In response to the current article on Blackfeet water compacts with the state I would have to say $14.5 million is peanuts for our water. We have accumulated interest on fee land that far exceeds the amount we are being offered for our vital resource. A pattern of resource exploitation has existed since the begining of relations with the whiteman.
It is time for us to put the whiteman in a compromising position to actually deal with Native America the way America can and should. America is big and rich enough to deal with Natives the way they should conduct business. Let's face it, the Cobell case probably will never be resolved in our lifetime.
Why sell out for virtually chump change? In 1883 a quarter of my people starved to death on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana. The provisions that were meant for my people that winter got off the train before they reached us. Why don't we do the same to every white farm and rancher east of the Rockies that survives from our water resources. We have the chips and it is critical that our tribal government recognize that we have the chance to stick this out until they come to us and negotiate in our best terms, not theirs.
The history and patterns of every bacterialistic European nation has been to seek out and create a workforce of every indigenous people on the face of the planet Earth and strip them of their culture and languages and to exploit their natural resources without ever improving the quality of their lives. We are hopefully smarter now and can try to prevent this from happening again and again. Thirty percent of all natural resources lie on reservations in the U.S. When they are done in Iraq and need more oil, where will they go next?