WHAT IS A TOWN?

Mistyne overlooking the rez from Divide

What IS a town?  Mistyne Hall is at UCal Berkeley, working on that question for an independent study course.  She wanted to get a better understanding of her early home town, partly because it is in such a state of crisis and confusion that it has been put into legal receivership.

Court appoints Robert Denning receiver 

for Town of Browning

Posted: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 6:00 am

By JOHN MCGILL Glacier Reporter Editor 

Last week, the Montana First Judicial District Court of Lewis and Clark County issued an order naming Robert K. Denning of Denning, Downey and Associates as receiver for the town of Browning.

According to the Order, “the Receiver shall take immediate possession, custody and control of all assets owned or held by the Town of Browning” and “immediately, and during the pendency of receivership, or until otherwise ordered by the Court, all of the authority of the Mayor and Town Council is temporarily suspended, and the Mayor and the Town Council shall have no authority to act on behalf of the Town.”

“Basically, Bob Denning becomes the town manager, city council and mayor,” said Glacier County Commissioner Michael DesRosier. While DesRosier said he’d not read the entire Order as of last week, he said he’d been assured by Denning that the county’s offices would remain operational and untouched. “Bob’s coming up to secure the office, and he said, ‘You’re going to have everything you’ve got. You’re not going to lose anything,’” DesRosier said.

While he couldn’t say for sure, DesRosier noted the county may be held responsible for part of the cost of the audit mandated by the Court Order.

The Order gives the receiver broad powers, including “the authority to gather, protect and oversee the Town’s assets, and the authority to hold, develop, rent, lease, sell, manage, maintain, operate, and otherwise use or permit the use of the assets under the terms and conditions the Receiver deems to be prudent and reasonable under the circumstances. The Receiver’s authority shall include entering upon and taking possession and control of the Town’s assets; take and maintain possession of the Town’s assets; manage the Town’s assets as an executive officer of the Town…take any and all actions deemed necessary by the Receiver in the Receiver’s sole discretion to the extent necessary to protect the Town’s bona fide assets; comply with the Orders of all Court’s exercising jurisdiction over the Town; determine that the business operations of the Town should be temporarily or permanently terminated; incur expenses that are normal and customary for the operations of the Town…and employ or contract with such consultants, managers, employees, agents, independent contractors, accountants, attorneys or other professionals as may deem appropriate in the Receiver’s discretion to effectuate the rights, duties or responsibilities of the Receiver pursuant to this Order.” And “To undertake, obtain or complete a comprehensive governmental audit of the Town’s assets and liabilities.”

The Order enjoins all people involved with the town to cooperate with the Receiver in discovering the town’s situation and requires him to submit a monthly report to the Court.

Speaking on Monday, March 14, Denning said he was at that moment meeting with his staff to arrive at a strategy to deal with the town’s many issues. He said a plan would be forthcoming this week, but he said the County’s operations at City Hall would continue unimpeded, as will Thunder Radio, KBWG-LP 107.5 FM. “Our intent is to address Browning’s issues and keep everything else.”

Vintage postcard of the Browning tipi

This move raises a lot of questions, one of which is explained in the article below from the PBS Newshour.

Which American municipalities 

have filed for bankruptcy?

Across the country, from Vallejo, Calif. to Detroit, Mich., some cities that cannot repay their debts have taken the extreme step of declaring municipal bankruptcy.

Cities file for bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code. Yet before a city can declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the city must establish it is eligible to do so according to state law.

Chapter 9 bankruptcy is relatively rare. We’ve listed the cities and towns that have filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy since 2008 on the map below.

According to bankruptcy attorney Karol Denniston, when a city owes money to its employees, pensioners, and creditors, these debts constitute a contract — similar to a business taking out a loan. If the debts cannot be repaid, a municipality may consider bankruptcy as a last resort to negotiate reduced financial liabilities.

But unlike individuals and corporations, cities are not always allowed to declare bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is a federal process. In turn, a state must give its cities, towns, counties, and other municipalities — governmental administrative districts like irrigation authorities or hospital districts — the right to petition the federal government to restructure their debts.

Without permission from the state, the federal government granting a bankruptcy petition for a municipality would violate a state’s authority and therefore, the 10th amendment.

Some states, like Arizona and Washington, expressly grant municipalities the right to file for bankruptcy.

Many other states establish conditions that must be met before a town can declare it is bankrupt. These conditions may involve an evaluation of the city’s finances or may require permission from a state governor.

Illinois, Colorado, and Oregon have particularly restrictive laws that only allow specific types of municipalities or even specific districts to file for Chapter 9. Georgia and Iowa prohibit cities from declaring bankruptcy, though Iowa has an exception to the law for municipalities that become bankrupt for reasons beyond their control.

A number of states haven’t written any specific law that determines whether or not a municipality can declare bankruptcy. Since cities in those states aren’t granted the right to file for Chapter 9, they cannot legally do so.

________________________

Browning during the NAID encampment along the west edge.

The first question has to be the hottest one:  is the Town of Browning under state law or federal law?  Is it continuous reservation or is it an “island of jurisdiction” belonging to the state?  If the Town of Browning is reservation, is it federal or a private tribal corporation?  We were at this point once a half-century ago when a tribal member refused to pay his debt at a large off-rez store on grounds that they could not use the state’s legal machinery to enforce private contracts because the debtor’s residence was on the reservation, not under the jurisdiction of the state.  He lived in Browning.  I can’t remember how it was settled, but the upshot was that no tribal member on the rez could get credit because there was no way non-payment could be prosecuted, so I guess the debtor prevailed, which was not exactly a win for the people.

Lewis and Clark County Courthouse

Who at the federal level gave the state permission to begin bankruptcy in this case?  How does the order come from Lewis and Clark County which is the county where Helena, the state capitol is located?  How does a private accounting firm get given the authority to begin receivership and what is its relationship to Glacier County, which is sometimes at odds with the tribe?  In fact, Denning, Downey and Associates is the business that has tried to sort out the Boggs' treasury mess in the county and is involved in the lawsuit against her. Isn't that a little, um, "incestuous" if not a conflict of interest?  The news stories make it sound as though it is Denning personally who is appointed to do this receivership.

At what point did “Browning” become a proper legal town anyway?  What are the conditions of being a legal town in Montana, let alone on a reservation?  Is there a specific process for towns ON “federal” land?  Surveyed boundaries; service infrastructures like water, sewer, and streets; law enforcement; a written code of ordinances?  (In the Sixties for some years the Browning ordinances were lost — I mean, the only copy was physically missing.  I don’t know whether a new set was composed or a copy was finally located.  It’s online now.)

Anthropologically, there are several “kinds” of towns at different stages of existence, responding to different forces, mostly economic.  In the beginning people lived in small units based on family.  If they were “hunter-gatherers”, which the Blackfeet were until the 19th century, they followed the herds of buffalo and the crops such as berries or camas.  This was not haphazard, but followed a predictable pattern.  In a way, they were a moveable town.  When they were forced by the disappearance of the buffalo and the military presence of US Cavalry, to stop moving, this changed many practices and relationships.

Fishing towns developed in situ where there was food year-round.  In pre-written history “sedentariness”— considered a move towards civilization — happened mostly when shifting to agriculture, the storage of grains in structures which meant that the people must stay close by to defend them.  They built enforcement structures like walls.  The ability to store and accumulate food meant that the population could grow and specialize.  

This idea was dominating the white mind into the twentieth century when they wanted to make hunter-gatherers into farmers.  But this was done in a colonial fashion with white overseers only pretending to consult people.  The overseers used ideas appropriate to conditions back east.  Later the reservation was transferred from the Department of War to the Interior Department, which was a slight improvement, but it still left the colonial pattern of whites from back east imposing their decisions on the indigenous people who lived here.  

Fertile and productive land

The Blackfeet were fortunate in that they could stay where they had been for centuries.  Not as sedentary towns, but circling through an area of operation bigger than today's reservation.  There was no Trail of Tears, but there were massacres.  The “Baker Massacre” happened in part because the people’s pattern in winter was to move to the river bottoms for shelter and wood.  Then they shifted, as bands, from one location to another along the river.  To the white mind, one location equalled one band so they attacked the location, getting the wrong band.

Towns developed without “permission”.  For instance, Robaire was a little town that gathered on the south banks of Birch Creek (the rez boundary, a natural line determined by the creek) because the residents had been thrown off the rez.  Bootleggers and whiskey traders ran a bar next to the little chapel and dwelling of the Catholic priest.  (The agent of the time was Methodist and the federal government had assigned the rez to the Methodists and other tribes to other denominations — all Protestant — who chose the agents for a few years until they turned out to be just as corrupt as everyone else, which is to say, “mixed.”)  This little pop-up town lasted a while and was exploited by entrepreneurs like Joe Kipp.  The big flood of '65 washed away the last traces.

Browning persists in part because of the crossing of highways 2 and 89 along the natural pathways determined by the Old North Trail down the east slope of the Rockies and the entrance to Marias Pass which is used by the railroad High-Line.  By now it has been the location of services and trade for a century, no doubt begun as soon as the agency began issuing commodities there.  Then came the federally authorized Indian traders, their homes, and the beginnings of infrastructure, like Green Grass Bull’s rickety wagon carrying barrels of water from Willow Creek for laundry.  This was all recent enough that my mother-in-law was one of the customers.

Green Grass Bull, taken by Thomas Magee

LOVE IT OR HATE IT, HARD TO LEAVE TOWN

When this was Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife, 

I had a room in the gable nearest.

“Brown Town,” Browning, Montana, is the capital of the Blackfeet Reservation and roughly in the middle of the very large (50 miles on each side) reservation that is partly in the Rocky Mountain foothills (Glacier National Park was ripped out of the West side) and partly stretched out to the oil and grain plains where Cut Bank did a little pushback in order to dominate the only part of Glacier County that’s not rez, because they wanted to be the county seat.  There are three resort towns in the foothills (East Glacier, St. Mary’s, and Babb), one town in Pondera County (Heart Butte), one not-quite-town (Starr School), and a lot of “population centers” where the housing projects have created clusters.  

The town was the third of a series of Indian Agencies, beginning in Fort Benton and hopscotching north as local whites wanted the good grazing land and the tribe was reduced to maybe 500 people by then.  So Choteau was the agency, then “Old Agency,” which fell back to being a population cluster, and finally Browning.  Government Square was laid out to be a parade ground for cavalry horseback exercises because in those days all Indians were supervised by the Department of War and the agents were military.
  

"I bless you, my friend!"

Unfortunately, the military man who chose the location of Browning was inspired by the beauty of the wildflowers, which was created by Willow Creek feeding a swamp.  If there’s a lot of rainfall and runoff, the swamp comes back despite a webwork of drainage lines under the town.  It’s old broken tile and no one kept maps.  Luckily, the schools and the hospital are located on ridges at either edge of Browning.  If the location were a saddle, the school would be on the swell, and the hospital would be on the cantle.  By now the population has so expanded that there is a lot of housing outside the “saddle.”

The quality of the well water was so poor that it could only be used for the vital dialysis center after a lot of work to clean it up.  (Diabetes, which requires dialysis in the last stages, is rampant on the rez.)  Management of local water is a major problem in every small town along the top half of Montana.  Snow pack is low, there’s not enough water for the population, the infrastructure is worn out, the state and federal regulators keep imposing new requirements, and the population’s average income is sinking as the town businesses leave.  At the same time, frakking has introduced a new need for huge amounts of water which are then too contaminated and salty for re-cycling.  This is a long-standing and universal problem.
  

The tipi burner at the Industrial Park.  Now gone.

In the beginning Browning had a hard time figuring out how it fit into the big picture of the reservation as a reserved (set aside) part of the state.  Like Washington, D.C., and the Vatican, it was unclear whether it WAS the state or was NOT the state.  When I came in 1961, it was considered an “island of jurisdiction”.  The earlier chaos introduced by returning and traumatized veterans from WWII and the Korean War meant that the “white” people in town had organized their own law enforcement parallel to the Tribe, which was finally no longer part of the War Department but rather the Interior Department, like trees.

If you go to my other blog, awkwardly but accurately called “Early Browning News”, at  http://browningnewspapers.blogspot.com  you’ll find notes that I took from Browning newspapers between 1806 and 1968.  It’s my understanding that Blackfeet Community College has a complete set of the Glacier Reporter, but I found at the Montana Historical Society a few newspapers that were earlier.  I commend to you the years Milo Fields was owner/editor because he was quite frank.

Main Street looking at Glacier National Park

In those days the town was not just an island of jurisdiction, thought to belong to the state of Montana,  it was white.  When I say “white,” I must note that some of the “whites” were enrolled full-bloods who were mostly culturally “white.”  They were considered dependable, honorable, and stable, which meant good business traits.  Think Masonic.  The government people were white.  The agent was white.  For a little while the feds insisted that the agent be Methodist, but that turned out to be a source of mischief, given the strength of the Catholics.  The Indian people were “oligarchies,” meaning that elite self-protective families had power.  (This is always true in tribes.)

There was another phenomenon that is now true in Valier as well.  The people with the political power, connections in Washington,DC, and deep pockets suitable for capitalism, are not ON the reservation but surround the reservation and have other interests than the rez.  They are ranchers, oil and timber interests, and -- in the case of Cut Bank -- legal manipulators.  When the government reform of Indian preference swept all the government whites (mostly educated) out of their jobs, the division between rez and Cut Bank was driven deeper.  The small business people who were white and -- anyway  -- aging, with children who had emigrated, sold if they could but mostly just ran the inventory down as low as possible and left.  The BIA and Tribe rushed in to fill the vacuum, but competed more than they cooperated.

Along the way some responsibilities of the two aspects of social infrastructure became so burdensome that they were handed over to the state, in much the same way that the public schools, family law, and some other functions became delegated or sub-contracted.  "Serious crime" had always been handled by Feds.  This complicated many situations.  When the Post-Colonial wave of thought demanded sovereignty, these complexities were not considered.  They could not be financed by the tribe alone.  Anyway, the oligarchical families tried to swallow the Tribal Council.

Before the Catholic School was built, 

this was the view from my tiny first apartment.

The water tower was taken down only days ago.

Outside intervention has been too idealistic and inexperienced (or cynical) to be entirely helpful.  Some education efforts have been VERY successful (BCC, Piegan Institute, Siyeh)/ The world scene turned to the recovery of indigenous languages, the rising respect for tradition, and the rather darker influence of AIM.  The other dark thread has been drugs, which travel the same paths as early whiskey.

Now comes a new gunslinger, Derek Kline, a newly graduated and qualified white man from Vermont Law School, Vermontlaw.edu, which is a private law school specializing in Environmental Law and proud of its “warriors” for virtue in the Post-Colonial Bio-Ethics context.  Lawyer/gunslingers are a “type” on reservations and have been from the very earliest days when designing the governmental documents and framing-up organizational structure.  Sometime look up Felix S. Cohen.  http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100532980

In the Sixties I attended the meetings in which a governmental gunslinger (literally, since he was a cop) named Saurez closed down the town’s law and order system, replacing it with tribe and BIA.  Bob Scriver was the City Magistrate and one of the Justices of the Peace, so I had an inside view.  This government guy (FBI as there was no Homeland Security yet) assured us that this reform would be an end to the murders, abuse of women and children, and drunkenness.  Half a century has passed.  There are a lot of new buildings.  People have a lot of training.  Otherwise . . .

Indian Days

The whole world, now viewable via satellite, is struggling with these issues.  It’s not just here, not just us.  We’re looking for new guidelines, and pressing harder against the old ones.  Population growth means scarcity challenges, the gradual blurring-away of the blood quantum system, and hard questions about education that plague us.  The government would like to collapse reservations and tribes.  Attempts have failed.  Once it was suggested that the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier County simply be conflated.  Something needs to change in the post-colonization world.  

Incidentally, Valier talks about stepping away from town status, since so much of the property has already been ceded to the county because of taxes.  There is said to be a few lots in Valier that are technically rez, since the tribal owner put them back into trust status.  How much of the property on the rez has been taken OUT of trust, but then lost to off-rez loans?  How much is now owned by Hutterite colonies?  Might they like to buy a town?  One with a royally screwed-up infrastructure snarl?

Approaching from East Glacier