BIA Betrayal?18 July 2002
BIA Betrayal?
In the article below I outlined the victory the Tribe and
the people had won in the court of appeals. The pig factory lease was voided
by a unanimous Court and we were very confident the ruling would be upheld when
Bell Farms asked for an 'en banc' hearing from the whole Appeals Court as a
preliminary to an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Remember there are three parties
on the winning side, the BIA, the Citizen and Environmental groups, and the
Tribe. Also remember that shortly after the ruling favoring the Tribe, Senator
Conrad of North Dakota contacted BIA boss Neal McCaleb and told him a former
Govenor of North Dakota and others had $100,000,000 (one hundred million
dollars!) at stake and threatened to take "legislative action" to force a
resolution, among other things. Coming from a Senator with budget control over
the BIA and Tribes this was a direct attempt to intimidate and coerce them.
According to the email we discovered, the top aides of Conrad and McCaleb were
discussing options to force the pig factory on the Tribe dispite the ruling by
the Court and the will of the Lakota people. The very next week McCaleb
attempted to "mediate" the issue at an NCAI meeting in North Dakota that Tribal
officials attended. To the gratitude of the people the Chairman and the Council
reaffirmed their opposition to the pig factory to McCaleb and Chairman Kindle
reiterated it in a public statement.
The people do not want the filthy pig
factory on the homelands! The people have voted against it, the Council has
condemned it and is fighting it in court, the BIA voided the inadequate lease
and the court upheld it. What is there that Neal McCaleb can not understand?
As expected, Bell Farms filed a petition asking for a rehearing by the entire
Court. In return each of winning parties filed a rebuttal brief to explain why
the rehearing should be denied and the ruling stand.
An affirmative ruling
would mean the lease was legally voided and the Tribes sovereign rights to
regulate businesses on Reservation and to protect the land and resources would
be restored. It will also be an important rebuke to district court Judge
Kornman for his unwarrented intrusion in Tribal affairs.
You can imagine my
outrage when I saw the brief from the BIA and saw they had betrayed the Tribe,
Citizens and the Lakota people to agree with Bell Farms that there should be a
rehearing! They say they are still in favor of the ruling but want some
underlying issues resolved by the entire Court.
Here is what they say: "We
believe that this Court should grant panel rehearing and then reverse the
district court on the merits of the case".
The BIA is supposed to be
protecting the interests and the assets of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe but this
betrayal proves who they really serve. If the BIA and the pig factory suceed
in their request for a rehearing the existing pig factories will continue to
spew their filth on the land, making money for Bell and Hormel but leaving only
waste for the people, and the treacherous BIA will have more time to work
against our people on behalf of the powerful polititions who are attempting to
steal Sicangu water and land. So even though they try to cover their betrayal
in legal lies it is very easy to see that what they say is not their true
intent.
In this fight the Tribe and citizens are facing some very powerful
interests. First there is Bell Farms, a rich hog farm operator based in North
Dakota that has CFO's (pig factories) in several states, in partnership with
them is Sun Prairie owned by Bell and his sons, Mountain Prairie owned by
Hormel Foods 2/3rds and Bell 1/3, and interested parties include officers of
Hormel, US Bancorp and other investors we're not sure of such as ex-Govenor
Sinner who was mentioned by the Conrad email. Hormel Foods is a multinational
company with many prominant politicians on its board such as John Block the
former Secretary of Agriculture and E. Peter Gillette, former president of
Piper Jaffery U.S. Bancorp.
These are the kinds of people who can pick up a
phone and get a Senator to use his power to to force a stinking pig factory on
our people. And these are the kind of people who can get the BIA, the legal
protector of Tribal Trust Assets, to use an underhanded and unethical legal
subterfuge to strip the legal victory from our homelands.
In the end I still
believe we will prevail in Court, if not we will find another way to close it
down and clean it up.
The BIA has always operated against our interests,
usually they get away with their underhanded acts and betrayals of their trust
responsibilities. This time we have seen them sneaking through the grass and we
know their intention is to join our enemies. The BIA has done some damage with
their two faced betrayal and we must plan to overcome them, but for now I'm
sending you this update to let you know that now we're fighting two hogs, the
BIA has joined the pigs!
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 12:24 PM
Subject: Pig
Fight Update
Ah-Ho Relations,
A few days ago the Rosebud people won an appeal on their
lawsuit against the Bell Farms pig factory. While the ruling is a significant
victory for those of us who want to close the place down it by no means solved
our problem, in fact it brought the issue back to the Tribe for some very
important decisions. The ruling will not take affect for forty-five days even
if they do not appeal, but we must assume they will appeal to the republican
Supreme Court. In the meantime two enormous pig factories with non-working
waste disposals are still spewing their toxic waste on the homelands and
sending their antibiotic laden product to feed everyone. Last summer the
reservation had an amazing plague of flies swarming in a way the people had
never seen before, it was so bad it made people stay inside. Then this winter
we had a very bad epidemic of influenza that completely over-taxed the health
system, babies were in such danger they quarantined their wards, the emergency
room stayed full for two months and elders in beds were lining the hallways.
People were calling it the "pig flu" but who can prove either of these bad
things were actually caused by the pig factory?
Since Bell farms won an
injunction against the Tribe that allowed them to build their second factory,
they began a public relations effort in an attempt to gain approval for their
plans. They hired a "consultant" named Trent Loos who has been constantly
working the media on their behalf. His main theme is that those opposed to the
factory are supported and directed by PETA and other "radical
environmentalists" like Robert Kennedy who want to destroy the family farm and
force all Americans to be vegetarians! They also sponsor programs on the local
Catholic radio station, which is the local station for the rez. They are also
targeting schools with propaganda disguised as information and they had a pork
sandwich stand at the annual powwow and fair that handed out heart attacks and
lies. These people see their dreams of easy riches at the expense of our
people slipping away and they intend to fight hard to maintain their hold on
the land. In addition to the p.r. campaign they have begun to replace the
arrogance they treated the Tribal Government with last year with an attempt to
influence them with secret meetings and offers to tribal officials and tribal
attorneys. They have appeared uninvited and unannounced at unrelated out of
state meetings of Tribal officials, to their credit Tribal officers and
Councilmembers have not responded favorably to them. I don't know about the
tribal attorneys however, as to what offers they are entertaining or
discussions they have had with Bell Farms, and that worries me. The ruling
hurt and angered some powerful politicians and one of the powerful 'boss hogs'
of the pig factory(Contained Feeding Operations) movement that is taking over
American agriculture. Wounded hogs are dangerous and this one is protecting
twenty-four barns full of shit and money. Bell Farms, their Banks, and the
politicians they own, will stop at nothing to defeat those of us who stand up
for this land and the Constitutional rights of the Sicangu people to govern
their homelands. This struggle is far from over.
After the ruling I was
invited to attend a Tribal Council meeting called to discuss the situation,
since this was the first meeting specifically on the factory since last falls
election I was curious about the make up of the new Council and their positions
on the ruling. I am gratified to report that the Council majority is still
strong against the pig project and several have instruction to oppose it from
their communities. At the same time the Council is faced with some very hard
legal and economic problems that will be hard to resolve without further
litigation and possible monetary losses. As is so often the case in Indian
Country, this Council will be asked to clean up the mistakes of the past
administration, and they are huge. First is the legal problem that must be
resolved, the ruling upheld the BIA decision to void the lease because of a
lack of an EIS but the subsequent injunction in favor of Bell farms allowed
them to build the two large sites now in operation. These are an established
fact and 25% owned by the Tribe, although the lease was cancelled they still
have a contract and various permits with the Tribe they will contend these give
them the option of continuing operations while having an EIS done. The BIA says
they will not permit a new lease unless it has an EIS, but I contended in the
meeting that there can be no EIS of the land with an entire pig factory already
situated on top if it. In the event we win our legal argument and the Council
decides the factory must be closed, who pays for cleaning it up and will the
Tribe be stuck for at least 25% or even the whole bill? What is the BIA
responsibility since they allowed the pig factory to be built without an EIS in
the first place and most important what is Bell Farms liability in the cleanup?
During the meeting the Council took some important actions even though they
must wait for a final legal disposition. They have asked our citizens groups
to help them bring in an environmental scientist to asses the waste disposal
operation and they voted to seek the legal council of the lawyers that
represented us in the lawsuit and if necessary replace their representation.
These are important first steps and others are planned for the future in order
to bring this problem under control. I am now confident that the Tribal
Council is working to fulfill the wishes of their people and get rid of the pig
factory but their success is still in doubt as long as Bell can enlist the
courts to help them win.
On the grass roots level the ruling prompted us to
get active once again after a winter of waiting for the ruling and inactivity
brought on by the injunction, which included the citizens groups also. Our
campaign is different than that of Bell Farms, we have no money for media or
consultants but we know our own people in a way Bell Farms can't compete with,
the best thing is we know our people are smart enough to make good decisions
when we give them the information that was denied them in the beginning.
Deeply imbedded within our culture is a love and concern for this land that can
be depended on to make good, earth-friendly decisions when asked to by their
leaders. Our job has been to get the facts on factory farming and its dangers
and put them before the Rosebud people, we have done that and in a referendum
vote the people rejected the pig factory, now our job is one of helping the
Tribe in their effort to clean up the mess. We are providing them with
contacts with legal and environmental expertise and as legal interveners
citizens can monitor the Courts, the Tribe has formally requested our
assistance and I believe we're all on the same path. I have heard there may be
a petition circulated urging the Tribe to close down the factory and there has
been talk of rallies and community meeting by grassroots people to keep up the
pressure on Bell Farms, I'll let you know of any further activities that may
come up. It may be a hot summer on the pig front after all, and I expect a lot
more action from both sides.
One of the things that weigh on my mind is the
aftermath of our victory should we win... What responsibility do we activists
and environmentalists have for the consequences of our actions? The Tribe will
be left with big changes in in their plans for economic development when a
multi-million dollar project and its spin-off industries are shut down
permanently. They will be left with an tremendous infrastructure of water
lines, pumping stations and other utilities stretching for miles across the
empty prairie, fully one half or more of the Tribes portion of the giant "Mni
Wiconi" federal water project was dedicated to what was to be the world largest
pig factory! The lines are in and the project is slated for completion this
year, our victory makes the entire thing useless unless we can come up with
something to replace it. Millions of gallons of Missouri river water per year
will be left idle by the failure of the project and several dozen much needed
jobs will be lost by the closure of the factory. What a wonderful thing it
would be if we could think of and offer a solution. Only then can we turn our
court victory into a real victory for the people and our Mother Earth.
Carter
Camp
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