that people are afraid of retribution here, from the family involved. And the families here do handle these matters themselves. If a major crime occurs here, the families will handle it.

The FBI and the US District Attorney do not ‘waste their time’ on the reservation. This is another one of our big problems here on the reservation with the major crimes. They (FBI and US District Attorney) say that they won’t prosecute cases here because they cannot get witnesses and they never get any results when they prosecute a case from the reservation. And they handle all the major crimes on the reservation. Another problem is really the fault of the FBI. If a crime is committed on a Saturday, a lot of times they don’t get here to investigate until Wednesday afternoon. There was a break in at the hospital and a couple of young men stole some drugs from the hospital. This time they caught the guy red handed. But the US District Attorney wouldn’t take the case. It was the special officer’s son that had broken in. This happened about two months ago, but they wouldn’t prosecute the case.

There was a long time when we didn’t have a trained law and order staff. There were no records of citations. They weren’t issuing citations. Now we have records. These are in-house things. We have to have these changes. Now we keep annual records of arrests and have reports of these arrests and records.

The FBI and the US District Attorney handle major crimes on the reservation. The tribal law and order and police handle only misdemeanors. In the future, the tribe may have jurisdiction over major crimes, but now the tribe only has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Major crimes are tried by the grand jury in Billings.

Can Indians hunt off the reservation out of the hunting season?

There isn’t any hunting off the reservation except during the hunting season. Traditionally, we were a hunting people. And even today I know that there are a lot of people in Hays who depend on this meat for their livelihood. Without this meat, a lot of people in Hays probably couldn’t give meat to their families. But the game is rapidly diminishing on the reservation in the mountains. The deer population isn’t anything like it used to be. And there is a flagrant violation of the hunting laws. The people who hunt all the time claim that his is one of their treaty rights. But if they’re going to claim this as a treaty right, they should hunt in the traditional way, the way it was done when the treaty was signed, on foot. I don’t think the people had in mind running down an antelope in a truck going 60 mph. The game has diminished from this sort of practice. We’re not in the same position as we were when the treaty was signed. If these people want to go by the treaty, they should keep all of the same conditions and hunt in the traditional way. I don’t hold a very popular opinion on this subject.

There’s another problem that we have now with non-Indians on the reservations. It’s a jurisdictional problem. The FBI has jurisdiction now on the reservation over all major crimes. This was first decided in the Major Crimes Act of 1867. It was the Crow Dog vs South Dakota case that decided this issue. The federal government, the FBI then, has jurisdiction on the reservation over all major crimes. The tribal police force has jurisdiction on the reservation only over misdemeanors. The big issue now is whether the tribes have jurisdiction over non-Indians on the reservations. This is a big issue, and it is in the courts now.

There are two arguments about tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians living on reservations. It involves the Homestead Act. Ft. Belknap is not really affected by this problem, because when non-Indians were placed on the reservations our borders were moved in along the borders, the reservation boundaries, so that the non-Indian homesteads weren’t on the reservation. But some reservations are involved and have non-Indians with homesteads on their reservations. And the tribes argue that they have jurisdiction over these people, and the non-Indians argue that the tribes do not have jurisdiction over them.

In 1921, when the Allotment Act was passed here for the reservation, a lot of the land was allotted, and the people here were given individual land holdings. But not all of the reservation land was allotted. There were excess lands and the tribe also reserved more land. And there was still more land left, and this was opened for homesteaders. This didn’t happen here, but it did happen on a lot of reservations. And a lot of non-Indians started homesteads on the reservations. They came onto the reservations and started homesteads, and now this land is no longer part of the reservations, but the land is surrounded by the reservation. This didn’t happen on Ft. Belknap because the homesteads were started near the boundaries of the reservation, and the land was just taken and the borders of the reservation were diminished. So, the homesteads of non-Indians are now off the reservation.

This jurisdiction issue came about with this boundary problem, when the non-Indians came onto the reservations to homestead. Another word you hear a lot is ‘Indian Country.’ We say that all of this land on the reservations, with the reservation boundaries is Indian Country. We argue that all of this land, the whole area, is Indian Country. It is in the laws and in the treaties, all of the land, even after homesteading. On Ft. Belknap, when homesteading started, they just ceded the borders of the reservation. We don’t have excess land either. It was all in the allotments. It has all been allotted. And the tribe reserve has been in the allotment, too. But there’s another area of land (another land category) that’s called Tribal Original. There’s 160 acres at Snake Butte, there used to be the Big Warm land, but this got allotted. A lot of people think that the allotment of the Big Warm land, which was Tribal Original land, involved some hanky panky. Another area of land that is Tribal Original is 160 acres at King Springs. In all these areas, the 160 acres is from the mouth of the spring to below the spring.

Another word used a lot in this jurisdictional issue is ‘implied consent.’ What this term means is that when the non-Indian came onto the reservation lands for homesteading there was implied consent on their part to jurisdiction on the reservation. It was implied that they, the non-Indians, consented to tribal jurisdiction when they moved onto the reservations. This is the argument of the tribes. But the non-Indians claim that there isn’t and shouldn’t be a tribal jurisdiction over them, because there is no means of them becoming a member of the community and a member of the tribe. They argue that the tribal jurisdiction over them is like taxation without representation. They are taxed by the tribe. It’s important to remember that the tribal jurisdiction is only for misdemeanors. That’s the only jurisdiction that the tribal police have over both Indians and non-Indians on the reservation. The FBI takes jurisdiction over all major crimes on the reservation. But the tribe does set their own law and order code, and the tribe believes and argues that both Indian and non-Indians, everyone living on the reservation, should be under this code. The tribe does have a counter-argument to non-Indians argument that they can’t become members of the tribe. They could be adopted. A person can be adopted into the tribe, and we can limit the rights of the adoption. Like the sisters at the mission who were adopted into the Gros Ventre tribe. They were adopted in name only. They have no inheritance rights or rights to treaty claims or anything like that. The tribe would have to adopt a person. It couldn’t be done by individuals.

You shouldn’t bring up Indian rights around me. I went to a MOD meeting a few weeks ago. They are Montanans Opposed to Discrimination. It was a Chinook council meeting, and it was advertised as an open meeting to the public and all community members were invited to improve the community. I thought that since the reservation is a part of these communities, I should go to the meeting. So, a carload of us went to the meeting from the reservation. The meeting involved tribal jurisdiction and water rights, and things like this. These are major concerns of MOD. So, we went up there for the meeting. Lloyd Ingrams was the guest speaker. He’s the lawyer for MOD. He’s from Ronan and I got ahold of a pamphlet that had his name on it. He may have written it. The pamphlet was titled, ‘Are We Giving America Back to the Indians?’ The pamphlet was filled with outright lies and a lot of half-truths. His speech lasted for about 45 minutes and then the meeting was open for questions and discussion. I stood up and asked him about the pamphlet. He said, I don’t know anything about it. I said to him, well, your name is on it. You ought to read something before you allow your name to be put on something. When he was saying about not knowing about the pamphlet was just not true. I said to him, this is an open meeting for anyone to discuss these issues, and I would like to go through this pamphlet and dispute some of the statements in there. I could go through it and dispute most of the statements. Will you allow me to do that? He said, do you mean, you want to come up here to the podium and talk about the pamphlet? I told him I did. I want to respond to the issues you’ve been talking about. He said no. He wasn’t willing to let me respond to his statements. And you know what he said to me; and these are his exact words, ‘you’re on the wrong side of the street, and you can go back home.’ I was really mad. I said what about the right to our freedom of speech at a public meeting. You’re talking about rights. What about that right, the freedom of speech. What made it worse was that the meeting was held in Chinook at the VFW hall. And I was a veteran, and others who were with me who were Viet Nam War Veterans. I told them this, and the people there at the meeting shouted us down. So, we left the meeting. When we got home, I decided to tell the newspapers about what happened at the Chinook meeting. So, the next day, I called the Great Falls Tribune and told them what happened. Do you know what they told me. They wouldn’t print the story because they didn’t consider it news-worthy. The editors of the newspaper, the Great Falls Tribune and the Billings Gazette, once told me something, but they would deny it if you asked them. They wouldn’t admit it publicly, In Great Falls, Billings and Anaconda, there are no independent papers. In Anaconda, the mines own the newspapers. The editors admitted to me that there’s no investigative reporting, especially when Indian concerns are involved. Reporters from these newspapers are assigned to a reservation and Indian area for only one year and then they’re reassigned to a different place. The papers don’t want the reporters to become too concerned with the Indian, and they don’t want the reporters to have any sympathy for the Indian. They don’t want the Indian atrocities to get to the reporters and switch their opinions of the Indian to one of sympathy. They’re selling newspapers, and they’re selling these newspapers to whites. And with the white attitude around these places being what it is, they can’t be sympathetic to the Indian. So, in the newspapers, Indian news is not good news.

Do they have any kind of training in law enforcement work? Susie: Does the Hays police station at the Lodge Pole turn off have a telephone?

They have trained in Brigham City, UT, the National Indian Training Center. They get law and order training in a three-week course at this center.

No, there isn’t a telephone in the Hays Police Station. We’re on the same waiting list as all the other homes in Hays who want telephones. But the police are using radios. They’re communicating with radios from the station to the police cars. They have radios in the police station. Triangle Telephone says that they can’t run phones into Hays because there’s not enough electricity to do it for all the homes in Hays. That’s their argument. I think it’s discrimination. They don’t want to invest the money here. It would take 1.2 million dollars to upgrade the homes on the southern part of the reservation. I just got wind that a company is going to open up the mines again in the mountains and they’re going to run electricity in there for the mines and miners. Now I got word that we can build on the southern part of the reservation. They’ll run lines down from the mines. They’d do it for the mines, but not for the reservation.

Big Flat Electric, the REA, is discriminating against the reservation. It’s not unusual. In 1970 there was a big flood in Hays, and for two days we tried to get the BIA to do something about it, because they lost all of their electricity. But the BIA did nothing. Then we called Washington DC to try to get them to help out. Hays was without electricity for six weeks. Jimmy Main was on the council when it happened. He had a good comment about it. He said that there could be a blackout in New York City for a couple of hours and it is a national disaster. But the electricity is out in Hays for six weeks and no one cares. The reservation Indian has no political power. Even if we were involved in Blaine County politics, we wouldn’t have any power (the reservation takes up a large portion of Blaine County). They would gerrymander the reservation, and would have us split. We wouldn’t even have political power in Blaine County.

What is the relationship between the tribal council and the tribal law and order and tribal police? What are the tribal council’s responsibilities in this area?

The police used to be a function of the BIA. There were three special officers on the reservation, and the BIA operated this law enforcement agency here on the Ft. Belknap Reservation. The special officer here on the reservation was an Indian man. There may have been some politics involved in the decision. I’m not sure exactly what their reasons or motives were, but the tribal council didn’t feel that he was doing his job. So, they passed a resolution for his removal, but for some reason, they couldn’t get him removed. The BIA denied this request. The Billings Office (the BIA Area Office) told the council that they could get rid of him if they contracted for their own law and order. They could advertise for their own law and order, and then put their own bid in for it. So, they did contract for the law and order, and that’s when the tribal council took over their own law enforcement and law and order code. The tribe put in a bid for the law and order contract for the reservation, and because of the Indian preference on the reservations they were given first and primary consideration and the tribal council got the contract.

In 1910 the Buy Indian Act was passed giving Indian tribes a preference for jobs and contracts if they were on and for the reservation. The tribe put in for the law and order contract and they were awarded the contract. The tribe submitted the bid through the BIA. There are violent crimes on the reservation. They’ve always been here, and they’ve always been a problem. There can be 28 witnesses to a crime here, and there won’t be a conviction. They can’t get a conviction. The people just won’t testify to the crimes they see. People are afraid of retribution. Another thing is that the people involved take care of the matters themselves, and they do take care of their own matters. The families do it. The FBI won’t come on the reservation to prosecute because of the problem with the eyewitnesses and the frustrations involved in getting convcitions. And the District Attorney won’t come down here to prosecute cases either, for the same reasons as the FBI.

So, the tribe contracted for their own law and order in 1967. They took it over themselves. And the council really set itself up for some big problems. The tribe never had enough money in the contract to legitimately carry out the law-and-order code, the tribal police force. The contract used to be $60,000. With this money, they had to hire a police chief and two or three officers. They had to buy and maintain the cars, equipment, radios and a lot of other things. It just couldn’t be done with this amount of money. We tried to increase the budget, to get more money for the tribe for the police force. We increased the law enforcement budget to $183,000 and this was the budget until last year. But this was still not enough. And there was some poor planning on the part of the council. They didn’t plan for the supportive services in the budget. We have a holding facility. It’s not really a jail. They didn’t have enough money for supportive services. It wasn’t in the budget for the dispatchers, jailers or any of the other supportive services. So, for these supportive services and for radios, cars and the other equipment we were able to get $50,000 more in the budget. This should have raised the budget to about $233,000. It should have been this amount at a minimum. But the $50,000 was never put in the budget. This year, the BIA has three of their own officers on the reservation. They were assigned here. The three officers are a special officer, a juvenile officer and a clerk. They are all Indian. They kept the total budget for law and order, but now it was for the tribe and their officers. It’s the same $183,000 as last year. And they want $77,000 off the top for the salaries of these BIA officers. Those are pretty high salaries for these three officers. We are doing it because the BIA didn’t give us a choice. Now what’s left is $107,000 for the present $183,000 program. The council told the BIA there was no way we could do it with this budget.

The tribal courts get $22,050 out of this money. The law-and-order budget has never been enough money, and the BIA controls the purse strings. They have us hand cuffed. We’re going to have the law-and-order budget increased to $250,000 a year or we’re going to turn it back over to the BIA. But we can’t run it on the present budget. There are too many responsibilities to operate on this budget we have now. We have seven tribal police now.

What are the duties and responsibilities of the tribal council?

The duties and responsibilities of the tribe; that’s a tough question to ask. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act was passed, and it was supposed to be self-government for the tribes. It had provisions that allowed the tribes to govern themselves. So, one of the biggest responsibilities of the tribal council is government. But the tribe has more than a constitution. The tribal council also has a corporate charter. It is a corporate charter corporation. They could set up economic development for the tribe, for themselves. So, the tribal councilmen wear two hats. They are legislators also. Most people are not aware that the tribal councilmen wear two hats. They are both legislators and board of directors from the corporate charter, like the board of directors of a company. It is very complicated and there are court cases involved with this relationship in the tribal council, both legislators and board of directors. The constitution and the charter determine the powers of the council. The council has the power to tax, to have a police force and to enforce their own law and order code.

The constitution was passed on Ft. Belknap on December 13, 1935. I always wanted to check a calendar to see if that was a Friday (he laughed cynically). Since then, the constitution has been amended six or seven times. Then the corporate charter was adopted in 1936. The corporate charter allowed the tribal council to carry out economic development. We have a revolving credit fund, and we have land acquisition programs. Few people are aware that we have both responsibilities, those from the constitution and those from the corporate charter.

There’s such an unfamiliarity of the Indian people. I think the Indian people are the least understood people in the world. So many laws have been passed that affect the Indian, and no one knows all these laws.

There’s a case now in the courts, the Gardipee case, and it will have a lot to do with the determination of whether Indian tribes can be sued. It also involves this relationship between the tribal council’s constitution and the corporate charter. According to the agreement, I don’t believe that the state can sue the tribe. This is according to the 1935 constitution. But the lawyers against us argue that the 1936 corporate charter superseded the constitution when it was passed. They say that with the corporate charter, the tribe relinquished its sovereign immunity. This is not true. We argue that in regard to the tribes, the state has no jurisdiction. The state has no jurisdiction over the tribe.

The tribe lost the case in the Montana State court. We knew that we couldn’t win the case in Montana, and we also lost the appeal in the Montana state court. We asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but our request was denied. The State of Montana never showed that it had jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court decided that they wouldn’t act on the case until the state demonstrated its jurisdiction. The case was tried in Havre by a judge from the State District Court. The Gardipee case involves a man (Gardipee) who was shot by a tribal policeman, and they are asking whether the officer involved was acting within the scope of his authority. The case concerns the constitution and corporate charter and whether our tribal police are policemen or security guards. They argue that there’s a difference. If we are under the constitution, they are a police force. But if we are under the corporate charter, then they are only security guards. We argue that the officer was acting as a tribal policeman when he shot the man. The Gardipee case has been an ongoing case since 1974. They aren’t suing the officer. The man has very shrewd lawyers. The officer is not insured but the tribe is insured. If the man won a case against the officer, the claim would be non-collectable, but because the tribe is insured, if they won the case, they would collect against the tribe. But we have to show, and we will demonstrate that the state has no jurisdiction over the tribe. We believe that the policeman was acting under the constitution of the tribe. We have, according to the constitution, the right to a police force and our own law and order code that they enforce.

As far as the duties of the tribal council are concerned, we sit wearing more than one hat. The council hasn’t been involved in politics in quite a while. It used to be that councilmen were untouchable, the police wouldn’t stop them if they were doing something wrong. The councilmen used to use their power this way, and they would warn if they were picked up for something, they would see to it that they would use their influence to get the policeman fired. It’s not as bad now. It used to be bad. There’s one councilman now that is still like that. I got a report back from one of the policemen that he was warned not to bother this councilman, or he would use his influence to get him fired. At one of our council meetings, I addressed this issue. I said that there are no untouchables on this council, including me. We’ve gotten away from that.

We do have some problems in tribal government. A lot of problems. One big problem is the constitution and corporate charter thing. The councilmen should be legislators, writing and passing laws and establishing and carrying out a budget. We should really bring someone in to enforce the laws and budget. The tribal council has too much hold on too many things. Someone else should come in to enforce our laws and budget.

There are twelve councilmen on the tribal council. The size of the tribal council is too large. The tribes now are big business. We need a full-time council. We can’t just sit back and watch the world go by. And we need more than one meeting a month. People should be able to come in and get their business taken care of whatever it is. And we should be able to meet right away to take care of the people’s business, like when they come in to take care of land business. We could take care of the BIA games, too, if we could meet more often. We need a full-time council. It would be possible to do.

The strongest arguments against a reduction in the tribal council is that only a few people would run the council. On the present council, I have a full brother, a full uncle and a first cousin, and then myself. My brother is Gros Ventre, my uncle is Assiniboine, my cousin is Assiniboine and I sit on as an Assiniboine. Me and my uncle are up for reelection this November. A woman came in and she made the remark to me that there’s too much Horn influence on the tribal council. The Horns can get through anything that they want on the council. Since I’ve been chairman of the council, we have a voting record for the first time. Before there was only a yes or no vote by the councilmen raising their hands, and there was no way to tell how people voted. If there were ten people present at a meeting and we had a vote, it used to be that the minutes would say something like six for and 2 against, one abstain and three absent. But no one knew how the councilmen voted. But now I’ve had roll call votes on all the key things this year. And I especially made sure that we got a roll call vote to check this ‘Horn influence.’ I found that there was no consistency in our vote. I checked the minutes for the roll call votes. A lot of times we opposed each other in the way we voted. We seldom voted together. But people won’t look at this, they’d rather listen to the rumors. My brother is up for reelection too but he’s not running. He said that he can’t be responsive because he’s going to school and doesn’t have enough time to devote enough attention to the council. My uncle says he’s going to get off the council. He’s been on the council for a long time. My philosophy is tribalism, and his is tribalism, too. But his stronger philosophy is that blood is thicker than water and this isn’t good. When a lot of people run for the council, they wait for the last day before they enter the election. They wait to see what the opposition is going to be. 

I ran out here from the River District. If I run again this year, I’ll run from the River District. The candidates have to decide to run and put in their candidacy before October 1^st. The election will be on the first Tuesday in November, November 1^st. There’s no limit on the number of terms a person can hold office as a councilman, you can run as many times as you want. I’ll be running for the tribal chairman. When you run for council and want to be chairman, then you also run for the chairman. You state your intent. The council elects the chairman. After the new council is elected, there’s a meeting held on January 3^rd in the council room. The Tribal Judge conducts this meeting. He swears in the six new council members (staggered terms). And then he opens nominations for the officers. The chairman was a strong candidate. He is usually someone who is outspoken, and everyone knows which way he’ll vote on different things. There’s a lot of politics in electing officers to the tribal council.

There are only two salaried positions on the council, the chairman and the secretary-treasurer. Now we have a third salaried position, the land chairman. This is a new salaried position, and it may be only temporarily salaried. We got a grant which allowed us to pay him a salary. There is politics in the election of the officers of the council. There are factions on the council. Let me give you an example. One of the factions would be the land owners vs the land users. Joe McConnell (the present secretary-treasurer) would be a land user. He has a farm and ranch and he uses the land. So, the land users would want him to be an officer on the council, and they would nominate him for one of the salaried officer positions, one of the strong positions on the council. I would be a landowner. I don’t really own a lot of land, but the landowners are the people who aren’t land operators. Here’s where the politics come in. If the land users or operators wanted their man to be the secretary treasurer, the landowners would nominate him for the vice chairman to take him out of that position (the secretary treasurer). He’ll usually accept the nomination. He doesn’t want to decline, because it would look kind of embarrassing if he declined the position for vice chairman and then accepts the nomination for the secretary treasurer. But the land operators would counter act this move by nominating the landowner’s man for the office that he doesn’t want. Then what usually happens is that someone finally nominates a compromise candidate for these officers’ positions. The secretary treasurer is a salaried position. He and the chairman used to be the only salaried officers but now the land chairman is salaried.

If I’m elected this year, I’m going to try to take the politics out of the election of council officers this year. The way it is right now, it’s not good for the council. No one thinks of the chairman dying or resigning from office. They don’t think about this when they nominate or elect the vice chairman. They don’t consider that this person might have to be the chairman sometime for some reason. I’m going to propose to the council that we have these three salaried positions and that we make the land chairman the vice chairman of the council. The vice chairman wasn’t a full-time salaried position before, but if we make the land chairman, who is salaried, the vice chairman, then we’ll have all three officers on the tribal council salaried and full-time positions. These three would be full-time positions.

I believe that the best tribal council would have only three councilmen. But it wouldn’t work here. The tribes wouldn’t accept just three councilmen. They’ll never have it here because there are the two tribes, the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine. The Gros Ventre would never accept two Assiniboine and the Assiniboine would never accept two Gros Ventre on the tribal council. The reason I think three councilmen would be best is that the tribe could support three councilmen.

The tribal income is between $92,000 and $97,000 a year. But the tribal budget (what the tribe spends in a year) is about 2.5 million dollars a year. The rest of the money (above the tribal income) comes from other programs. We get $500,000 a year from Manpower, this is the largest amount of the budget (from a single program). With the tribal budget, it determines how many salaried positions we can put on the council. We could pay three councilmen at a reasonable salary, about a minimum of $12,000 a year for each councilman’s salary. This way the councilmen could afford to leave their personal enterprises. A salary of $12,000 would allow each councilman to devote full time to council business. They could find someone to take over their businesses for them while they are on the council, and it would improve the council. The council could spend all their time working on tribal business. The way it is now, the councilmen have to devote a lot of time to private work and businesses so that they can make some money and feed and support their families. This way the time they can devote to tribal business and the council is limited. That’s why I’d like to see three councilmen that the tribe could afford to give a good salary, and make the council full time positions. Joe McConnel is a rancher, but if he had a salary, full time from the council, and found someone to take over his ranch work, he could devote full time to tribal business.

We should go to a three-man tribal council and throw the elections open to a reservation wide vote, instead of by district representatives and voting. The largest vote from the whole population would get the three council positions.

There are some unwritten rules about the tribal council. When the chairman is Assiniboine, the secretary treasurer is usually a Gros Ventre, and it is the same the other way. There’s nothing written down about this, but that’s the way it usually works with these positions on the council. There have been some cases where the chairman and the secretary treasurer were from the same tribe, but this doesn’t happen often. And when this did happen, there were some cases where one of the people, either the chairman or the secretary treasurer would resign. There’s more movement up and down in the vice chairman position. John Allen was the tribal council chairman before me. He’s from Lodge Pole. He’s a good man.

Can you explain how Hays became incorporated.

Elmer Bigby from the land office can tell you more about it than I can and BJ could tell you more. He has a lot of maps that show streets in Hays and they had names. Hays was set up as a taxable land base by the county. Hays was set up as a town and some parts of Lodge Pole were also incorporated. A lot of people who lived in Hays were delinquent on their tax rolls. When they were delinquent, the tribe started paying their taxes. The tribe took over the taxes for these people. The tribe is asking the county (Blaine) for title to this land. The tribe goes in and asks the Department of the Interior to return this land to the tribe, this land that was on the county tax rolls. After the tribe pays this delinquent tax for three years this land should return to the tribe. The incorporation of Hays has something to do with the 1921 allotment act.

Hays is incorporated. The people who live in Hays pay property taxes. But a lot of people are delinquent on their taxes, and the tribe has taken over payment on this property tax (to the county?). After three years of the tribe paying this tax, the land goes over to the tribe. So, now the tribe owns a lot of this land in Hays. But it’s incorporated. There are streets set up on blueprints with names and everything. That’s the reason why there aren’t recreation facilities in Hays. They complain that there’s nothing down there. There’s not enough land in Hays for us to build on. We could build in Old Hays, but it wouldn’t make any sense to build recreation facilities way out there. Moving it away from Hays contradicts the reasons for having recreation. We’re trying to buy land away from Alan to build recreation facilities on. Alan owns a lot of land in Hays both in front of the store and behind it. It’s a real rip off though. He knows how much money the tribe has and he’s asking a really high price from the tribe for the land. He’s really ripping us off. Another reason that Hays doesn’t have recreation facilities is that they can’t get together. At the Agency, we can get together and make a decision. But the Hays community is really split and they can’t get together. I told them that if they’d sit down together and make a decision about what kind of recreation facilities they would want, we’d try to get it for them. But they just can’t get together about it. I told them to have a town meeting and make a decision. But they can’t do it. They have a problem with the landless Indians, the breeds in Hays, and they’re really split down there. Some say that they won’t go to Urban Rural because that’s a breed place. The community is really split.

What is the population of Gros Ventre and Assiniboine on Ft. Belknap and how does it compare to the off-reservation population?

There are about 800 Assiniboine on the reservation. There are about 300 Assiniboine in Lodge Pole and the rest (500) are in the River District. You could just about double that figure for the off-reservation Assiniboine, about 1600.  There are approximately 1500 Gros Ventre on the reservation and most of them live in the River District. There are about 3,000 Gros Ventre who live off of the reservation. There are some large urban area populations in places like Seattle and Butte. A lot of people went to Butte from here to work in the mines.

How did the districts on the reservation come about, and what was the past distribution of the tribes in these districts and the present distribution?

It’s an interesting story how the districts on the reservation came about. There used to be meetings in each of the districts, in each of these areas. There were general council meetings of the whole tribes. At the meetings of each of these districts, the people would elect representatives to the big council meeting from each district, about three or four people from Lodge Pole and Hays. They sent these people down here, the reservation agents were down here, their headquarters was the River District. These meetings were after the reservation was established. That’s where the districts came from when the constitution was formed. There used to be a Dodson district on the northeastern side of the reservation. There used to be a lot of people who lived in this district, and it was mixed, both Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. They had allotments up there. That’s why they lived there.

After the reservation was formed, the River District was the largest district and Lodge Pole was the smallest district. Hays was large from the standpoint of people, numbers of people. But the River District is the largest and to win an election on the reservation, you have to carry the River district.

Even though Hays is large from the standpoint of people, a lot of people there are landless Indians and they don’t vote on the reservation. There’s a lot of landless influence here in tribal politics and tribal government. They came down here to this area after the Riel Rebellion, they were his people. They are Crees, landless Indians from Canada, and they moved up here to Hays and took up residence in Hays. They were taken in, and there’s been a lot of intermarriage between these landless Indians and the people in Hays. The breed – full blood problem isn’t as bad as it was in the past; it used to be pretty bad. There was a lot of hostility.

There have been other influences in these districts. There has been a shift away from tribalism to individualism. Lodge Pole is still Assiniboine, and the Gros Ventre are still very strong in Hays. Lodge Pole is still very much Assiniboine. Hays is now a mixture of landless and Gros Ventre. The River District is a mixture too. It is a mixture of Gros Ventre and Assiniboine and there’s a lot of intermarriage. The landless Indians are in Hays. I’ve got to give them a lot of credit. They’ve stayed here all these years, and it has been tough on them. They’ve been unwelcome a lot of years and they’ve persevered. They’re still not welcome today, but it is not as bad. They have a strong-hold here and they have a say in tribal affairs. They do have an indirect influence (through intermarriage) but still an influence in tribal affairs.

Susie asked Jack if he thought the landless Indians should be accepted and allowed to stay here on the reservation with acceptance?

According to the strict interpretation of our constitution and the treaties, no. They should not be accepted on the reservation, but through intermarriage here, they have a lot of involvement in tribal affairs.

The Rocky Boy Reservation was established in 1924 for the Chippewa-Cree and the reservation is still all tribally owned. It was never allotted. There are different Chippewa and Cree groups in the United States. There’s the Little Shell Band of Chippewa, the Rocky Boys Band of Chippewa. The Turtle Mountain of North Dakota Chippewa. There are places where they are enrolled. This is the wrong place for them. They just don’t belong here.

What are the districts on the reservation?

The Assiniboine live in Lodge Pole. Hays is mostly Gros Ventre and the River District is mostly a mixture of both Assiniboine and Gros Ventre. I think the reason that the River District is mixed like this is that there were government schools up here at the Agency, and both Gros Ventre and Assiniboine went to the government boarding school. There were and are more Gros Ventre here at the Agency than anybody.

The Assiniboine and Gros Ventre were always waring tribes traditionally. The treaties with the government established the identities of the tribes. With these treaties, the tribes became recognized by the government.

There’s never been a pan-Indian movement, Indian for Indian sake. The treaties kept the tribal identity. There’s always been tribalism, not Pan-Indianism. People don’t ask are you an Indian. They ask, what kind of Indian are you? The American Indian is a very unusual minority, different from all of the other minorities in the United States. The Indian has a unique relationship with the government. They are different from the Chicano and the Black. They have unity in their movements, but there still isn’t a Pan-Indian movement. There’s American Indian tribalism and with all the different tribes, we don’t have the unity that these other groups have. Another difference between the Indian and the other minorities is that the Indian has a land base. The government put up with more from the Indian, too, because we have this land base.

What are the responsibilities of the tribal council. What agencies and departments and programs does it administer?

That’s a tough question. I’ll have to give you some historical background. The first treaty that was made with the Assiniboine was made between the government and the Assiniboine in 1851, the Laramie Treaty. The first treaty made between the government and the Gros Ventre was the Blackfeet Treaty of 1855. Both of these treaties established a common hunting ground for these tribes. And there were land secessions made in the treaties, the tribes gave up land in these treaties with the government. The Ft. Belknap Reservation was established in 1888, and it was ratified in 1889. The reservation was established for both the Assiniboine and the Gros Ventre tribes.

Where did the name Belknap come from?

I don’t really know. There may have been a man who worked under Grant.

The government split up the Assiniboine tribe. They really made two tribes of the Assiniboine by putting them on different reservations, but they were the same tribe. There are the Ft. Peck Assiniboine and the Ft. Belknap Assiniboine. They were split up because they got their rations and commodities from different places. First, they got their rations from Ft. Assiniboine near Havre. Then they moved down near to a Fort near Chinook, and then they moved down here. Since they moved down here, and the reservation was established.

The Milk River was made the northern border of the reservation. The center of the river is the dividing line. By splitting up the Assiniboine this way on two reservations, the government created another tribe from this split.

I gave my son an Indian name this year at one of the pow wows. Some people still give their children Indian names, but a lot don’t. My brother has the name Weasel Moccasin; it is a Blackfoot name from my great grandmother. It came down her way. When he was a kid, he hated that name, and when I would tease him, I would call him Weasel Moccasin. He would go running to my mother and tell her what I called him, and she would tell him, well, that’s your name. Now he likes the name, and he is glad that he was given an Indian name. Plumage isn’t my real name. That name came out of Websters. The mission shortened a lot of the names of the people here. My name was Many Feathers on the Head, but Ebershwieler shortened the name of one of my relatives. He just looked in Websters and changed it to Plumage. This happened to a lot of people. Pipe was Takes The Pipe and Shields was Takes The Shields. These were the original names.

We’re losing a lot of the Indian culture, and a lot has been lost already. But the Assiniboine have more than the Gros Ventre. They have kept more of their culture and their language. There are more Sioux in the area, and they have it easier to keep their language which is a Siouan language.

Much more of the Gros Ventre culture has been lost. There’s almost nothing left of the Gros Ventre language and religion. No one uses the pipes anymore. One of those pipes was once stolen by the Assiniboine and bad things happened to them. I don’t know which pipe it was that they took.

I asked Jack if there was an area of research that he thought I could do that would be of help for the community.

I think it is important to collect as many of the old stories as possible. We’re losing so many stories of our people. I used to know a lot of these stories. I heard a lot of these stories from my grandfather. He was Gros Ventre. When I was just a kid, he lived in our house with us, and we would go into his room, and he’d tell us the same stories over and over again. He was getting very old and sometimes he would lapse into Gros Ventre. He’d forget who he was talking to. So, he’d go for a while telling us the stories in Gros Ventre and then he’d remember we didn’t speak Gros Ventre, and he’d go back to English. I heard these stories so many times.

I was once out with the public health service doctors. I took them out hunting. I was about seven or eight years old. I was telling the doctors some of those stories, and when I was done, one of them told me that I should write them down. They said that if I didn’t write them down, that I would forget them. I didn’t though, because I thought that I heard the stories so many times. There was no way that I would ever forget them. Well, I have forgotten the stories. They’re being lost, and the Gros Ventre language is being lost as is most of the traditional culture. I’m half Gros Ventre and half Assiniboine. My grandmother was Assiniboine, but I learned more about the Gros Ventre ways because my grandfather was Gros Ventre and he lived with us.

I asked Jack if he was going to run for council again in November.

I am up for reelection in November, and I’m not really sure that I’ll run again. I have a few things to consider. In the last eighteen months, I’ve learned so much. I’ve really learned what the position is all about. I could do a lot now on the council. But I wouldn’t just sit on the council. I would only run for the chairman. I would let everyone know that I’m running for the chairman, and if people don’t want me in that position, they shouldn’t vote for me at all. I don’t know if I’m going to run, though, because I have to spend so much time away from my family. I’m always traveling to different meetings, and I have to spend too much time away from my wife and son. And we have another one on the way. I’m not sure yet. I have to make my decision by October 1^st.

I went to a meeting in Billings that was put on by the Northern Cheyenne. It was great. I wish you could have been there. I learned so much in that weekend from the people who were there. McNickle talked about the IRA and we talked about the tribal constitutions. The biggest mistake that was made in dealing with the Indians and the most destructive thing the government did was the Allotment Act. It was passed in 1887, but it came late here to Ft. Belknap, and it would have been worse if it came earlier. But it came late, and that’s what kept it from being much worse here. The Allotment Act was passed on Ft. Belknap in 1921. The General Allotment Act (1887) was the basis for the allotment act on all the reservations that had it. It was the basic guideline for all of the allotment acts passed on the reservations. On each reservation that had the allotment act passed on it had a separate one written specifically for each reservation and tribe. It was the same way with the IRA. All of these acts are on the Congressional Record.

Before the allotment act, the land was owned and used by the tribe communally. But the allotment act changed this relationship. It changed the land relationship from the tribal ownership with individual use to individual ownership and use of the land. It changed the tribe which was communal, and now people have become individualistic. A lot of things have become individual oriented. It used to be tribal and communal oriented.

When the allotment act was passed here in 1921 the people didn’t really understand what it was all about. Individual ownership of land was foreign to them. The land had always been communally owned by the tribe. So, when an individual was given ownership of land in the early days of allotment here, they really didn’t understand it. When they died, they had no will, and they didn’t designate the heirs for their land. They just assumed that all the land they used would go back to the tribe. But the land didn’t revert to the tribe like they thought it would. Since they owned the land as an individual which was a concept foreign to them, the land was passed on to all their heirs. And the land was sometimes split between a lot of people. And there were times when all these people would split up just one acre. The land was passed on this way because the land owners did not write wills before they died, just passing the land onto just their children.

Our land problem isn’t as bad as some other reservations. On Ft. Belknap, the tribe owns or controls between 30-40% of all the land on the reservation. The state has sections 16 and 36 in each township, but on most of this land, we control the acres or have some other way to control the land. There are only four sections on the reservation that the state can get to and use. But when the state took these sections it stated that the land taken were not irrigable and there were no minerals on the land. But the state has been advertising for bids on oil and coal on this land in these sections. We’ve taken them to court now because according to the original agreement these lands weren’t supposed to have any minerals. So, why would they be advertising for bids for coal and oil. This is in the courts now.

Another thing about the state land is when they were taken and how they were taken. In 1921 with the allotment act, sections 16 and 36 from the townships on the reservation were taken by the state. It was taken so the Indian would be assured of a public school education. But in 1924 the Indians were granted US citizenship and then they could have been entitled to a public school education anyway. There are a lot of people who think that the state knew this all along and in 1924 they knew citizenship would be granted but the state got the land.

I have a solution to the land problem that I’d like to see done. But I don’t think the government would go for it and I don’t think the people here are ready for it. We would do so much more with agriculture if the tribe owned all the land on the reservation. We could start an economic development project that would bring in an income for the tribe and would provide jobs for people. And we would develop the agriculture and ranching on the reservation. But there would have to be tribal control of the land to do this. To make it economically, we have to go back to communal ownership of the land and use of the land. It is the only way we’re going to make it with ranching and agriculture here is to go back to socialism, the way it used to be for the Indian. If the government would give the tribe one billion dollars, the tribe could buy back all the land from the individual owners. This may sound like a lot of money but it’s not at all if you consider all the appropriations of money the government makes. The government has rebuilt Japan and Germany after they defeated them militarily and the government built them back into world powers. The Indian were defeated by the government militarily, but they won’t give the Indian enough money to rebuild the society to self-sufficiency. The government would never invest that much money on the Indian.

I asked Jack what I would need to do if I wanted to find out who all the Gros Ventre and who all the Assiniboines were on the reservation?

There is a book that has that information that you can get from the treaty committees. They have a list of everyone enrolled in the Gros Ventre tribe and everyone enrolled in the Assiniboine tribe. Lyman Young is the chairman of the Gros Ventre treaty committee, and Frank Ohlerking is the chairman of the Assiniboine treaty committee. Those treaty committees are unconstitutional. They were set up some time between 1964 and 1968. That was about the time the treaty claims started to come in. There are six Gros Ventre and six Assiniboine on the tribal council and these people on the tribal council are supposed to handle the treaty business for their tribe. The tribal council was set up in 1934, with the Indian Reorganization Act. At the time, the Assiniboine and the Gros Ventre had a lot more of their culture, their language and religion and they were distinct tribes and wanted to keep separate. So, when they set up the council they put on six Gros Ventre and six Assiniboine and these people on the council are supposed to handle their tribe’s treaty claims. Each of these six councilmen are their tribe’s treaty committee. But at the time of the treaty claims were about to come in, there was a lot of distrust of the council and the tribes set up the treaty committees, I believe unconstitutionally. People didn’t trust the council because of the problems with the Ft. Belknap Builders and with the problems that came up with ONAP. There were some money problems. So, because of this distrust of the tribal council, the treaty committees were set up by the people. If you ask John Capture (former chairman of the Gros Ventre treaty committee) about it, and pressed him, he’d admit that they were unconstitutional. But when they set up the committees, I couldn’t stop them. It would have been a very bad move politically. I was just elected to the office, and I was just a young boy. If I had stopped the treaty committees from forming, people would have said that I was just power hungry. If I run again in November, I’ll be in a much better position to do something about it. I’ll stop the treaty committees. Besides that, all future claims will be with the two tribes together. There won’t be any more separate claims like the last ones so there shouldn’t be any need for these treaty committees.

There have been a lot of problems with the committees. The off-reservation people have caused a lot of trouble. I’ve heard a lot of the things they say and a lot of it is just not true. They come in to complain to me, too. They say that they are (off reservation Gros Ventre and Assiniboine) being used in the head count on the reservation for when we get any kind of money here. They say that they should be getting more benefits because they’re included in the count. This just isn’t true at all. They’re included in the head count where they live. We’d like to be able to count them here, but we can’t. When they complain, I invite them to come upstairs and check the books themselves, but of course they don’t come in. They’ll just complain, but they won’t take me up on checking for themselves.

There are three districts on the reservation, Lodge Pole, Hays and the Agency or River Districts. There’s an election in November and there’s going to be a count of all the Gros Ventres and Assiniboines in each of the districts and they’ll find out the numbers, how many Gros Ventres and Assiniboine in each district. Then they’re going to determine how many can be represented from each. Like if they find out that Hays has so many Gros Ventre and no Assiniboine, then there won’t be an Assiniboine representation on the council from Hays. But the council will always have six Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. But this count is useless, because the representatives are elected at large. Everyone votes for all of the councilmen, regardless of he district they are from, so it is ridiculous this way. The people from the River District vote for the councilmen at Hays and Lodge Pole, and the Hays and Lodge Pole people vote for the councilmen from Hays and Lodge Pole. You can’t win the election without carrying the River District. The River District has the largest population on the reservation, Hays is about the same size, but there are a lot of landless Indians in Hays and they can’t vote in these elections.

Susie asked Jack what the reason was for having enrollment here on the reservation?

According to our constitution you have to be one quarter blood to be a Gros Ventre and one quarter blood to be an Assiniboine. And in the constitution the word Indian means either Gros Ventre or Assiniboine, not just any Indian tribe. It does get very confusing because you can be a member of the Ft. Belknap Reservation community and not be a member of the Gros Ventre or Assiniboine tribes. If a person is one eighth Gros Ventre and one eighth Assiniboine, then they are one quarter Indian, according to the meaning of the word Indian in the constitution and they’re a member of the reservation community. So, we have three rolls for enrollment here on the reservation, one for the Gros Ventre (one quarter), one for the Assiniboine (one quarter) and one for the reservation community (any combination of Gros Ventre and Assiniboine that adds up to at least one quarter degree blood).

When a person is enrolled in either of the tribes and in the reservation community there’s no way the tribe can throw him out. He’s enrolled for life. There are only two ways a person can lose their enrollment though, if they become a member of another tribe and receive a per capita payment from the other tribe on another reservation, or if a person applies for citizenship in another country and becomes a citizen in another country. Both of these ways, the person would lose their membership in the tribe and reservation community. It would be involuntary and automatic. A person can also send in a written statement saying that they no longer want to be a member of the tribe and they also give up their membership in the reservation community. The tribal council then erases their membership, and it can never be returned once they give it up.

Enrollment is important for government business on the reservation. It determines who can sit on the council and who can vote and be represented by the council.

There’s a big question now of tribal sovereignty. I believe that the tribes are sovereign. There’s a case in the courts now. It’s a case involving a Pueblo woman. The Pueblo are matrilocal and many ceremonial and ritual positions in their society that require that a person be full blood to hold these positions. This woman was a descendant and there’s been so much intermarriage that they’ve diluted the blood lines. She applied for her kids to be enrolled in the Pueblo tribe, but her request was denied because of degree blood. She has sued the tribe and now it is in the Supreme Court. If the court rules that her kids can be enrolled, then the government has made the decision, the tribal sovereignty becomes the real issue. I believe that the tribes are sovereign and they are the ones who should make the decision about enrollment. I don’t agree with the blood criteria for enrollment, but it is the tribe that should make the decision.

It’s good that you’re teaching GED. We’re working through Sister Kathleen in Hays and Lodge Pole on their GED program. We have been putting so much emphasis on college education and professional training that we’ve forgotten and neglected the high school education. We’ve had a lot of higher education by people from this reservation. It is a good percentage. But the emphasis has been on the other end, and we’ve forgotten the high school degree. Well, now we’ve been looking at the situation, and we have 662 people on the reservation that are without GEDs. We have Bob Swan working on this. We just hired him as an educational consultant and he’s working on the GED program and high school degrees. He’s from Rocky Boy and we’re fortunate to have him. He just received his Phd and he’s only one of a few American Indians from Montana with a PhD. You should go in to see him, and he can tell you a lot more about education. The way that I look at it, no one is too old to get their high school diploma, and no one is too old to go back to college. My brother went back to college when he was in his 40s and he did really well and enjoyed it. It is good for pride, and the knowledge is good to have, even if you go back to school later in life. We have five lawyers who are from Ft. Belknap and out of 5,000 people that’s pretty good (5,000 Gros Ventre and Assiniboine on and off the reservation).

I told Jack that if the tribal council had any ideas for research that they felt would benefit the community, that I would like to consider those areas in my research.

So many of the stories are being lost and they should be saved and maybe videotaped from the old timers before they’re lost. So much of the traditional Gros Ventre culture and language is already lost. Whatever can be salvaged would be good.

I told Jack that I was already collecting some of this information. I told Jack that I wanted the interview with him because I wanted to be certain that my material on the tribal council and tribal government was accurate.

If we don’t get done with the interview, you can just keep coming back for as long as it takes you to get it all done. Just give me about a week’s notice before you come in and we can meet for about an hour or so at a time. I may not be on the council next year. I might not run or I might run and not get reelected, but I’m still willing to do these interviews with you.

I thanked Jack for all the time today and for the interview. “I know that you are very busy and we appreciate that you spent the whole day with us. You were very helpful and have helped us to clear up a lot of issues.”

He said that he knew that we didn’t get all of our questions answered.

You can come back and meet with me as long as you are going to be here. You can do it all year if you want. I’m glad to help you out.

We left the tribal office at 5:00.

Jack dancing to an honor song at the Midwinter Fair Pow Wow to recognize his son receiving an Indian name