1975-01-15 Char-Koosta News

              MANY SEE PLOT TO ROB MORE TRIBAL
WATER
Dixon: What many see as a sinister CIA type intrigue to rob the remainder of the tribe's Mission Mountain water has been unfolding since early last fall. The drama,which appears to be aimed at siphoning the remaiag 60,000 acre feet of Mission water into non-Indian use, involves high ranking area BIA officials, Flathead
Irrigation Project (FIP) management and irrigation districts, and a former government chief engineer who is working here as a consultant.
Although it all started in October when it became known that FIP was studying the feasibility of expanding the storage capacity of the project, the alleged plot climaxed in Dec-
ember when area engineers requested a look at a highly secret study on tribal water rights. Dave Walker, the Chief Engineer for the Billings area of the Bureau, asked the tribe for permission to examine the extremely sensative Clyde, Criddle and Woodard study of Water Rights on the Flathead Reservation.
The study, which was contracted and paid for by the tribe, has been carefully guarded since it was completed in 1973. The $50-to-$80,000 analysis is said to contain valuable and unique information on the validity of claims to reservation waters.
WATER (Cont. on page 10)
THE NEWSPAPER OF THE SALISH, PEND'd ORIELLES AND KOOTENAI TRIBES OF THE FLATHEAD RESERVATION
15 C
HAR-KOOSTA
Volume 4   Number 18
FULL MOON OF THE WANDERING
January 15,1975
ST. IGNATIUS HEARING RESULTS:
MEMO NIXES INDIAN WATER     KEEP POWER LINES OFF
RIGHTS
THE RESERVATION
Billings: A Department of Interior memorandum disclosing a plan to de-emphasize Indian water priorities was revealed during a meeting of the Native American Great Plains Resources Federation here last month.
Flathead Reservation delegate Bill Morigeau, Poison, said the memo from a Department undersecretary would place Indian water needs in the Missouri River basin below five non-Indian uses. Morigeau said the non-Indian projected water use priorities were: private and state irrigation...Bureau of Reclamation units...other uses...coal cover-sion on non-Indian land...and main stream water quality control maintenance.
The memo was from undersecretary Lyons to the bureau's of Indian Affairs and Reclamation. Both bureaus are under the Department of the Inter-MEMO (Cont. on page 11)
St. Ignatius: Tribal Councilman Joe McDonald, Ronan, angerly lashed out at a corps of Montana Power employes who followed a circuit of public hearings on the proposed Colstrip generators and power lines to St.Ignatius, Jan. 3.
McDonald told a group of some 60 persons at the Senior Citizen's Center that, "I don't see why we have to listen to well prepared, well coached testimony from these people that Montana; Power has brought around the state to do their talking for them. This is our area and it is us (local residents) that are going to have to live with these transmission lines and all that they bring with them. And, I, for one, don't see why we should have to live with them just because people on the west coast want more electricity
and Montana Power wants more profits", he said.
Most of the local people at the meeting agreed with McDonald. A stand up poll of persons opposed to the lines brought 47 of the 50 to 55 western Montanan's at the meeting to their feet.
McDonald, who is principal of the Ronan High School, added that the giant electrical utility was asking the people of Montana to make "enormous sacrifices" in the things they love best for the sake of the "almighty dollar". He noted that if people want to see what living in a power-concentrated area is like, they should go down to the Four Corners area in northwestern New Mexico. "There they have already sacrificed a beautiful, productive area for west coast power." He said that the coal-HEARING (cont. on page 2)
MARY ANTISTE IS DEAD
Elmo: Mary Antiste, one of the grand-old-women of the Kootenai community, died Jan. 6. She was 77 years old.
Mrs. Antiste was reknown for her pride in her Kootenai and Indian heritage and her good natured antagonism for
Mary Antiste
the rights of the Kootenai people in the northern reser-
ANTISTE (Cont. on page 7)