And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (S.I.S.I.S.) writes:
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Subject: Please post attached
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 19:34:35 +0200
From: Long Standing Bear Chief <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: LISN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Please read and post the attached results of our Blackfoot Confederacy meeting.
Voices from the Blackfoot Confederacy
regarding illegal Montana counties
and a fraudulent Treaty 7
(Browning, Montana, within the Blackfoot Nation)
Members of the Blackfoot Confederacy met and decided that their primary
objective goal for the coming year will be to educate its people and the
general public about the illegal nature of Glacier and Pondera Counties
with the homeland of the Blackfoot people.
The consensus of opinion according to Long Standing Bear Chief, a spokesman
for the Pikanii Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy, is that exposing the
illegal creation of Glacier and Pondera Counties in 1919 by the State of
Montana will move everyone toward a resolution of the Indians white
problems, past and present, of taxation, jurisdiction, stolen land,
inheritance, and a host of other issues that involve the State of Montana,
its counties, and the United States of America.
The members present also agreed that the lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy
are effectively under occupation under an illegal authority. Reference is
made here to the fact that lands in what are now call Alberta, Canada, by
the whites, were taken under a fraudulent Treaty 7, supposedly signed in
1877 at a place called Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River.
No such thing as a Treaty 7
George Yellow Horn a spokesman from Brocket, Alberta said that his father
Albert Yellow Horn, Cecil Currey of Hobemma, Alberta, and Eugene Steiner of
Saddle Lake, Alberta went to London, England in 1989 to find the original
of Treaty 7 and were unsuccessful in finding it.
In 1990 Eugene Steiner returned to London as instructed in 1889 to meet
with the representatives of Queen Elizabeth ll, only to be told that the
original Treaty 7 did not exist in the royal archives.
In 1877 when Victoria was queen, all treaties had to be stamped with the
Royal Seal and be signed by her. To this day there is no such record of a
stamped original Treaty 7 by Queen Victoria in all of Great Britain
(England) or all of Canada. Indian people have looked in Government of
Canada archives in Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and in the papers of their
ancestral Grandfathers and nothing has been found. Treaty 7 in its original
form never seems to have existed, at least one bearing the Royal Seal and
the signature of the Queen. Without these two qualifications there cannot
be a Treaty 7.
The illegal Montana counties.
In 1789 the new United States of America ratified its Constitution.
In that constitution there is something called the commerce clause that is
interpreted to mean that no state may have jurisdiction over matters
involving Indians or Indian land within the United States.
In 1889 the State of Montana was allowed to be created as a state
by the United States of America. The very first article in the new
constitution of the new State of Montana said that the state could have NO
jurisdiction over Indians or Indian lands without the express approval of
the Congress of the United States.
In 1919 the State of Montana created Glacier and Pondera Counties
within the homeland of the Blackfoot Nation. A nation having treaty
relations with the United States indicative of its status as a nation. In
view of the foregoing citations of law the action taken by the State of
Montana was fraudulent and illegal.
The act of the State of Montana was illegal for another reason: Montana
never obtained the consent of the Blackfoot people to create counties using
their land base.
It was also pointed out at the confederacy meeting that Indians were not
citizens of the United States until 1924. Only the United States government
could have negotiated some kind of treaty agreement with the Blackfoot to
purchase their land to create state counties. This was not done prior to or
in 1919, or since that time.
On a February 17, 1998 Glacier County Attorney Larry D. Epstein said in a
letter to researcher Long Standing Bear Chief: "In direct answer to your
question is, no, the state did not obtain the consent of the Blackfeet
Tribe to create Glacier and Pondera Counties."
A search of the Pondera County archives revealed no record of consent by
the Blackfoot Nation giving its consent to include land within the nation
as the basis, in part, of Pondera County. Again, a patently illegal act.
It was decided that Long Standing Bear Chief and Gene DuBray, both members
of the Blackfoot Nation, should proceed to file a class action type legal
action that would order Glaceir and Pondera County Commissioners to cease
and desist from their illegal and fraudulent activities within the
boundaries of the Blackfoot Nation, called the Blackfeet Indian Reservation
by some.
The foregoing is a press release of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Contact 406-338-2882 or e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more information.
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S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
P.O. Box 8673, Victoria, "B.C." "Canada" V8X 3S2
EMAIL : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
WWW: http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/SISmain.html
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