What price for keeping silent?
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Editor,
You recently printed a letter from a compact proponent who concluded that because the CSKT have had past success in the courts, people should accept the proposed water compact. In other words, we should stop trying to defend our water and property rights and allow tribal leadership to take whatever will satisfy their corporate lust for control over their former reservation lands.
A reliable source told me that in this proponent’s former life, as a water expert and consultant for the Flathead Irrigation Project, responded to a threat of taking our water resources by pounding his fist on the table and saying it was necessary to fight, because the tribe will take whatever you are willing to give. I couldn’t agree more, and wonder what might have caused the change of heart that now drives this man to not only want to give away his own rights, but also those of his neighbors?
Where does it stop? The recent CSKT lawsuit attempts to rewrite history and federal law to claim that aboriginal title remains to all land and water within reservation boundaries. While they would like you to keep silent concerning what they call a “narrowly tailored” lawsuit, there is nothing narrow about it. It is an attack on private ownership of land and water, and everyone who lives here should be concerned.
John Dickinson, one of our founders, said “To remain silent in the face of such a blatant attack on property rights flies in the face of all that that this country was founded on. Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds: (1) that we cannot be happy without being free; (2) that we cannot be free without being secure in our property; (3) that we cannot be secure in our property if without our consent others may as by right take it away.”
How much are you willing to give?
Chris Grier
St Ignatius
