Federal rerpesentative still sticking point for tribes

Jennifer McBride

Leader Staff

POLSON — On May 28, representatives from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, state and federal government met again to discuss the fate of water rights on the Flathead Reservation. While the tribes agreed with most of the state’s counter-proposals made in April’s meeting, the CSKT were leary about the state’s suggestion to cut a federal representative from the panel of five administrative members. In January, the tribes proposed creating a new administrative committee made of two representatives from the state, two representatives from the tribes and a federal representative as tie-breaker. Last month, State delegation leader Chris Tweeten suggested replacing the federal reprsentative with someone else agreeable to both the tribes and the state because of the federal government’s sluggishness at responding to issues.

This week, the tribal delegation said they were concerned nobody would look out for the rights of people granted allotments by the federal government decades ago unless there was a federal representative.

Chuck Courville, standing in for Duane Meccham, the federal government’s usual representative on the water compact commission, said that the federal government could be present without being involved in the “day-to-day” management.

“Of course we want to protect individual trust holders,” he said. “There should be a person there, but not necessarily with voting power.”

Though attendence was sparse, a few of the audience members didn’t want to see the federal government removed.

“If we deal with the federal government, at least we have a little bit of a chance [at fair treatment],” said Arlee resident Louise Stasso, who has spoken frequently in favor of the CSKT pursuing litigation instead of negotiation.

The tribal delegation agreed with the states’ other four counter-proposals and added their own thoughts. They believe that there should be no changes made to any sort of agreement after it has been approved by the state legislature without the approval of both sides. They wanted the process of creating single-household wells to be simple, although they believed they should put a stronger limit on how much water can be drawn from small wells, below the current state standard of 35 gallons per minute. They also said the technical staff of both the state and the tribal government should continue working together. They finally agreed the administrative board should be as independent and transparent as possible and suggested the new administrators conduct public meetings.

Chairman Steele and CSKT head of Natural Resources Clayton Matt again renewed their call for the state legislature to extend the deadline for negotiations, which are supposed to be completed by June 2009. Failing that, Steele asked to start meeting more often. Tweeten reminded Steele the state was operating on a schedule set up by the tribes, but said he would report the tribes concern to the state.

“Things will really grind to a halt if we stop trusting each other,” he said.

Both sides agreed in interviews after the meeting that the compact commission was making progress, though Tweeten called the progress “substantial” and Steele called it “glacial.”

The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 25.