A Montana Native Perspective 

Gordon Belcourt |  Executive Director, Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council

Good day everyone. My name is Gordon Belcourt. I’m a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in Northwest Montana. I come from a tribal traditional community on the reservation called Star School. All my family members have been on the reservation for all of their lives. Growing up in that small community of about 300 people, I really didn’t know an outside world existed until I left.

My Indian name is Mixed Iron Boy. That name was given to me by my uncle whose name was Paul Holmgren Jr. In the Blackfeet language it can be translated as “scrap iron” or “bits and pieces of iron.” He named me after the amount of carnage and battle he saw in the European theatre. When a combat veteran names you that is possibly the highest honor you can receive for somebody naming you. With all of our tribal veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, we have an entire group of individuals who will hopefully step up to their role in naming our youth.

If you go into communities on a reservation now, likely half of them do not have a traditional name like I do. But I think that it is important that they have a traditional name, as it helps set context for their future. These individuals need to be given proper training, proper names, and a family tree so that we can give them an adequate representation of where they have come from.

An interesting note about my uncle: coming back from World War II after participating in combat for many years, he was granted citizenship, but his parents and grandparents were never considered citizens of the United States. It was only on June 1st, 1924, that the Indian Citizens Act was passed by Congress. Now that did not automatically incorporate all of us as citizens because it only allowed veterans who have served, and served honorably, to have the right to petition to become a U.S. citizen. It didn’t automatically mean that all Indians were going to be citizens. That has created problems for tribes for how we and citizens of Montana and the United States view and relate to each other.

The issue around citizenship is a complex issue. Basically we gave up millions and millions of acres of land, the Blackfeet I’m speaking of, in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, in return for signing treaties with the Federal Government that acknowledged we should have access to support including education, health, and welfare. Yet this support has been suspect. We really receive only a fraction of this support.  Even today we have to battle at the Federal level because they, and the state of Montana, have to be held accountable for acknowledging those treaty obligations.

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

However, we have made some progress. The current governor, Brian Schweitzer, has appointed many Indian peoples to various committees and commissions in our state government. In addition, the Federal Government under the Clinton and Obama Administrations has emphasized government-to-government consultation that must occur between both parties and are encouraging states to do the same. It is also encouraging and helpful that there are several Indian people who are part of the state legislature, either as representatives or senators. But because we do not have a strong presence in terms of numbers, we have to either depend on the Democratic or Republican parties, or a non-political basis, to get our bills passed.

The other issue I would like to discuss pertains to health disparities. With our treaty obligations, we should have a functioning medical system on each reservation. Currently some have clinics, and only a few have hospitals. Yet this infrastructure is not adequate to deal with our current high health disparities. In the past, tribal health operated under an infectious disease model. But now we are heading into a chronic disease model. We have traded small pox for diabetes.

If you go to the Indian Health Services website and look up health disparities you will be able to see that most of the problems that we are dealing with are chronic diseases. It is exacerbated by the fact that our medical infrastructure is not funded at the level needed to address these concerns. They are funded at approximately 50 percent to 57 percent of capacity. With that level of funding we really can’t address some of these dilemmas. We have tried to get the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, our flagship medical funding bill, funded at the federal level.  But it took almost twelve years for that to be funded. It is now under the Health Care Reform Act. If this bill happens to be rescinded as some call for, then the major riders in there, which include funding for our medical services, will be removed.

Additionally, even though it has been approved it does not necessarily mean it will contain sufficient appropriations to augment some of the problems on our reservation. A lot of the problems we suffer from: cancer, coronary disease, diabetes, etc., are never going to be addressed unless we have proper funding from the Federal Government.

These are all indications of communities that are at risk. This is not to say they are the only indicators. However I think the state of Montana, in order to have a fair and level playing field, really has to address some of these fundamental policy concerns.

That is our task.

I wish you a good day.