{"id":13036,"date":"2016-07-04T07:23:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T13:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13036"},"modified":"2016-07-04T07:23:17","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T13:23:17","slug":"montana-ethic-project-still-waiting-in-indian-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/montana-ethic-project-still-waiting-in-indian-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Ethic Project: Still waiting in Indian Country"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gordon\"<\/a>

Joey and Libbie Early<\/p>

The late Gordon Belcourt, a Blackfeet who was executive director for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, talks about challenges and opportunities facing Montana Indians.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 18th\u00a0chapter of the 32-part video series \u201cThe Montana Ethic Project.\u201d This chapter features the late Gordon Belcourt, a Blackfeet Indian who was executive director for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, speaking on “A Montana Native Perspective.”\u00a0You can watch the whole video below. Here is how it begins:<\/p>\n

“Good day everyone. My name is Gordon Belcourt. I\u2019m a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in northwest\u00a0Montana. I come from a tribal traditional community on the reservation called Star School. All my family\u00a0members have been on the reservation for all of their lives. Growing up in that small community of\u00a0about 300 people, I really didn\u2019t know an outside world existed until I left.”
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Here is another, edited excerpt from Belcourt’s\u00a0presentation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“The issue around citizenship is complex. Basically we gave up millions and millions of acres of \u00a0land\u2014the Blackfeet, I\u2019m speaking of\u2014in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Saskatchewan, and\u00a0Alberta, in return for signing treaties with the Federal Government that acknowledged we should have\u00a0access to support including education, health and welfare. Yet this support has been suspect. We really\u00a0receive only a fraction of this support. Even today we have to battle at the Federal level because they,\u00a0and the state of Montana, have to be held accountable for acknowledging those treaty obligations.<\/p>\n

“It is my opinion that the Federal Government acknowledges those treaty obligations through\u00a0relationships with tribes as sovereign nations, but the state of Montana has room for improvement in\u00a0terms of defining the role of the tribes. Tribes are basically seen as 501(c) 3 non-profit making\u00a0corporations and sub-components of county government here in the state. This causes problems in\u00a0terms of trying to get work done on a variety of issues.”<\/p>\n