Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 9-23-15

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
9-23-15

Robert C. Juneau   

To the Editor:  
I found a great quote in a book called 1776 by David McCullough.  In the book McCullough 

quotes from the play Cato by Joseph Addison which goes,"Tis not in mortals to command 

success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." I believe this quote applies very 

well to the B.E.A.R cause because no truly rational, logical mind can examine it and
say that it is not Just.   B.E.A.R  will succeed but even if it does not future Historians
and Anthropologists will say that B.E.A.R was on the right side of History.  The Enrolled
Blackfeet who have not yet signed the B.E.A.R Petition have a opportunity that does come 

along often in the History of a Tribal Nation.  If you asked most people today who count
themselves as Patriotic Americans' do they wished they had an ancestor that had been a
signer of The Declaration of Independence.  The answer would be yes.  However most people today do not know that when the American Revolutionary War was happening only one-third of the population was actually on the side of the Patriots.  One third was on the side of the Loyalists and the other third was sitting on the fence awaiting the outcome of the war.  The men who signed The Declaration of Independence were well aware that by doing so if they lost the war they would be hanged as traitors to the Crown, their property confiscated, and their families impoverished.  It was not the massively popular war that we believe it to be today with lots of money and support for the troops.  Many of the leaders of the Continental Congress like John Adams were worried that the Revolution was going to fail through most of it.  The troops had very little food or proper clothing for most of the war.  Some soldiers even had to walk barefoot, feet bleeding in the middle of winter because they had no shoes.  Native Americans' were among them from tribes like the Oneida and Tuscarora.  Polly Cooper, an Oneida Woman, brought wagon loads of white corn for starving Continental Soldiers to eat at Valley Forge in 1777. She taught them how to prepare and cook it.  When the Warriors that came with her left to go back home she 

stayed behind to take care of the sick soldiers and pass on knowledge of medicinal herbs and plants.  She refused any pay for her services so as a thank you some of the wives of the Continental Army Officers bought her a beautiful black shawl as a gift.  The Oneidas' still have it today.  The Founding Fathers also used Native American Tribes as examples of how Union and freely elected Democratic government can work.  So supporting a cause that a person believes in can sometimes come with a risk.  However had those men not taken that risk they would have had to submit to whatever the King wanted to do with them.  So neutrality only brings safety to those who had no belief in that cause in the first place while it does bring regret to those who did when the danger has passed and they did nothing to support it.  Choices are made by individuals everyday and collectively those choices can add up to a big impact on the world we leave behind to future generations of Blackfeet.  We should ask ourselves constantly what kind of world we want to leave to our future generations.  Do we want to leave them a world of poverty, pain, and suffering?  Or do we want to leave them a Blackfeet Nation where they can grow up happy?  Should B.E.A.R not succeed the Blackfeet will be in ruins by the year 2080 and our future generations landless and without Tribal government to represent them.  When that happens I think they will wonder why those who had the power to stop it with a mere signature on the B.E.A.R Petition and a vote for it in the Secretarial Election did not do so.  

To get a copy of the B.E.A.R Petition to sign you can call Deena McDonald at (406)450-3645 or contact B.E.A.R on Facebook at the Blackfeet Descendants Group or B.E.A.R.       

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 7-10-14

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor   

7-10-14

Robert C. Juneau   

To the Editor: 

I was reading a book recently called War Against The Weak

Eugenics And America’s Campaign To Create A Master

Race by Edwin Black and on pg.xvi-xvii it says,”Eventually,

America’s eugenic movement spread to Germany as well,

where it caught the fascination of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi

movement.  Under Hitler, eugenics careened beyond any

American eugenicist’s dream.  National Socialism transduced

America’s quest for a “superior Nordic race” into Hitler’s

drive for an “Aryan master race.” The Nazis were fond of

saying “National Socialism is nothing but applied biology,”

and in 1934 the Richmond Times-Dispatch quoted a prominent

American eugenicist as saying,”The Germans are beating us at

our own game.” Nazi eugenics quickly outpaced American

eugenics in both velocity and ferocity.  In the 1930s, Germany

assumed the lead in the international movement.  Hitler’s

eugenics was backed by brutal decrees, custom designed IBM

data processing machines, eugenical courts, mass sterilization

mills, concentration camps, and virulent biological anti-Semiticism-

all of which enjoyed the open approval of leading American

eugenicists and their institutions.  The cheering quieted, but only

reluctantly, when the United States entered the war in December

of 1941.  Then, out of sight of the world, Germany’s eugenic

warriors operated extermination centers.  Eventually, Germany’s

eugenic madness led to the Holocaust, the destruction of the

Gypsies, the rape of Poland and the decimation of all of Europe. 

But none of America’s far-reaching scientific racism would

have risen above ignorant rants without the backing of corporate

philanthropic largess.” Blood Quantum was created by Scientific

Racism.  The Nazis also believed in the concept of Blood Quantum. 

My father, Bob Juneau, Sr., told me when he attended school in

Browning, MT in the 1960s the Juinor High was segregated

according to Blood Quantum.  White, Half-Breed, and Full-Bood

students were categorized and put into different classrooms. 

White students were in Group 1.  Half-Breed students were in

Group 2, and Full-Blood students were in Group 3.  Scientific

Racism promotes the belief that those with the most white blood

are the most intelligent and that one racial group is and should

be treated as superior to another.  As a people, we the Blackfeet,

need to reject Scientific Racism and embrace our Blackfeet

Descendants as Full Members of the tribe with the same rights

And privileges as all other members of the tribe.  Many of the

Blackfeet Descendants are heirs to Blackfeet land and will

have to be Enrolled at some point in time.  Sooner is better

than later.  I encourage all of the Enrolled Blackfeet Members

to sign the Blackfeet Enrollment Amendment Reform (B.E.A.R)

Petition and let the issue come to a Secretarial Vote.  You can

get a copy of the Petition by contacting us at our group on

Facebook called Blackfeet Descendants Group or B.E.A.R

or by calling Deena McDonald at 406-450-3645.

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 3-6-14

To the Editor:  

I was reading an article recently in Indian Country Today entitled The Ugliness of Indian-on-Indian Racism from February 13, 2014 written by Dina Gilio-Whitaker who is a Freelance Writer and research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies in Olympia, Washington.  In the article she says,"The use of the term breed is of course predicated not on Native concepts of identity and belonging through kinship and relatedness  but on settler colonialism's construct of blood quantum.  It is no small irony that is the same racist logic of the Social Darwinists of the nineteenth century who equated higher Indian blood quantum with evolutionary inferiority, an ideology that justified the genocidal practices of the U.S. government and led to the massive land theft and assimilationist policies of the Dawes era.  Colonialism's legacy on Indian people is manifest in a multitude of ways on the political, institutional, and personal levels.  The psychological ramifications are legion as evidenced by a well established body of literature on postcolonial psychology and intergenerational posttraumatic stress disorder.  Among the effects are internalized 

oppression characterized on the individual level by self-hatred, often surfacing as violence within the oppressed group.  Violence is closely associated with mental illness.  Another way of linking these concepts is to say that colonialism is responsible for the bulk of what shows up as mental illness in Indian Country.  But violence can take other forms not limited to physical acts.  Racism is a form of psychological violence when perpetrated by anyone.  When Indians exhibit intra-cultural racism it is an exercise of internalized oppression, i.e. self-hatred, outwardly directed.  It is the manifestation of a colonized mind." The Blackfeet need to get rid of Blood Quantum as an Enrollment Criteria.  It is immoral because it denies the vote and the right to run for office to the Blackfeet Descendants.  It is impractical because it divides the tribe and will cause it to go extinct by the year 2080.  The way to avoid this is for the Enrolled Blackfeet Tribal Members who have not already done so to sign the Blackfeet Enrollment Amendment Reform (B.E.A.R) Petition and 

let the tribe vote on the issue.  There is a webpage on Facebook called Blackfeet Descendants Group where members of B.E.A.R can be contacted for a copy of the petition.  In closing Dina says in her article,"Colonization is a mental prison that draws no boundaries based on blood quantum.  Full or mixed blood, we have all been affected.  The common ground we share is the history of our families having been ripped apart, our languages stolen and our cultures violently disrupted.  When we judge each other based on our genetics all we do is keep ourselves trapped in a prison of someone else's making.  And what is that if not a form of insanity?"  

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 1-30-14

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor  
1-30-14

Robert C. Juneau  

To the Editor:  

I was reading a book recently called Montana Before History 11,000 years of 

Hunter Gatherers in the Rockies and Plains by University of Montana Anthropology 

Professor Douglas H. MacDonald and on page 155 it says," Ethnographic, linguistic, 

and archaeological data support Blackfeet presence in northwestern Montana for 

at least 2,000 years.  Blackfeet origin stories point to an eastern origin within the last 

2,000 years, and the Blackfeet language is similar to Algonquian dialects found in 

the northern Midwest.  Archaeological sites may indicate even longer-term residence 

in northwest Montana and nearby areas, possibly extending back 3,000 years or more.  

For example, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Southern Alberta shows a sequence 

of occupations beginning in the Archaic period and continuing well into the Late Prehistoric 

period.  Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the earliest Archaic occupations are associated 

with some other tribe, such as the ancestral Salish or Kootenai, and that the Blackfeet 

arrived during the Late Prehistoric period." The Blackfeet have a rich and ancient History 

on the ground where they currently reside which dates back to the rise of the Roman 

Empire.  The myth about our History and culture is that it is static and unchanging.  

I learned in the Anthropology classes that I took at the University of Montana that all 

cultures are dynamic and always changing in order to survive.  The Blackfeet began 

hunting Buffalo in large groups on foot and using dogs with travois to transport their 

shelter and belongings.  Then the horse arrived in America and the Blackfeet adopted 

both the horse and the rifle for hunting, self-defense, and warfare.  They studied their 

environment discovering new plants for medicine and using the stars for navigation at 

night.  Then when the Blackfeet could no longer live off hunting the Buffalo they had to 

adapt again to life under a dominant Anglo-American culture by becoming Farmers and 

Ranchers.  Becoming so good at Ranching Businessmen came all the way from Chicago, 

Illinois to buy the Blackfeets' beef.  Very few indigenous peoples in the History of the world 

have accomplished that kind of a transition from a Native culture to survival and adaptation 

in the face of a different economy and culture.  The Blackfeet Language has also changed 

to include things that did not exist prior to the beginning of the Reservation like radio and 

television.  The Blackfeet have always adopted the best technology and ways of living while 

retaining a core culture so why not adopt a Enrollment Criteria that works the best for all of 

the people?  A Enrollment Criteria that will include all of the Blackfeet Descendants and 

provide a means for tribal members to marry whoever they want Native or Non-Native and 

still be able to get their children enrolled.  Blood Quantum does not exist and will not work 

for our people as a Enrollment Criteria.  I believe signing the B.E.A.R petition is the way 

to do this and I encourage all Blackfeet Enrolled Members to sign it.  There is a Blackfeet 

Enrollment Amendment Reform (B.E.A.R) page on Facebook for those who need to 

contact us.    

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 12-26-13

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor   

12-26-13

Robert C. Juneau  

To The Editor:   

I was reading a article entitled Whiteness As Property published in the Harvard Law Review and on page 1721-1722 it says,"Although the Indians were the first occupants and possessors of the land of the New World, their racial and cultural otherness allowed this fact to be reinterpreted and ultimately erased as a basis for asserting rights in land.  Because the land had been left in its natural state, untilled and unmarked by human hands, it was "waste" and, therefore, the appropriate object of settlement and appropriation.  Thus, the possession maintained by the Indians was not "true" possession and could safely be ignored. This interpretation of the rule of first possession effectively rendered the rights of first possessors contingent on the race of the possessor.  Only particular forms of possession those that were characteristic of white settlement-would be recognized and legitimated.  Indian forms of possession were perceived to be too ambiguous and unclear.  The Blood Quantum issue relates to this because without Tribal recognition Blackfeet Descendant land will be vulnerable to taxation by the State of Montana.  The 

State of Montana has already taken half a million acres of Blackfeet land and Mineral Rights.  If the State of Montana legally takes land from a Blackfeet Descendant the Blackfeet Tribe can never get it back.  The Blackfeet Tribe could lose possibly up to another quarter of it's landbase.  If you study the History of the United States debt has always been a effective means for State governments to get tribal lands.  If the Blackfeet Descendants were enrolled the land would be safe under Federal recognition and in Tribal Trust.  The tribe would get more money in State Compacts on things like taxes on gas, alcohol, and tobacco.  Right now the tribe gets nothing for Descendants because only Enrolled Members are counted in agreements.  The Blackfeet would get more money for Treaty Obligation Funds which would mean more money for all Federal programs serving the Blackfeet on the Reservation.  The choice is simple enroll the Blackfeet Descendants and get more money and land ensuring the survival of the tribe long into the future.  Or keep going with Blood Quantum and lose all of our land, members, and go extinct.  The answer to this problem is for the Blackfeet Enrolled Members to sign the B.E.A.R. Petition and let the issue come to a Secretarial Vote.  

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 11-8-13

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor  

11-8-13

Robert C. Juneau 

To The Editor:  

The intent of our Blackfeet Ancestors was always the survival of the tribe which is partly what they negotiated for in the 1896 Agreement.  They made sure the Mixed Bloods were included and recognized by the United States Government as Enrolled Members of the Tribe thus establishing the right of the Blackfeet to set their own standards for Enrolled Membership in the Tribe.  Blood Quantum never entered in to their thinking.  Blood Quantum was never adopted as a Criteria of Membership until 1962.  In the Minutes of Negotiations of the 1895 Blackfeet Treaty at the Blackfeet Agency in Montana on September 21, 1895 a Blackfeet Man named Three Suns says,"At the last treaty, the government bought a large tract of land, and it has now sent you to by more land.  I wish, not only to be benefitted, but to have my children pleased, by reason of the treaty that we are about to make.  We will apprach each other with caution.  We are to sell some land that is of little use to us, and we want the price to be satisfactory to all, -the full bloods and the mixed bloods.  It is not for myself that I speak, but for the rising generation.  If you wish to give a good price, we will be pleased.  The responsibility rests on us,-not on the 

rising generation.  We have selected a few mixed bloods and whited to help us in matters that we do not understand.  Mr. Conrad and Major Steell have been chosen and you may talk with them." The intent and the purpose of Blood Quantum as a Enrollment Criteria is to eventually choke the Blackfeet Tribe out of existence.  In the Wisconsin Women's Law Journal Lucy A. Curry published a article called A Closer Look At Santa Clara Pueblo V. Martinez: Membership By Sex, By Race, And By Tribal Tradition that says on page 187-188,"One's racial identity has defined the scope of one's rights and privileges in Anglo-American culture.  For Indian tribes, racial identity has relegated them to an inferior and dependent status within the dominant sovereign.  The ideologies and laws of the federal government, which granted tribes sovereignty to self-govern and exclude nonmembers, were based on Anglo-American notions of race; the ways in which the Pueblo "chose" to exclude individuals from membership was, and still remains, an important way in which the federal government defines racial identity.  Critical race theorists and other social constructionists have greatly contributed to our understanding of the historic and current cultural meanings given to race.  Scholar John Calmore explains that critical race theory has as its premise a recognition that "'race' is not a fixed term.  Instead, 'race' is a fluctuating, decentered complex of social meanings that are formed and transformed under the constant pressures of political struggle.  Although our understanding of race has been created by the legal and social relations between people in the United States, the races were treated as natural, objective categories of biological essentialism governed by blood, with white blood as the naked preference.  By using "objective fact" and natural law, race is made determinant of rationality, superiority, and privilege." Our Blackfeet Ancestors, the signers of the 1896 Agreement, intention for their descendants was for all of their children to be included in the tribe regardless of Blood Quantum which does not scientifically exist anyway.  The Enrolled Members of our tribe should honor the intentions of our Ancestors not the product of Scientific Racism Blood Quantum and sign the BEAR Petition so the issue can come to a Secretarial Vote.  

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 10-13-13

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor  
10-13-13
Robert C. Juneau 

To the Editor:  
In order to be truly sovereign a tribe must define for itself what 
criteria to use for it's membership.  Nations do not decide for 
other Nations what the content for their membership criteria 
should be.  Only the colonized have their membership criteria 
decided for them by a outside power.  Recently I was reading 
an article called A Closer Look At Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez:  
Membership By Sex, By Race, And By Tribal Tradition by 
Lucy A. Curry published in the Wisconsin Women's Law 
Journal and on page 190 it says,"However entrenched in 
ideologies was the subordination of races during colonization, 
"racial lines were neither consistently nor sharply delineated 
among or within all social groups." "The social meanings and 
legal entitlements that were breathed into racial identity in the 
race trials of the nineteenth-century South provide a context 
in which to illuminate the similarities between the ways in which 
Anglo-American whites have historically tried to preserve their 
racial purity and privilege and the ways in which Congress has 
and still does establish criteria for the requisite "Indian-ness." 
On page 162 Curry says,"Accounting for the ancestry and 
blood quantum of an individual to define one's identity has a 
long, disastrous history in U.S. law.  While it is unclear when 
the importance of blood quantum gained acceptance among 
certain Indian tribes, the federal government has pressed for 
its use as an organizational tool since the General Allotment 
Act of 1887." Curry goes on to say on page 194,"The legislative 
obsession with ancestry marked the beginning of the statutory 
regime of blood quantum, whereby "Indian" status was codified 
as a racial identity, not a political identity." The Blackfeet people 
as a whole should decide what criteria they want to use for 
Enrollment.  I believe the Blackfeet Enrollment Amendment 
Reform (BEAR) Petition gives our people a chance to do this 
and I encourage all Enrolled Blackfeet to sign it.  

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 9-25-13

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor   

9-25-13

Robert C. Juneau 

To the Editor: 

I was recently reading a article from the Stanford Law Review written by
Eric Beckenhauer entitled Redefining Race:  Can Genetic Testing Provide
Biological Proof of Indian Ethnicity?  In the article it says on Page 170,
"How blood quantum requirements are harmful to Indians for three principle
reasons.  First, due to intermarriage and admixture among cultures, subsequent
Indian generations face great difficulty in meeting even loose blood quantum
membership criteria, since the average blood quantum of their populations is
inevitably diluted.  Second, as individual Indians fall below minimum blood

percentage cutoffs, they lose eligibility for essential federal services, such as

healthcare.  Third, to the extent that the term "Indian" should be socially-not

biologically-defined, blood quantum requirements are over exclusive and,

some argue, genocidal." For these reasons and more the Blackfeet need to

get rid of Blood quantum as a requirement for enrollment.  Saving our landbase

is another as the Blackfeet Descendants will inevitably be heirs to Tribal land

from their parents.  When that happens that land will eventually pass from Trust

to Fee status.  Once the land is in Fee status it can be taxed by the State of

Montana and taken away.  If it is legally taken away the Blackfeet can never

get it back.  Membership is another consideration on page 175 of Beckenhauer's

article it says, "Blood quantum requirements raise the additional problem that,

given the inevitable march of time, they will be rendered useless since they

threaten to vastly diminish tribal rolls by the end of this century." The way to

avoid this is for the Blackfeet Enrolled Members to sign the Blackfeet Enrollment

Amendment Reform (BEAR) Petition and let the issue come to a vote.   

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 11-25-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
11-25-12
Robert C. Juneau  

To the Editor:  
The intention of the Blood Quantum has always been to legally extinguish the Blackfeet as 
a people.  Patricia Nelson Limerick says in her book The Legacy of Conquest,"Set the blood 
quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indianness, let intermarriage proceed as it had for centuries, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence.  When that happens, the federal government will be free of its persistent "Indian problem. (338)" Paul Spruhan says in his South Dakota Law Review article entitled A Legal History of Blood Quantum in Federal Indian Law to 1935,"However, members of Congress, especially Senator Wheeler of Montana, objected to the one-quarter standard:  
I do not think the government of the United States should go out there and take a lot of 
Indians in that are quarter bloods and take them in under this act.  If they are Indians in 
the half blood then the government should perhaps take them in, but not unless they are. 
If you pass it to where they are quarter blood Indians and want to be put on the government 
rolls, and in my judgement it should not be done.  What we are trying to do is get rid of the Indian problem rather than add to it.(46)" Lucy A. Curry writes in her Wisconsin Women's Law Journal article called A Closer Look At Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez:  Membership By Sex, By Race, And By Tribal Tradition,"Even after the IRA, when the federal government officially and formally recognized tribes and Indians with a political rather than a racial distinction, the racial (and thus perceived inherent) difference between Indians and whites still controls the boundaries of tribal powers from their roots in the Eurocentric Doctrine of Discovery.  Therefore, as Professor Robert A. Williams, Jr. eloquently stated, the Indian's self-governing and self-defining vision is recognized, however, only as long as the tribes' desires are consistent with the interests, express or implied, of the European- 
derived vision of the superior sovereign.  [T]his form of discourse enforces a highly 
efficient process of legal auto-genocide, the ultimate hegemonic effect of which is to 
instruct the savage to self-extinguish all troublesome expressions of difference that diverge 
from the white man's own hierarchic, universalized worldview.(199)" The Blackfeet need 
to decide for themselves what the best criteria as to the preservation of their membership 
and landbase is going to be.  The BEAR Petition offers the best solution so far to this 
question.  

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 10-13-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
10-13-12
Robert C. Juneau   

To the Editor:  
In my previous Letter to the editor I quoted a story called,"The Big Game," from a American 
Indian Quarterly article called Indigenous Identity What is it, and Who really has it?  by 
Hilary N. Weaver.  "The Big Game," is a story Weaver was told by her father about the Lakota and the Navajo at a all-native basketball tournament championship game.  Neither 
Native basketball team could prove to the satisfaction of the other that they were true 
authentic Native American people.  The argument ends in stalemate with the game being canceled and no champion declared for that year.  In this letter I would like to recount six of the lessons explained by Weaver about the meaning of the story from the article.  The first is identity is always based on power and exclusion.  The second was,"all the players see themselves as indigenous people, yet the ways in which they define themselves are contested by others.  A stalemate occurs when it becomes impossible to reach an agreement between self-definitions and external definitions of identity(245)." The third is,"the players are members of teams.  The teams validate and reinforce each member's identity as a basketball player, just as Native communities validate and reinforce the identities of their members.  Being part of a larger group is critical to identity in both cases(246)." Fourthly, "The way we choose to define ourselves is often not the way that others define us.  "The Big 
Game" is an example of how conflicting definitions of identity can lead to hostilities.  When the members of one team identify themselves with enrollment cards, this is perceived as a threat to the self-defined identities of those without cards.  Likewise, when the other team 
asserts that identity is grounded in the ability to speak an indigenous language, this threatens the self-perceptions of those who speak only English.  Searching for the "right" 
criteria is both counterproductive and damaging(247)." Fifthly,"The conflict in the story 
"The Big game" illustrates the difficulty inherent in measuring identity by any one standard 
(249)." And sixthly,"Through internalized oppression/colonization, we have become our own worst enemy.  The hateful accusations that are hurled at some serve to hurt our communities.  "The Big Game" illustrates this point.  It is a story of the pain we inflict on each other as a result of internalized colonization(252)."

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 9-21-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 
9-21-12
Robert C. Juneau  

To the Editor: 
Recently I read an article entitled Indigenous Identity What is it, and Who really has it? by 
Hilary N. Weaver. It was published in American Indian Quarterly Spring 2001 volume 25 
number 2. In the article she recalls a story told to her by her father called "The Big Game." 
The story on pages 241-242 begins like this,"The day had come for the championship game in the all-Native basketball tournament. Many teams had played valiantly, but on the last day the competition came down to the highly competitive Lakota and Navajo teams. The tension was high as all waited to see which would be the best team. Prior to the game, some of the Lakota players went to watch the Navajos practice. They were awed and somewhat intimidated by the Navajos' impressive display of skills. One Lakota who was particularly anxious and insecure pointed out to his teammates that some of the Navajo players had facial hair. "Everyone knows that Indians don't have facial hair," he stated. Another Lakota added that some of the Navajos also had suspiciously dark skin. They concluded, disdainfully, that clearly these were not Native people and, in fact, were probably a "bunch of Mexicans." The so-called Navajos should be disqualified from the tournament, leaving the Lakota team the winner by default. That same afternoon, some Navajo players went to watch the Lakota team practice. The Lakotas had a lot of skillful moves that made the Navajos worry. One Navajo observed,"That guy's skin sure looks awful light." Another added,"Yeah, and most of them have short hair." They concluded, disdainfully, that clearly these were not Native people and, in fact, were probably a "bunch of white guys," The so-called Lakotas should be disqualified from the tournament, leaving the Navajos the winners by default. The captains from both teams brought their accusations to the referee just before game time. Both teams agreed that Native identity must be established before the game could be played and that whichever team could not establish Native identity to everyone's satisfaction must forfeit. The Lakota captain suggested that everyone show his tribal enrollment card as proof of identity. The Lakotas promptly displayed their "red cards," but some of the Navajos did not have enrollment cards. The Lakotas were ready to celebrate their victory when the Navajo captain protested that carrying an enrollment card was a product of colonization and not an indicator of true identity. He suggested that the real proof would be a display of indigenous language skills, and each Navajo proceeded to recite his clan affiliation in the traditional way of introducing himself in the Navajo language. Some of the Lakotas were able to speak their language, but others were not. The teams went back and forth proposing standards of proof of identity, but each proposed standard was self-serving and could not be met by the other team. As the sun began to set, the frustrated referees canceled the championship game. Because of the accusations and disagreements that could not be resolved there would be no champion in the indigenous tournament." I wanted to share this story with the Blackfeet hopefully as helpful tool for figuring out the answer to the Enrollment question which is who is a Blackfeet and who is not?

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 9-5-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor  
9-5-12
Robert C. Juneau  

To the editor:  
Charles Darwin once said in his book Voyage of the Beagle,"If the misery of our poor be 
caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." Blood Quantum 
is a product created by Scientific Racism.  In a Wisconsin Women's Law Journal article 
entitled A Closer look at Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez:  Membership By Sex, By Race, 
And By Tribal Tradition by Lucy A. Curry on Page 187-188 it says,"The ideologies and 
laws of the federal government, which granted tribes sovereignty to self-govern and 
exclude nonmembers, were based on Anglo-American notions of race; critical race 
theorists and other social constructionists have greatly contributed to our understanding of the historic and current cultural meanings given to race.  Scholar John Calmore explains that critical race theory has as its premise a recognition that "'race' is not a fixed term.  Instead,'race' is a fluctuating, decentered complex of social meanings that are formed and transformed under the constant pressures of political struggle." Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez is a U.S. Supreme Court case which grants tribes the right to determine their own membership.  In American Indian Quarterly an article entitled Indigenous Identity What is it, and who really has it?  Hilary N. Weaver says on Page 240 there are,"three facets of identity-self-identification, community identification, and 
external identification," and on Page 247-248," The way we choose to define ourselves 
is often not the way that others define us.  When the practice of defining Native identity 
by blood quantum is combined with the highest rate of intermarriage of any group 
(75 percent), Native people seem to be on a course of irreversible absorption into the 
larger U.S. society.  Scholars such as Jaimes and Rose suggest that the federal government has an interest in the statistical extermination of indigenous people, thereby 
leading to an end to treaty and trust responsibilities." Blood Quantum doesn't work.  Our 
tribe should choose one that does like the one suggested by BEAR. 

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 8-2-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
8-2-12
Robert C. Juneau  

To the Editor:  
The Blackfeet have one of the strongest treaties of all the tribes in the United States.  The 
Blackfeet signed what is called a negotiated treaty which means the Blackfeet were not 
defeated in a war and therefore negotiated from a position of strength and paid for the land that we are supposed to own today with land cessions.  We have what is called a, 
"bought and paid for reservation." It can never be taken away from the Blackfeet without 
the consent of the Blackfeet people.  Marquette University History Professor Francis 
Paul Prucha says in his book American Indian Treaties The History of A Political 
Anomaly on Page 16,"What kept the anomaly of the treaties alive was the enduring 
quality in the American character that upheld the faith and honor of the nation.  
Government officials, in the early years of the republic especially, were conscious that 
the United States was an experiment in republican government, watched by the whole 
world.  If the treaty contracts were not lived up to by the federal government, there would 
be an indelible stain on the honor of the country and its citizens.  Moreover, there was 
a deep consciousness that the United States was a Christian nation and that not only 
would it lose its religious innocence by dealing unfairly with the Indians but that God in 
his justice would punish the nation if it left the path of righteousness by violating 
"sacred" treaties."  In the Final Report of the American Indian Policy Review Commission 
May 17, 1977 the Commission stated,"The fundamental concepts which must guide 
future policy determination are:  
1.That Indian tribes are sovereign political bodies, having the power to determine their 
own membership and power to enact laws and enforce them within the boundaries of 
their reservations,".  
When it comes to changing the Enrollment Criteria the Blackfeet are on solid legal ground and can do so whenever they want. 

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 7-20-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
7-20-12  
Robert C. Juneau   

To the Editor: 
The Blood Quantum is rooted in English Common Law and Sceintific Racism yet many 
Native Americans continue to believe it comes from Native Tradition. Authors John Rockwell 
Snowden, Wayne Tyndall and David Smith say in their Nebraska Law Review article entitled 
American Indian Sovereignty and Naturalization: It's a Race Thing on Page 175,"Descent and 
blood quantum are a particularly European fascination used most often to justify and maintain 
the oppression of others. Like colonialism, its hand-maiden, racism is generally prohibited among 
the world's nations. As a result: [S]ubterfuge designed to create false appearances are an essential aspect of maintaining and perfecting the order of colonial rule. Hence, it is necessary for the colonizer not merely to preempt the sovereignty of the colonized, but to co-opt it, inculcating a comprador consciousness among some segment of the subaltern population in which the forms of dominion imposed by colonization will be advocated as a self-determining expression of will emanating from the colonized themselves. Paul Spruhan in his South Dakota Law Review article entitled A Legal History of Blood Quantum In Federal Indian Law To 1935 said on Page 4,"To understand the federal use of blood quantum, it is important to recognize its antecedents. The use of fractional amounts of blood to describe ancestry long predates the question of mixed-race ancestry. An ancient rule of English common law distinguishes between "whole blood" and "half blood" relatives for purposes of inheritance." One of the earliest examples of Blood Quantum Law is a 1705 Virginia Statute that defined a Mulatto as being the child of a Indian or the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of a African-American. On Page 5 Spruhan says Virginia defined Indian as being,"every person, not a colored person, having one-fourth or more of Indian blood." When slaves began to file emancipation suits in state courts claiming a maternal free white or Indian ancestor state courts applied a common law rule known as partus sequitor ventrem or the offspring follows the mother and granted them freedom. Later partus sequitor patrem would be applied and according to Spruhan on Page 23,"would become the most important test for the status of mixed-bloods up to the beginning of the twentieth century." The patrem rule, as it was called, says those who have a non-Indian paternal ancestor are non-Indian. Then the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act came to define who was a Indian for those tribes who accepted it. The reality is the Blackfeet have one of the 
strongest treaties with the United States Government and do not have to accept Blood Quantum 
as a Enrollment Criteria if they do not want to. But for those who would rush to embrace it 
I would say go take a look at what the Blood Quantum really means and the History of where 
it came from. 

Robert C. Juneau Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor 7-6-12

Glacier Reporter Letter to the Editor
7-6-12
Robert C. Juneau  

To the Editor: 
According to Paul Spruhan in his South Dakota Law Review article entitled A Legal History of 
Blood Quantum in Federal Indian Law To 1935 one of the earliest examples of Blood Quantum 
Law was in 1705 in Virginia which defined mulatto as being either the child of a Indian or the 
great-grandchild of a African-American. He says on Page 8 that,"The important thing is that 
blood quantum existed before the extension of federal authority over tribal territory, and was 
not created specifically for it. As the United States expanded and interacted with more tribal 
nations, officials brought a pre-existing language of blood that they would apply in different 
ways to define Indians." Former Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of 
Montana Gregory R. Campbell says in a book he edited called Many Americas on Page 14, 
"The degree of "Indian blood," originally, was incorporated as part of the 1887 General Allotment 
Act to determine land inheritance among allotees. Blood quantum linked forced assimilation with 
Scientific racism through the necessity of defining legally who was Native American. The Indian 
Office used the concept to track the "civilized progress" of Indian people: cultural characteristics 
were linked and determined through "blood." Spruhan also goes on to say in his article on Page 46, 
"However, members of Congress, especially Senator Wheeler of Montana, objected to the one- 
quarter standard: I do not think the government of the United States should go out there and take a lot of Indians in that are quarter bloods and take them in under this act. If they are Indians in the half blood then the government should perhaps take them in, but not unless they are. If you pass it to where they are quarter blood Indians you are going to have all kinds of people coming in and claiming they are quarter blood Indians and want to be put on the government rolls, and in my judgement it should not be done. What we are trying to do is get rid of the Indian problem rather than to add to it." 
The Blood Quantum is rooted in English Law and Scientific racism. Not Native Tradition. 
The Blackfeet do not have to use it as a Enrollment Criteria. They have the power to use 
whatever Enrollment Criteria they want. And, in fact, are not sovereign unless they can 
determine for themselves their own Enrollment Criteria.