Read the Water Compact
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Editor,
Hackneyed though it be:
“Oh! what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!” Marmion, published in 1808, Canto VI. Stanza 17, Walter Scott.
Though within a poem of triangulated love and over-zealous power, the above quote might fit well beneath any bonnet, whether Easter or War. As well, we might call it the cloak of the Compact. And it has a priority date 1808, beyond the Hellgate Treaty date of 1855 (really 1859 as the ratification date). Not that it should matter, as the Compact is about Reserved Water Rights, which should bare a current date, as it, as some would wish, would be current law, masking all precedental (existing) law.
In other words, if via the Compact, and the UMO (Unitary Management Ordnance), we are to “sweep” the “body” of existing relevant laws and court dicta including their priority dates, under the “rug” of the UMO, why hold onto any of it, including the Hellgate, Stevens, or Omaha — including this time immemorial Damocles’ sword of 1855 (really 1859).
No matter the times read, repeatedly, and logically with whatever hat or headdress adorned, this Compact is neither poetry nor proper prose; and parses out only to constitutional confusion, serving only as a legislative laxative, and a case-law Clearasil to cover the acne of indecisive times.
Again, I ask you to task yourself and read it, perhaps bald-headed as have I – both figuratively and literally – and ask if it is a fair meeting of the (current) times, without triangulation or over-zealousness. The past maybe prologue, but maybe we should all think seven generations into the future as is the want of the Tribe, as bloodlines will then be further paled, and the fight, as always, will be against the Federal government. Actually the solution might be that the Tribes adopt all 23,000 of the non-Tribals on the Rez. Racism, real or imagined, be damned.
Christopher Chavasse,
Ronan.
