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The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes of north-central Montana are closing in on a bipartisan deal to settle their water rights in Congress.
The more than $1 billion policy comes after decades of negotiation and would close out a century of tribal water disputes in the state.
Montana Public Radio’s Austin Amestoy reports.
Fort Belknap President Jeffrey Stiffarm told a committee of U.S. senators Wednesday his community made great sacrifices to strike the deal.
“We ceded a lot of land away that we wanted — that was rightfully ours, that was taken from us. We put that aside, and we thought, you know, ‘Water is more important.’”
The Fort Belknap Reservation is home to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes.
It’s the last of seven reservations in Montana without a water compact.
More than a hundred years ago, the tribes were at the center of a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found water rights were implied in tribal treaties.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) thanked Stiffarm and Montana politicians for negotiating the compromise agreement.
“For years, we’ve talked about moving this settlement forward, and this Congress, we’ve got a real shot.”
If Congress approves the compact, the tribes would receive federal dollars to repair and improve an aging irrigation project that provides water to more than 120 thousand acres of farmland.
Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras (R-MT) told committee members her state’s legislature passed the Fort Belknap compact in 2001.
“And yes, President Stiffarm, it is, after a century, time to close this circle and grant this Tribe the water rights that were intended for them.”
Committee chair U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said lawmakers would work to pass the policy as “expeditiously as possible.”
Karluk Spit and village of Karluk, Alaska. (Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Fishing, camping, kayaking, and a year of all expenses paid living; that’s off a poster from the Karluk Tribal Council that went viral late last month. They’re looking to pay two families with four children each to move to the village in an effort to get state funding and re-establish a school.
As KMXT’s Brian Venua reports, since then, the Tribe has received thousands of inquiries from around the world.
Within a week, between four and five thousand people responded to the poster.
Kathryn Reft is the Karluk Tribal Council’s secretary and treasurer. She says they never could have anticipated the response.
“We just figured we tried to do something like this just to see if we get any kind of attention. We never knew it was gonna blow up to be this huge!”
The Native Village of Karluk is on the southwest end of Kodiak Island and has 37 year-round residents.
The State of Alaska only funds a school if a village has ten children.
The school there closed in 2018 due to low enrollment and now there’s only two kids in the community.
Reft says the Tribe is willing to pay families to move there including housing, utilities, and even a food stipend for a year in the hope of getting a new school.
“We had our feelers out there. We tried going through agencies and we just couldn’t find any interest and then somebody brought up ‘Why don’t we get a poster out there?’ and that’s what we did.”
The Tribe has heard from families across the country as far as Florida and even internationally from Canada and the Philippines about its ad.
The Kodiak Island Borough has kept up the former school building’s heat and electricity. With some maintenance, it could reopen and host classes again.
Cyndy Mika is the Kodiak Island Borough School District superintendent. She says the district was caught off-guard by the poster, but is open to helping the village.
“If they make those ten students, we’ll have to do something. But at this point, it’s going to be very difficult staffing at this late of a date and it’s not part of this budget at all.”
KIBSD struggled to fill rural positions last year and faced huge budget cuts last month.
Mika says she understands it’s difficult for the community to grow without a school for their kids.
The clock is ticking, though. The state counts student populations for schools in October.
Reft, the Tribe’s secretary and treasurer, says they hope to bring new families soon.
We’re going to try to get families here before the end of August, before the school year, have them settled in their house, and ready for school.
The Tribal Council will sort through applicants in the next few weeks.
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