Don’t be fooled
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Editor,
It seems to me very important that residents of western Montana understand that the proposed CSKT Compact, and the recently filed CSKT lawsuit against “everyone” are really about the same thing: controlling property rights in land and water. Both the Compact and the CSKT lawsuit attempt to ignore and rewrite the history of settlement on the opened Flathead Indian Reservation, and in western Montana.
The assault on private property rights is happening all over the western United States, and western Montana is not immune. In this small part of the world, the proposed CSKT Compact gives the Tribe control over all land and water use on the reservation through the irrigator water use agreement, the proposed Unitary Management Ordinance, and the claims to all the water on and off the Flathead reservation. And if the Compact’s objectives were not clear enough, the CSKT’s recently filed lawsuit makes those objectives crystal clear: no one on this reservation owns land or has a valid claim to water, that all the United States’ actions were without authority, and the irrigation project — built for everyone on the opened reservation — belongs to the Tribes.
So don’t be fooled by the drama if the Tribes announce they will drop their lawsuit, in favor of renegotiation of the Compact. It’s pure theater — because the Compact proposes the same thing as the lawsuit, only those objectives are buried in a 1,400 page compact document. They will paint it as “one more concession they’ve had to make in favor of protecting irrigators.”
What is even more disturbing is that so far, the Compact Commission—including local legislators who sit on that Commission—and the Governor’s office seem to be just fine with giving away Montanan’s property rights, not only to the CSKT but ultimately to the federal government. Who, in fact, do these taxpayer-funded public servants work for? And will the Bullock administration, including the Attorney General, play the game too? And dramatically announce (again) their support for this economy-killing CSKT Compact?
You know what they say: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Harlen Gerdes
Ronan
