November 25, 2010

• Warrior Woman

  *From November 2005… bc we need to remember the consequences of our choices on this day of Thankfulness…

  “It’s Not Your Money”

  In a land where the Bison and other animals were once plentiful but was now barren, the Blackfoot Indians were confined by barbwire and legislation from 1883-1884. They eat the remains of their seed potatoes and wait for the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) to provide the food supplies they promised. By June, they are eating tree bark and watching the white man’s cattle grazing on the land they used to own before they were left to die behind fences. Almost-A-Dog cut a notch in willow stick as his people died, first the oldest and most revered, then the youngest and the most cherished. Notch after notch, and still they waited for eighteen months. By the time the BIA finally responded, there were 555 notches in the willow and the land was marked by their deaths.

   It’s an old story, and it’s one that formed the young girl-child whose family told her the story of her ancestors when they visited Ghost Ridge. She continues the fight for her tribe’s existence today with the same government that has no remorse for their actions of the past.

   The problem started with the Dawes Act in 1887. There was “an Indian Problem” back then, and the solution was easy- out of sight, out of mind. If you gave them a plot of land and told them to farm it, then you could manage to make everyone happy (except the Indians, and they didn’t count). So they divided the reservation land into plots (giving families 160 acres and single adults 80 acres) and sold the remaining land to the white settlers who wanted it (about 2/3’s of the land was sold without the Tribe’s approval). However, the Indians didn’t get a 160 acre plot of land- they got a 50 acre plot here and another 50 acre plot fifty miles away, making farming the land impossible.

   Well, since the Indians weren’t using the land, those “in charge” decided that they were responsible for putting the land to good use. They “rented” out the land, promising the rent funds would go to the Indians. The Indian Trust started losing land almost immediately after the Dawes Act became a law and everyone got rich- except the Indians. Some years they got a check, some years they didn’t, and they never got an accounting of the use of their land from the federal government. Sometimes, the land was taken away under false pretenses (after they found oil on it or needed the timber), and if the Indians complained, they were told the accounting was too complicated for them to understand (as if they were stupid).

   Elouise Cobell asked to see her account when she was 18 and they told her you needed a degree in accounting to understand it, so she got a degree in accounting. Her fight with the Department of Interiors was just beginning. She has been fighting them since then, using their own tactics and legal system.

   Her class action lawsuit Cobell v Norton is suing the government for the billons of dollars they are supposed to be holding in Trust for her people. This isn’t about reparation for all the wrong doings. This is about a legal accounting of what is rightfully the tribe’s that has been in the care (Trust) of the Federal government.

   Therein lays the nasty web of lies and half-truths. You see, the Trust only keeps records for six years, and then they shred them (according to court testimony), and they claim that the problem is that all the descendants of the original Blackfoot tribes are so multiple that it makes the average check about eight cents, and besides, they don’t have the money. They never had the money, they claim, and the Federal government while spending millions to defend themselves against this lawsuit doesn’t have the money. So who has the Blackfoot tribe’s money? The BIA officials since 1887? The tenants who make tons of money and live in nice houses and drive new trucks while their landlords starve and live in hovels without heat? The Indian employees of BIA who were rewarded for not making waves? The Federal government who treated the trust account like a private piggy bank and the payments like a gift instead of a debt?

   It’s 2005 and the Department of Internal Affairs is still acting like there is a “problem with the Indians” and continues to act shamefully toward the tribal members. The judge hearing the case recently ruled that “The entire record of this canes tells the dreary story of Interior’s degenerate tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian Trust… a story shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception, dirty tricks and out right villainy, the end of which is nowhere in sight.”  Still the Federal government stalls and delays instead of attempting to make things right, and in the meantime, the people are caught in the middle.

   But the girl-child is now a powerful woman, educated in the ways of the white man, retaining her cultural identity. Elouise Cobell has been given the designation of Warrior by her tribe, a rare honor for a woman, as she continues her relentless fight against those who persist in harming her people

  Currently Listening Sacred Spirit, Vol. 2: More Chants and Dances of Native By Sacred Spirit see related

   

  • 9:20 am
  • 3 Comments