As he speaks about last year’s snowstorm and the buffalo shooting, Commissioner

Don Swenson lets out a short, gruff laugh.“It’s not like we didn’t cooperate,” he says, his tone exasperated. “If it was an emergency situation — life or death — we would have helped them.”
The county, he explains, had problems of its own. Resources were tied up.

Standing over the new district boundary maps he just spread across the table, Swenson changes the subject.

“I represent District 2,” he says, pointing at the bottom left third of the county map. “I used to go to the reservation quite often because it was part of my district. Now I don’t have any reason to go down there.”

Hanging on the far wall in a glass frame is the old district map. District 2 has more or less remained the same, except for the tribal land lost to District 1, which now encompasses the entire reservation. District 3 has almost doubled and covers the entire east-to-west swath of county land north of Highway 2.

The Fort Belknap Reservation is what Swenson calls a closed reservation — less than 4 percent of its land is managed by the county. The rest is tribal, and what happens on tribal land is largely dictated by the tribal government.

“There just isn’t that much the county does on the reservation,” Swenson says. “Don’t get me wrong, they are still Blaine County, but they have their own budget.”

According to District 3 Commissioner Kleinjan, the county provides 10 miles of road maintenance, courthouse services, and backup fire, ambulance and law enforcement.

Because of the redistricting, Kleinjan no longer lives in the district he represents. He can’t run again, a situation he deems unfair.

“I lay my blame on the federal government,” Kleinjan said on the phone a few days earlier, echoing both Swenson and Detamore’s gripe over the heavy hand of the federal government.

“In my opinion, it is not a racial issue. It is illegal … immoral for the U.S. government to come in and tell us what to do,” he says. “I have never been racist against American Indians.”

In fact, he is complimentary toward Plumage.

“The lady who has gotten the job is competent. It has gone better than I expected … I am surprised,” he remarks, stopping himself to quickly add, “No, I am pleased.”

Swenson and Plumage’s black swivel chairs are just far enough apart so their knees don’t bang when Plumage turns left and Swenson right. Kleinjan’s seat is empty — he is out of town on business.

Room 108 of the county courthouse is large and uncrowded. Old paintings of cowboys and Indians sparsely cover the wall to the left of the outdated district boundary map. Below the paintings is a desk on which a tattered filing box full of folders reading “Summary Judgment 2001” and “Appeal, Court Opinion” and “Voting districts” sits.

Swenson walks across the room and sits heavily into his chair. His arms cross just below his chest.

Plumage looks quickly at him and, before meeting his eyes, looks down at a typed list she has prepared of all the county services that affect the reservation — services, she says, that can potentially bolster the tribal government.

The list is long and includes tobacco prevention, mosquito spraying, and assisting the county clerk with the recruitment of diverse judges. She mentions mostly the different state-funded boards that commissioners sit on. She fills any breaks in conversation with more examples of her efforts over the last two years.

The more Plumage speaks, the less she glances at Swenson, who leans back in his chair, shifting his attention between his computer screen and the window behind him. Talking seems to relax her.

“I will be glad when this is over,” she says a few weeks before the Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal. Leaning forward in her seat, she continues: “[The tribe] has no idea what I am going through. They have no idea what it means, how hard it is. I have no one to ask advice. No one has done this before, being a woman or an Indian.”

“I have kept my feeling to myself,” she adds. “I have maintained a silence, watched and listened. I don’t want to hurt them and I don’t want to hurt people here.”

Dolores and Jack Plumage moved to the Fort Belknap Reservation in 1977. It was her second marriage. The first didn’t work out, so she and her son, the only child from that marriage, left Las Vegas where they briefly lived and returned to Montana. They stopped in Missoula, just south of St. Ignatius where she grew up, on the Flathead Reservation. There, Plumage went to college, fell in love with Jack and got married.

She moved again, this time for good, to Fort Belknap where Jack Plumage was enrolled.

“I was sick of traveling,” she says. “This is the longest I have stayed in one place.”

As young girls, Plumage and her sister Judy were sent to boarding school on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation to get out of what she calls a dysfunctional family, enveloped in drinking and abuse. She wanted to give her family the stability of place that she never had. She seldom visits St. Ignatius now.

Plumage has never told anyone on the tribal council about her childhood.

“In an Indian way, you see life as a gift,” she says. “You don’t want to see it as a stereotype. No matter how hard it is, it is a gift.”
That is how she looks at the opportunity she has now.

“You want to have friends … but you have to know why you are in office,” she explains. “It’s hard to be patient and realize … all I’m laying is the groundwork. But I am here. I’m the first. That’s my job. There is someone behind me.”

While in Missoula, Plumage also met Jesse James Hawley, an enrolled Fort Belknap member who now lives just beyond the reservation’s northern border, in Harlem.

“She and Judy were very vocal,” says Hawley. “They have always been involved.”

Hawley has seen how difficult it is for Plumage. Sometimes, after a long day or week, Plumage will stop on her way home from Chinook and say she wishes that a familiar face would just stop in the courthouse and say hi.

Hawley thinks some people on the reservation still don’t consider Plumage one of their own because she was not born there. It is a part of what Hawley calls the innate racism that plagues her people.

“She has lived here for 30 years and raised kids, for God’s sake,” Hawley says.

“I can take the name calling. I can deal with that. It is the stuff from the inside … Discrimination within our own system hurts us more than discrimination from outside.”

In that vein, Hawley says she doesn’t think the tribal council supports Plumage adequately. Council members have not invited her to meetings and rarely travel to Chinook.

“She is in a position where she is trying to tell the white folks [Indians] are citizens of the county too,” Hawley says.

“On the other hand, [she is] trying to educate those on the reservation, without them valuing the work she does.”

Referring to some council members, she adds: “If you have one iota of a brain, it’s clear they are threatened.”

Racism, Hawley says, exists on both sides.

After the redistricting, Swenson approached her and said he felt bad that he no longer had an opportunity to represent her.

“I had to laugh,” she says, chuckling at the memory. “I thought, ‘That was odd; you never represented me before.’”

Hanging just above and to the left of tribal Vice President Raymond Chandler is a heavy, wool tapestry, on which several Indians sit around a red and orange campfire, pointing to constellations. The tapestry nearly covers the wall closest to the door of tribal President Julia Doney’s large office. Music and chatter waft into the busy room from an equally busy hallway. The atmosphere, unlike in Chinook, is causal. Framed pictures of family and elders decorate the walls on either side of the tapestry.

Since the redistricting, Chandler says, nothing much has changed.

“Basically it is the same as it always was,” he says. “Except that their feelings towards us have surfaced … We don’t even consider ourselves Blaine County residents. We don’t expect anything.”

Except, that is, during emergencies like the snowstorm.

Hearing the words “snow” and “buffalo” Doney joins Chandler and administrative officer Phillip Shortman around the table.

“After the rancher’s son shot and killed five buffalo,” Shortman says, “we filed a complaint with the stock inspector and sheriff, and the county commissioners were aware of it. The only charge that was issued was an obstruction of justice.”

“The county basically gave us the run-around,” Chandler adds. “If it had been a bunch of cows out there starving, they would have scrambled to save those cows.”

Their resentment, more than a year later, is strong.

“They said they couldn’t because of money,” Doney says, “but if there was a good working relationship you’d just want to help. There shouldn’t have to be a phone call. We are neighbors.”

“When we went up there to ask for help,” Chandler adds, “they had their lawyers sitting there. That’s how neighborly they are. We knew at that moment we had wasted our gas money.”

All of the tribe’s requests for aid were denied by the county commissioners. In the end, the tribe declared the situation an emergency and received $350,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for disaster relief.

To Doney, the buffalo shooting, snowstorm and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court speak not to a bad, but rather a lack of a working relationship between the tribe and the county.

“When they appealed the first time, I thought ‘OK, they have a right to appeal.’ But the second time makes us think, ‘Why aren’t we good enough? Why is my vote not good enough?’” she says to nods of agreement from other tribal council members.

The appeal was not the only shadow cast over the victory of redistricting.

The four council members also doubt Plumage’s ability to change the status quo.

“There is potential there,” says Chandler of the redistricting and new election system. “But we need a real strong person who doesn’t just think of themselves.”

An improvement, they agree, would be if all of the commissioners came and spoke to the tribal council. That would say something to their people.

“Dolores reported how hard it can be,” says Chandler, leaning over a cup of steaming coffee. “Sometimes we sympathize, but being an elected official you have to be able to deal with these things.”

Again, four nods.

Told of the council’s request to see more of her and the other commissioners, Plumage lets out a deep and tired sigh. The last time she went to one of their meetings, she felt unwelcome. They singled her out and asked why she was there, something Plumage says she would have never done to them had they come to Chinook.

“No one else had to say why they were there,” she adds.

Tribal member Ruben Horseman also attended the meeting.

“You should have seen Dolores go into that room,” he says. “They made some very inappropriate remarks. But her being in Chinook is opening eyes. People have never looked at issues in the county before. Now that we have representation, they are paying attention.”
And, according to Horseman, that is forcing the tribal council to open up. It is forcing accountability.

“When we ask for help, Dolores gives it,” he says. “Before, when we asked the council for information, they would say it is privileged information and hold meetings behind closed doors. Now they can’t because they know we can get it elsewhere.”

“Slowly,” he adds, “they are learning.”

Click Images to Enlarge

Tom Jones, a game warden at Fort Belknap Fish and Wldlife, closes the gate to the bison range, where in 2004 five bison escaped to neighboring land during a snowstorm.

The Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes manage a 700-head bison herd. After a neighbor shot bison that had escaped the range, the tribes sought reimbursement, but were unsuccessful. Range managers put the loss at $10,000. The neighbor was charged with obstruction of justice.

Family plays an integral role in Plumage's life. Her granddaughter Sage, 4, jumps at any opportunity to spend time with her grandparents, Dolores and Jack. Plumage's work in Blaine County seat is laying the groundwork for future generations of Indians, such as Sage.

Road maintenance is the responsibility of the tribe because Ft.Belknap is considered a closed reservation. Only a little less than 4 percent of the land, which includes 10 miles of state highway, is the responsibility of the county.

Don Swenson is 1 of 3 county commissioners in Blaine County. After a redistricting in 2001, a small square of land of the reservation previously in Don's district was lost to District 1, now Dolores' district. As a result, Done no longer travels to the reservation to work with the Indians.

A sign in Lodge Pole welcomes visitors to the small community on the Ft.Belknap reservation, where Dolores serves as the Blaine County Commissioner.

Tribal President and Vice President, Julia Doney and Raymond Chandler both agree that there is a lack of a working relationship between the county and the reservation.