For more details, see the Blackfeet Constitutional Reform website.
From the Great Falls Tribune (via Pechanga):
Blackfeet tribal members can help write their new constitution today in Browning.
A constitutional convention will be held today at Blackfeet Community College starting at 5 p.m. Participants will be broken into groups and will draft ideas on articles in the tribe’s new governing document.
A presentation of the ideas will be held later that night, and participants can refine them up until a deadline in February. The event is being put on by the Blackfeet Constitutional Reform Committee.
“The more people we can get to participate and feel ownership, the more success we will have,” said Lona Burns, committee spokeswoman.
The convention comes 19 months after Blackfeet voters overwhelmingly supported a referendum to overhaul the 75-year-old constitution. Voters hoped to add more checks and balances into the tribe’s charter.
The committee hopes the process will end in a secretarial election in which tribal members can adopt the new constitution in June.That also is when tribal elections are scheduled.A secretarial election is conducted by the federal Secretary of the Interior.
This process stalled last year because of a lack of community input and low turnout at reform meetings. The June 2008 referendum vote called for a secretarial election on the new constitution in June 2009, but the committee wasn’t ready.
The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council passed a resolution extending the deadline, allowing the committee to go back to work.
The project got new life with help from the Blackfoot Project, a group of Native American college students working to benefit the Blackfeet Nation. They led focus groups and have done survey work on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, along with analyzing what has and hasn’t worked in tribal constitutional reform.
Their research showed that the Blackfeet people wanted change, but they didn’t know how to get it. The Blackfeet currently have a centralized form of government, meaning the tribal council has full power to do what it wants, Burns said.
“The people definitely feel our current form of government doesn’t allow for fairness. They feel our justice system doesn’t work,” Burns said.
The committee has found that a separation of powers — or checks and balances — are needed for any tribe to be successful, Burns said. The federal government has three separate branches of government, but the committee wants to get input on how the Blackfeet want to incorporate their checks and balances.
Over the past few months, the committee has led educational symposiums on how the Blackfeet got their current constitution, which was adopted as a “boiler plate” charter during the Indian Reorganization Act in the 1930s.
There were attempts to change the Blackfeet constitution in the past, but sitting tribal councils shot them down under the threat of eroded power, Burns said.
People now want to be removed from the Indian Reorganization Act constitution and the restrictions it places on the tribe. They also want more recourse for fairness. If tribal members lose a tribal court appeal of a tribal council decision, they can only then appeal to that same tribal council.
“The people are more involved. They understand why it’s so important … they don’t want to sit back anymore,” Burns said.
Burns said Native American tribes across North America are pushing for new constitutions. The Crow Tribe previously has adopted a new charter, but the Fort Peck Tribes’ constitutional referendum attempt died last year.
After this convention, the committee will take these findings and go to the public for more outreach. The committee will fine-tune all of these findings and submit a new tribal constitution to the tribal council, which has to make a resolution calling for the secretarial election.
Past councils have refused to pass constitutional amendments on, but this sitting council has made a resolution to put the new charter up for vote in a secretarial election, regardless of the committee’s findings.
After the tribe passes a resolution, a secretarial election has to be held after a 90-day review process.
The historic nature of this project is understood by the committee, and those who are contributing to it.
“We’re hoping that 100 years from now, people are going to look back at what we did as positive and truly historic,” Burns said.
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