What an experience!

I’m not sure that anyone except this bunch of Amazons could fit quite so much into one day as we did today!

We started again on our construction project this morning.  One group hammered together the beams and studs for the basement wall that will support the middle of the floor.  The other tackled an even bigger power saw to start cutting the joists and blocking for the floor itself.

We had to make a few readjustments to the baseplates for the walls, and the basement wall to make sure everything was square, but by our finishing time of 2.30pm we had half the joists in place, and the rest cut ready to go the next morning.  Deb and Melissa graduated to working on the power saw today while the rest of the group honed their hammering skills.

We finished early to follow up on an invitation from our speaker the previous night, Carol Murray, to visit the Blackfeet Community College.  It is a truly inspirational place.  They began initially as a satellite of another college, but received their own charter and in just four years they have grown from having four instructors and two hundred students, to 23 instructors and 700 students!

Carol wasn’t there this afternoon, but Julieen who had also been with us the night before took us for a tour.  The college offers two year courses, with students able to complete a four year degree through distance education in special classrooms on the site.  The college also offers Blackfeet cultural and language studies.  Their library is incredible and includes an archive of Blackfeet history that is collecting documentation from around the reservation.

A special highlight is their ceremony room – purpose built to resemble a medicine lodge, with a fireplace for ceremonies.  It was used recently for a “sing”, part of the ceremonial lead up to the Sun Dance, and as a place for students who need support and prayers.

Marvin, the Blackfeet instructor who teaches the Blackfeet language, joined us in the Ceremony room with Julieen for a traditional smudge ceremony – a blessing and a cleansing.  We sat around the circle and Marvin lit a small fire in a pit of dirt with sage and sweet grass.  He gave each of us a small amount of tobacco and after Marvin spoke a prayer in Blackfeet we all went forward in turn and put our tobacco on the flame and waved the smoke towards us with our arms four times.

Traditionally a pipe would have been used in this ceremony, with the smoke carrying our prayer to the Creator.  Men and women would not use the same pipe together, however, so at the college when mixed groups are together they place the tobacco on the flame as we did.  Marvin said the tobacco we used had been passed down in his family since the 17^th century.  When ceremonies were performed, everyone would come forward and place tobacco from their pouch on a block, which was cut and mixed, and then some returned to the main pouch.  That way it was always mixed with what had come before, and continuity remained across the centuries.

On our way back to camp, we stopped at the buffalo jump nearby.  We scrambled under a barbed wire fence and across a horse paddock to reach a canal that had been dug in the early 20^th century.  After balancing across a little timber bridge, we reached the base of the buffalo jump.  We had been told there was an excavated area where you could see the bones of the buffalo.

In old times, Indians would search for a cliff on the plains, preferably just over a small rise, and then create driving lanes with small cairns of rocks or bushes.  They would scare a herd of buffalo into a stampede into the driving lanes and then over the cliffs, where they could be finished off and slaughtered.

This buffalo jump had been in use for time immemorial.  One group scoured a likely spot at the base of the cliff, while Deb, Donna, Melissa and a couple of others climbed the cliff face itself almost to the top.  Those at the bottom quickly found a pile of buffalo relics – teeth and bone.  It was amazing to stand there and imagine the buffalo being driven over the cliff, and the Blackfeet camp that would have been by the river.  To hold the buffalo bones and realize they were there from the time that the Blackfeet still ruled the plains and lived their traditional life.

We made our way back to the cars, and then back to camp for dinner and our speaker, Elouise Cobell.

Elouise’s story was incredible, and there is not space in this blog to do it justice.  For full details, visit www.indiantrust.com .  After settlers came to the Blackfeet lands, up to two thirds of the people died progressively through disease and starvation, and from a territory that originally covered from Edmonton in Canada, down to Yellowstone in the United States, the remainder of the Blackfeet were contained within a reservation of 1.5 million acres in Montana behind barbed wire fences.

Part of the land was held in a trust for the whole tribe, and the remainder was divided into individual allotments by the government, which was allocated to tribe members.  The allotment scheme was without logic, with some receiving 40 acres in the mountains, and then 100 acres miles away on the plains with no method of moving between them.  Eventually the government took control of the individual allotments placing them in a Trust, with any income from leases or royalties supposed to be returned to the individual owners.

In Elouise’s childhood she remembered hearing her parents and their friends talking about the fact that they could see the farmers who had leased their land harvesting grain, but they had received no payment.  After her return from college, she took on the role of Treasurer for the Blackfeet Nation and began to see statements for those individual allotments that made no sense.

Eventually what emerged was evidence of corruption and mass mismanagement of the individual trusts.  No accounting systems were in place for their management, there was no way to see what income was owed, records had been destroyed and lost so ownership of land was in some cases unclear, and billions of dollars was missing.

Elouise launched the largest class action suit against the Federal Government in history seeking the implementation of proper accounting processes, the provision of statements back to the 1880s for all individual allotments, and restitution of missing payments.

The case has been fought tooth and nail by the government, with Elouise winning all judgements until the last two – one in relation to implementing IT security for those accounts, and the other an appeal by the government to remove the judge who had ruled in favour of the suit so far.

Amazingly this individual trust system is still operating today.  Blackfeet families live in poverty on allotments with oil wells in their backyard, without receiving royalty income, or knowing what the leases entail.

The Federal Treasury itself has admitted in court that at one time it held $180 billion in payments due to Indians but could not get the information from other government departments on who it was to be sent to, so they used it to pay off the national debt.

Elouise is continuing the fight on behalf of all Indian tribes in the country.  At the same time she has been involved in the establishment of the Native American Bank, and is working with Patti, a local Blackfeet banker and one of the volunteers who has been with us each night, to set up financial education schemes in schools so that their people will never again be placed in this situation.

We were amazed by the strength and courage of these people, to overcome not only historical injustices but those happening right now.  To fight for justice and their rights, but at the same time to develop and grow initiatives like the Blackfeet Community College and the Native American Bank to create their own future. It was particularly inspiring to see the way women such as Elouise, Patti and Carol, have taken such leadership roles in the future of their people.

For more information: www.indiantrust.com and www.nativeamericanbank.com.