Follow procedures, settle water rights
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Editor,
There seems to be considerable renewed interest lately in the “flawed and stalled” Federal Reserved Water Rights Compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation; especially in the surrounding 11 counties who finally realize they are in this settlement as well.
Like it or not, the words “cede, relinquish and convey,” mean you no longer have claim to the object – time immemorial or otherwise (Article I, Hellgate Treaty). Whether it’s a handshake deal or Treaty – it’s gone. European-Americans gave up their aboriginal rights with the Declaration of Independence; the CS&KT gave them up with the Hellgate Treaty.
The erroneously titled “Flathead Indian Irrigation Project” was, and is, officially, the “Flathead Irrigation Project” created by the Bureau of Reclamation (along with many other “Irrigation Projects” in Montana) and was intended to foster agriculture on roughly 150,000 acres of the “open” Flathead Reservation (The Age of Irrigation, volumes 29-30). Arbitrarily changing the title doesn’t change ownership of the project, the project property or the elements necessary for the project: dirt, water, air and sunshine.
All that’s necessary for fair and equitable settlement of water rights for the CS&KT is to follow the same procedures that were used on the other six reservations within Montana, per the 1908 Winters Decision, including the fulfillment of on-reservation in-stream flow requirements for tribal fishing. Not pie-in-the-sky “robust rivers,” or outrageous, unrealistic expectations of entitlement that are neither legal nor logical nor supported by case law or common sense. This is 2013, not 1855 – nothing is the same for any of us descendents.
It’s past time to settle this issue; without playing the “race” card of divide and conquer that the Feds have been fostering here.
Michael Gale
Ronan
