OSEU Seven: Interview with David Bald Eagle

Reservation Governments - David Bald Eagle - OSEU #7 The people don't realize that there's about three different ways of life that we're living here on the reservation. There's a good part of it and there's a bad part of it. And there's some people who are really not our people that's running the governments. No Indian president or chairman or were Indians, full-blood Indian people, men. When their time was up, the non-Indians took over, calling it an Indian government. But we came out of there and they gave them 50 years to improve these reservations. They gave them 50 years, the government. Came along and they didn't do anything, just the same old reservation. And they was going to take that government away from them then. But they begged and begged and begged, so they gave them 25 more years to upgrade this reservation. If you can't do it, that's the end. So they, 25 years. It was up last year. It was up, nothing has ever been done but raise their own wages, the councilmen. That's where all the money went. And we get 7% of it. And they get 90% of it. So now they're on the edge. The state is stepping in to take over. I don't blame them. But if the government really kept their word, we kept ours. We said we'll never take arms again, fight no more. That's what crazy was. That's what he made. And we're still living up to it, putting away our weapons. But they took our weapons away from us and they started killing us. I got a wounded knee. But that's a conspiracy. That's not Red Cloud's conspirator. They brought that on to kill Bigfoot. They killed Crazy Horse and they killed Sitting Bull. And they did not kill White Bull, my grandfather, because he was over here. He kept a low profile, never talked. So they left him alone. But they're still, after 25 years, they're still there. But the government does not realize, they don't remember, I don't think they remember that that was a deal that they made. The Obamas don't seem to know about it. But now, since the Indian people wrote to Obama explaining this from here, explaining it to them, now he's on to it. So the state took over here in Rosemont. And next is Standing Rock and Cheyenne River. But nobody tells us about it. They're keeping it from the Indian people. They know about it, but they think we don't know what we know about it. Anything they hear. But we're keeping a low profile. We don't want to bring it out. They can't blame us, the traditional people, because they're the one that's bringing it on to themselves, by not improving the responsibility that they'd be given if they didn't do it. So they can't. But they couldn't blame us. If we had it, it would have been different. We could have taken care of the people, or we just could have been way down instead of way up like they got. They're getting $4,000 a month into work four days out of the month. So that's how much money they're getting. But if we, the chiefs, if we had it, we never did get any money for what we do. Instead, we do what the people want us to do. So we still do that for nothing. We don't get paid for it.