1975-02-01 Char-Koosta News

              THE NEWSPAPER OF THE SALISH, PEND d ORIELLES AND KOOTENAI TRIBES OF THE FLATHEAD RESERVATION
15 C
HAR-KOOSTA
Volume 4   Number 19
NEW MOON OF BANDS SPREAD ALL OVER
February 1,1975
COUNCIL ELECTION RULES UPHELD IN COURT
Missoula: The Tribal Council-* • election committee does have the power to interpret rules on tribal candidate's eligibility according to a U.S. Federal District Court ruling last month
U.S. District Court Judge Russell Smith ruled that an elections committee action in December, 1973, disqualifying Tribal Council candidates Kevin Howlett and Bernard Clairmont was legally justified under the 1935 constitution. Howlett, Clair aont and six other candidates for the council and the Constitutional Committee were stricken from the ballot for not meeting residency requirements. The committee ruled on December 9,1973, that candid acy required actual residency within the district for one year prior to an election.
Both Howlett, 23, and Clair nont, 28, had maintained legal residency in their respective districts...Arlee and Pol-son...but both had resided off the reservation during 73. Both had attended school at the University of Montana. And Howlett, now a graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., also attended school at the University of Arizona and had worked briefly in Billings.
Howlett and Clairmont notified the council in January of 1974 that they would appeal the ruling. They insisted
that the constituiton provided only for "residency" within a reservation district for one year prior to the election.
Both maintained at a hearing that the constitution provides that persons eligible to vote are eligible to run for office.
Judge Smith found that this was not so. In his ruling, he said that the council committee...composed of the five tribal councilmen not running for office...has the authority to judge the qualifications of Howlett (cont. on page 2)
NATIVE RANGE CASE IN COURT
Thompson Falls: Kootenai Indian Lasso Stasso went to court last month on a two-and - one half year old charge of killing a deer out of season in Sanders county.
Stasso, and his tribal attorney, Vic Valgenti, of Missoula, appeared before District Court Judge Jack L. Green on an appeal of an October 1973 conviction of killing a buck deer in the Ki-niksu National Forest. Stasso and the tribe are appealing
1974: A BLOODY YEAR
ON RES. ROADS
Dixon: Sixteen persons were killed on reservation roads and highways during 1974....that is one more than during the previous year.
The Tribal Law and Order annual highway report indicated that during the year 872 persons were involved in 388 accidents. The report further points out that alcohol was still a major factor in reservation accidents...136 mishaps being regarded as alcohol related.
There were 190 persons injured during the year with most injuries occuring during the month of June.
There were more deaths in August than any other month
....four dying during that month. Three were killed on reservation roads in both July and June, but February, March, April, September, October and November were death free.
There were more accidents in June than any other month ...49. February had 42 accidents and during April there were 40. There were an average of 32.3 accidents per month during the year with a marked fall-off during the last quarter. In November there were only 26 accidents and in December only 29.
Also during the last quarter there was one highway death and 218 persons involved in Accidents (Cont. on page 2)
the Sanders county justice court conviction on the grounds that the state does not have jurisdiction to in-force fish and game laws a-gainst tribal members within the native range of the * tribes involved.
Dr. Carling Malouf, an anthropologist from the University of Montana, was to have appeared as an expert witness of behalf of Stasso. Malouf's testimony at the hearing (which was being held while Char-Koosta was going to press) would establish that aboriginal range of the Kootenai Indians included the area northwest of Thompson Falls, where Stasso is alleged to have killed the deer.
Article HI of the Hellgate Treaty of 1855 assures members of the tribe "the privit* ege of hunting, gathering roots and berries and pasturing their horses and cattle upon open and unclaimed land (and accustomed places)". The tribe insists that if native range is proven, the right of Stasso and other members of the Kootenai community t§ hunt in these areas is guaranteed by the provision in the treaty.
Native range hunting rights have been a bitter and sometimes bloody dispute between the tribes and the state of Montana.
...In October of 1908, four Pend 'd Orielle men and one state game warden were killed at Holland Prairie in the Swan Valley. The men were part of
Hunting (Cont. on page 2)