Jewell visits Blackfeet Reservation to celebrate buy-back program

Blackfeet community members gathered in Browning last week to celebrate an agreement with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell that could help transfer 900,000 acres back to the Blackfeet government ownership. The Tribal Land Buy-Back Program pays private owners a fair market price for land to willing sellers that currently is split between multiple owners and often can’t be used.

In April, bison from Canada’s Elk Island National Park, once descendants of an original Blackfeet herd from 1873, were brought home to the Blackfeet nation. The Buy-Back program likely won’t directly help with the resettlement of these bison on the landscape. However, Blackfeet Tribal Council Chairman Harry Barnes said the council wants to create a conservation corridor for the bison to live on, from the Badger-Two Medicine up to Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. It would include Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada and two new parks in the Castle Wilderness Area that will connect Waterton to Banff. They’ve started discussions with Glacier and Waterton.

He said he told Canadian officials, “We Blackfeet are probably going to eat a couple of these, and the grizzly bear probably going to eat a couple of these, and the wolf will probably eat a couple of these, but a thousand years ago that was the order, that was the ecosystem that we all enjoyed here and have lost.”

This sentiment was echoed by Sen. Jon Tester who said the Buy-Back program was “righting historical wrongs.”

Jewell said at the ceremony that she is working toward “bringing back so many of the places, animals, the spirit and the nature of Indian County that we have worked so hard to drum out of this country and we’re now working hard to regain.”

The national program has $1.9 billion to spend by 2023. So far it has paid $740 million to landowners and restored 1.5 million acres of land to tribal governments. The program plans to spend $100 million on Blackfeet land by the end of this year. However, offers won’t be made until late fall.

It may be hard for some tribal members to participate in selling their land because it may have been passed down through the generations, Jewell said. However, the program is completely voluntary. Also, the Tribal Business Council will be able to use the land to better the entire community by building homes, or utility and water infrastructure. Currently owners can’t even drill a well or put up a tepee.

An outreach program has already started to inform the owners and it will continue until September. Each week the program targets a different community on the reservation. People have been responsive and excited, said Bill Old Chief Jr., Blackfeet Land Buy-Back coordinator. Although some have concerns about what the Tribal Council will do with the land. It’s challenging because the reservation is in an election cycle for the council, but elections will be completed in July.