Some left out of negotiations
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Editor,
Water rights concern everyone. How is it that we, in the 21st century, can’t work it out and share these rights to our mutual benefit? How is it that we find it necessary to lie, cheat and steal – after all these years, decades, centuries? We pretend to act civilized, for the camera I guess, but always seem to resort to underhanded skullduggery and backstabbing. Cheating, lying, perverting the truth and intimidation tactics appear the best we can do; ala Alan Mikkelsen and Jon Metropoulos and their endless “you don’t want to litigate.” Given the choice of negotiating a lie or litigating the truth, I’m for litigation; bring it on.
The CSKT wants to claim their Reserved Water Rights for the Flathead Indian Reservation under the 1908 Winters Act, but choose to ignore the procedures defined by that act for more than 40 years now. They would rather invent their own procedures and rules. Either we divvy up the water per the Winters Act, or we do it by the adjudication process through the DNRC and our state water court as defined by the Montana State Constitution. You don’t get to make up your own personalized rules as we go to suit your own financial ambitions.
How is it that the Allotment Act of 1910 (that opened up parts of the reservation for settlement through “homesteading”) is now painted as a bad thing? How is that homesteading, which brought agriculture to this rich valley and security from continual raids by warring neighbors, is now seen as a bad thing? How is it that being introduced to the “wheel” is now a bad thing?
How is that the only people not represented in this “water compact negotiation” are the non-tribal Montana residents on this reservation who, at some point, were responsible for helping the tribes move into the world around them and represent about 80 percent of the population on the rez? Who’s really the loser here? Who’s really being oppressed, and who should really be outraged? Methinks, not the CSKT.
Michael Gale
Ronan
