The Importance of Asserting Sovereignty with Dennis Fox Jr.

I’ll say one thing to start off and we’ll go from there but you have an opportunity as a tribal member living on a nation like the fort berkeley reservation than the mandan had odds are our nation and if there’s compliance issues with united states government state of north dakota montreal county mckenzie county whatever jurisdiction and even the city of newtown you as a tribal member in your tribal government should assert your sovereignty do whatever you need to do to assert your sovereignty yes there’s a cooperative effort that needs to happen between the municipalities the counties the state the federal government but you as a nation have the responsibility to search your sovereignty and whatever that cooperation ends up being is that they gotta speak to you as a nation too many times we go to the table and they treat you as a minority that is not respected and shouldn’t be at the table we’re not on the same level as the governments that have been formed around us but if you look at it if you look at the true nature of sovereignty we’re much greater than them and we deserve that respect so when you go into a meeting with the cross your jurisdictional entity whatever it may be that you’re talking as a nation and you need to assert your sovereignty and if that’s one point you can get across to young people is that they’ve got to be able to assert their sovereignty that message of that individuality of a nation and speaking nation to nation for the federal government has to be maintained there’s too many times we’ve been jabbed by the bureau of indian affairs the even the bureau of reclamation in this case because of all the oil activity and um the core engineers there’s got to be respect for nation to nation conversation is there a certain area a certain topic that’s kind of a hot topic right now that the tribe is dealing with here in this area that you might i don’t want to put you on the spot yes what would you say is the river bottom who owns the river bottom here is the big question that’s going on right now for the fort bristol indian reservation at the time of the missouri river there was just a channel of the missouri river and who owned that the state of north dakota is claiming they owned that at the time there was a state then formed a reservation within that boundaries but they still are maintaining that they own that portion of the river we as a nation believe we were here well before any state or any sort of formed government was in the area that we were the form of government and essentially we didn’t believe we owned any property it was everybody’s property so then now at the time of enclosing us onto the reservation we have to stick our elbows out say okay this is what you gave us this is what we’re trying to keep because they’ve tried to reduce our reservation a number of times and we’ve had to fight to keep those boundaries where they’re at they even came within the reservation and gave away a lot of our land you’ll see in the east segment that um was open to fee patent for farmers to come in and take the land and do what they had or settle for nothing and but that’s still within the reservation so that river bottom portion is in question because garrison dam happened and flooded out and made the river much wider created the lake sagagowia and within those provisions said the land under the lake is essentially the nations the tribal nations the mandated odds are our nation so with that said that includes the river bottom but there are provisions that are being argued back and forth and opinions from fed to the federal government the solicitor’s opinion saying that the riverbed is owned by the state and then a reversal on the solicitor’s opinion saying no it’s actually owned by the tribe the tribes and that was the most recent one and that was pulled back and that’s where we’re sitting today that there’s a chunk that actual river bottom portion they got the lake there’s a river bottom portion the lake part that was flooded essentially is the nations the tribal nations the river bottom in question is up in the air so we’re in the middle of oil activity and they the way they do the drilling now is they go on down and then they can go under the lake including the river bottom so that portion within the river bottom has been put in escrow that escrow is building and i don’t know what the figure is it’s it’s big though and whoever wins is going to get a large chunk of money and our argument is that state of north dakota has taxation on the on the oil industry and we can tax the oil industry too so it could be dual taxation but if we work out an agreement with the state of north dakota and the nation here the tribal nations here that we can have one tax but they get a portion we get a portion and that’s what the agreement has been in this case coming with the oil activity underneath the bottom there is a um that royalty amounts been fully funded for that escrow account our argument in our need for that is that when state funding comes in this western building of infrastructure that the tribe is excluded you go through the eligible entities are municipalities western north dakota counties townships goes right through but it leaves off tribes so we have to fund our own infrastructure with all this oil development going around so we’ve taken on that responsibility of doing our own roads doing our own sewer system working with the indian health service doing our water working with vor and having to comply with federal tribal trust issues and but supplementing that funding because the federal funding is just not enough with tribal dollars we need more money to get that done and the state doesn’t believe we’re putting the enough money into our infrastructure so we have to work out an agreement get our due portion of the taxation and what happens with that money and report it back to the state that we’re using it for infrastructure or whatever the instance may be which is really not fair because it’s our money but we see the important need for infrastructure in our area and right now it’s roads we have a real issue with roads and safety of our roads and public safety is number one here the truck’s traffic has just been unbelievable and destroyed our roads and so we’ve had to put some significant amount of money into our road development building our roads to truck capacity to haul these major loads that are happening on our roads and you can see the ones being rebuilt right now and for the forebears community and that was destroyed a destroyed road by the oil industry but we can’t get any state funding for that federal fundings well short of what’s needed to be um constructed here for that activity so our argument is let us have that money and we’ll put it into infrastructure we still need additions to our hospital our medical network needs to be upgraded we’re having we’re battling addictions here and we have treatment centers in we built a treatment center in bismarck but it’s well short of the overall need we need long-term care facilities and there’s just the ongoing list of needs that we have here on the reservation that pool of money will really benefit not only today’s generation that lives here but generations to come and that’s what we believe is why we’re building our infrastructures for generations to come