100 Years Page #2

Like he said, my grandmother

begging for her own money,

so she could set a good

Christmas table for the kids.

[woman's voice]

Dear Mr. Hector,

I'm writing you a few lines,

asking if you would send us

$25 for Christmas.

Our children are coming

to eat dinner with us.

Now, I want you to be sure

and mail it to us

so we will get it Friday,

if you please.

Yours truly,

Mr. & Mrs. Mose Bruno.

And right here, this is

the famous Grisso Mansion.

This was built in the 1920s,

or around the same time

that oil was found also

on my great grandfather's land.

While my great grandfather was

being swindled

out of his money,

you can see what

that family was able

to do with their oil money.

I've never been

this close to it.

It makes me even more angry

to be this close to it.

[Elouise] The Blackfeet people

call this "Ghost Ridge."

Right in this particular area,

over 500 Blackfeet died

from starvation.

There was an old agency,

where the Indian agent

was housed

to make sure the Indians didn't

get off the reservation,

and that was right down...

right down here a ways.

So, as time went by, they would

not allow the Indian people

to carry arms or hunt

because they wanted them

to be very dependent

on the Indian agent.

People were made

to just hang around

and wait for rations.

And the story goes

that the Indian agent

was selling off the rations

that were supposed

to come to women and children

and the men that had to stay

confined to this area

without any means to hunt.

And so, as a result,

we ended up with

which is called

"the Starvation Winter."

Right in this particular area,

over 500 Blackfeet died,

and all the people that died,

they just threw them

into these open pit graves.

But the Blackfeet always

used to bury their dead

above the ground.

They felt that their bodies

would go back to the animals

and to the birds,

and so it was hard

for them to get accustomed

to something

that was foreign to them.

And that's why they had

the boxes above the ground.

In some places,

you can just see

pieces of the wood

from the boxes that were here.

[bird cawing]

[Elouise] I always

liked numbers,

so I went

to a commercial college,

a business school

in Great Falls, Montana.

I had an emphasis

on accounting.

The FDIC came in

and closed down the existing

bank that was here.

We said, "Well,

why don't we start a bank?"

And we now have

the Native American Bank.

We're really proud

of what we were able

to accomplish.

These are homes

that were financed

by Native American Bank

and are owned

by individual people.

Uh, financing, home mortgages,

it's all new

to Indian communities.

[Charles] The country

was moving west.

People wanted farmland,

people wanted timberland

and mineral land,

and tribes had those things.

And this was at a time, also,

when people saw Indians

as a disappearing race,

as the vanishing Indian.

And so, Congress passed

the Dawes Act of 1887.

[Anthony] What was once

an Indian reservation,

or once a solid mass of land

that belonged to the Indians,

is now divided up

into 500 different parcels.

When allotment happened,

Indians had 150 million

odd acres.

When allotment ended,

Indians had 55 million acres.

It was a clear acceleration

of the dispossession of

Indian lands,

no doubt about it.

President Roosevelt's

State of the Union speech

a hundred years ago,

and he said,

"The General Allotment Act

pulverized tribal governments.

It's meant to civilize

the Indians. Give them a plow."

But Indians... Most tribes

aren't farming tribes.

[chuckles]

And so, land was leased out

to non-Indians,

and the same is true

with tribal timber sales

and tribal oil

and gas operations.

Those monies went

to the United States

to be held in trust.

The United States received

real dollars directly

and has lost the dollars.

I have a report here

that was done by Congress,

for example, in 1915.

"There is left an inducement

for fraud, corruption,

and institutional incompetence,

almost beyond the possibility

of comprehension."

So, Congress recognized

that the fraud going on,

in 1915,

was almost beyond

the possibility

of comprehension.

What did they do? Nothing.

Nothing, for a hundred years.

[Elouise]

My folks and other people

in the neighborhood

really fought hard to get

a country school

because, prior to that,

all the kids had to go

off reservation.

They would go to government

boarding schools,

and my mother would

be really sad

because she wouldn't be able

to see her kids

for nine months.

I wanted to go to school,

and I was only four years old,

and they kept telling me I was

too young to go to school.

And a new teacher came in,

and so my dad went up

to greet her,

and because he was

on the school board,

I tagged along.

And I spotted

a little tiny desk,

and it was just, like,

the cutest little desk ever.

And it was my desk.

That was my desk.

And I wouldn't leave

until both of them promised

that I could go to school

the next day.

So, I guess that's sort of

my first encounter

of being an activist.

The teachers, they would be

like from back East,

and this one teacher

ordered the Sunday

New York Times for us,

and it would come

maybe a month late,

but I would read

the New York Times

in the third grade

in this

one little country school,

and I used to think about...

"One of these days, I'm going

to be out in that world,"

and I could not imagine

what it would be like.

When the Clinton administration

got in, I was just,

like, really ecstatic.

I thought, "Oh my God,

this is great

because they're

gonna listen to me.

They're going to really do

something about it."

I was doing a talk on banking

with the attorney general,

and, at that time

it was Janet Reno,

so I used that opportunity,

and I said,

"Miss Attorney General,

you have got to listen to me.

We have a really serious

problem here."

And she said, "Well, Elouise,

go home, write me a letter,

and request a meeting."

Finally, one day,

I got a call back

from the Department of Justice,

and said, "We have

your meeting for you."

And there was an entire room

full of attorneys.

The attorney

that was conducting

the meeting told me,

"Now, Elouise,

don't you come in here

with any false expectations."

And I got

so upset with that man.

I said, "People are dying

in Indian communities

every single day,

and you tell me,

'Don't come in here

with any false expectations'?"

And right then and there,

I thought,

"It is time to draw

a line in the sand.

Enough is enough."

And I remember

coming to Washington

on June 10, 1996,

and I walked up from my hotel

to the Lincoln Memorial,

and I looked,

and all I could see

was government.

Big cement buildings,

and, oh, my God,

at the end was the Capitol.

And I just got

goosebumps all over,

and [stammers]

I was so frightened.

And I ran back,

and I thought to myself,

"You know what?

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