Chief Yellow Horn descendants and others announce re-creation of Blackfoot Confederacy.
The Blackfoot Nation - For many years members of the Blackfoot people and others have been meeting in what now is called Canada and the United States. Their discussions have centered upon the necessity of re-creating the ancient Blackfoot Confederacy that once numbered many thousands of people. Among them the Blood, Blackfoot and Peigan.
Among the members this group there has always been included the descendants of Chief Yellow Horn. Today his modern day descendants carry on the discussions and are among the many hundreds of people who seek the revival of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
The Yellow Horn family is represented by Vern, George, Rocky and Howard, and their wives, of Brocket, Alberta.
Rocky Yellow Horn said, "We seek ways to bring our people out of the grinding poverty we find ourselves in today. We are in this situation because we have no control over our present or our future".
One idea we have" Mr. Yellow Horn continued, "is to create a situation where we use our existing land base to use ourselves instead of leasing it out to non-members of the Blackfoot Nation". He said, "We must use our resources to stop the growth of welfare rolls and create an nation of self-supporting native people".
Mr. George Yellow Horn said, "We appreciate the welfare support of our white relatives to this time, but it is time for all of us to recognize that the whiteman's welfare system has been a gross failure".
"There are other things we must discuss with our white brothers and sisters in Canada and the United States", George Yellow Horn continued. "This is the fraudulent nature of Treaty 7 that has divided the Pikanii into two different groups, the so-called Blackfeet of Montana and the Peigan of Alberta. We are actually one people".
"We also have to discuss this Treaty 7 situation with our American relatives", said Yellow Horn. "They have land rights in Alberta. We want them to come home, so to speak, because they are separted from us by an imaginary line".
Vern Yellow Horn said, "Our father, Albert Yellow Horn, found in 1985 that Treaty 7 was not signed by all 54 men whose names appear on the fraudulent treaty. His research confirmed that the supposed signers of Treaty 7 had their names put on the paper by the same whiteman who made all the "X" marks". And he continued, "The research of Albert Yellow Horn is further collaborated by a Father Constantine Scollen who wrote the RCMP Major Irwin that the Indians who were at Blackfoot Crossing in September of 1877, did not even understand why they were there" These are but a few of the reasons we announce the re-creation of the Blackfoot Confederacy."
The declaration reads as follows:
Declaration:
The Blackfoot Confederacy and allied nations is re-created as a means of bringing the people back to a great and beautiful heritage, a time when people honored each other and felt their native spirituality at the center of their being. We are the children of the Great Holy Being, iit-tsi-pah-tah-pii-oop (the Source of Life) We gather together of our own free will because the Creator made us to be free and to live in harmony.
We announce to the world that we hereby take our place among the nations of mankind, responsible to no one person or authority, because there is no one greater than ourselves except the Great Source of All Life.
We call together those who have been members of our alliance in the ancient past. We welcome those who wish to join us from among the other nations. We call you home to be our relatives in the shining light of knowledge and the love of our Creator. Once again, we shall live by our sacred vows, spirituality, traditions, and beliefs. We have created a great and powerful nation based upon respect and honor for all beings of this Earth and beyond.
Among the many purposes of our confederacy are these:
l. We join together to freely associate with all people in honor and respect. There is no greater way.
2. We gather together to help each other in good times and hard times.
3. We seek our rightful share of the Earth's resources and to correct the greed that has denied us this right.
4. We seek to correct those political, religious, economic, social and other policies of those who have sought to enslave us. We call upon all people to stop their genocidal pursuits that seek to kill us and destroy our cultures and we ask them to finally give honor to the teachings of their holy books.
5. We come together, each of us, to offer our skills, knowledge, resources, and whatever abilities we possess to put them to work in the communities of our people so we may live together and raise healthy families as the ii-tsi-pah-tah-pii-oop intended.
6. We come together because we reject the dogma of mankind which enslaves the human mind and kills the human spirirt. We reject any and all things that cause mankind to fight, kill and be unhappy through the self imposed death of their being.
+ + + + +
For further information call: 403.965.2839 (Vern) or
403.965.2828 (George) or
403.965.2563 (Rocky)
Or contact: Spirit Talk Press, The Blackfoot Nation, Box 390, Browning, Montana USA 59417
Telephone: 406.338.2882
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)