Compact cultural imperative to preserve future
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Editor,
A recent article in the Inter Lake reported Flathead county commissioners are leaning toward non-endorsement of the water compact with one of the concerns being the state constitution may not support the compact.
State constitutions are largely irrelevant as 200 years of Federal Indian Law can attest. The courts have been surprisingly consistent with limiting state intrusion onto federal reservations. Furthermore, the Flathead is “outside the boundaries of the [state]” (territorial act). It has never been diminished and is still Indian Country (section 1151) regardless of land ownership.
Clearly, tribal members cannot go off reservation and find their culture. Whites look at the reservation resources and see dollar signs; tribes see home. This is the only land they have ever known with roots that extend millennia into the past and miles deep. Tribal protection of this land and associated water rights is not an opportunity to steal, but simply a cultural imperative to preserve a future. Whites long ago would have plundered the natural resources with their acknowledged propensity to log, mine, dam, pollute, overfish, and overgraze in the name of “progress”— as Joseph Dixon intended with allotment. Permitting that would be a crime.
Now that a decision is approaching to accept or reject the compact, I experience a gut feeling that insidious bigotry is rising ever closer to the surface (and spare me the “oh, but not us” rhetoric). It has been with tribes since whites set foot on this continent.
Those who would allow suppressed bigotry to influence their decision know who they are. The reality is a decision of rejection based on such raw sentiment over science or sound reasoning — 10 years in the making — will subject a lot of good folks to unnecessary financial burdens. It goes without saying litigation will likely favor the tribes.
Bill Bennington
Polson
