Chapter 20: The Sting

Now I am going to jump ahead in time, to tell you about important things that took place, and then later return to events in time sequence. What about the Real Bird tribal administration? As I review and update this chapter in September of 1992, my friend Richard Real Bird is in the federal penitentiary at Yankton, South Dakota, a convicted felon. There is some similarity in this situation to the plight of Leonard Peltier, another outspoken Indian leader (from another time and place) who is also in prison.
You must understand that Real Bird’s lawsuit against BIA for improper trust accounting, based partly on my testimony, was an insult that BIA would simply not allow. It would embarrass BIA, Interior, and the federal government as a whole. While this story continues an undercover “sting” operation was being conducted on the Crow Reservation by FBI agents and U.S. Justice Department operatives.
Obviously as these facts came out, the Crow Administration became both frightened and angry. Here is how they reported the situation in a press release dated July 25, 1989, the day after indictments were served:
“Crow Agency, Montana:
The United States District Court issued Criminal Indictments to members of the Crow Tribe dated July 24, 1989. United States Marshals served indictments to present and past Crow Tribal Administration Officials summoning them to appear in United States District Court August 1, 1989. Crow Tribal committee members of both tribal factions [political parties] were also indicted, namely certain individuals on the Crow Tribal Housing Authority, the BIA controlled Crow Land Purchase Committee and the Crow Credit Committee. According to Chairman Richard Real Bird ‘North Side or South Side, it don’t make any difference, the Feds are after the whole Crow Tribe of Indians.’ The Chairman was also served with a summons early today at his country residence by sixteen armed federal agents. Real Bird further stated the indictments are another attempt by the BIA to destroy the God-given rights of the Crow Nation.
The main thrust of the indictments against the Real Bird Administration is into allegations of vote buying to defeat the Clara Nomee faction at these quarterly Crow Tribal Council meetings. From October 1986 to the July 8, 1989 [meeting] Crow Tribal employees often attended these quarterly council meetings flat broke and without a paycheck. According to Crow Tribal Officials the Billings Area Office [of BIA] has continually denied the Crow Tribe’s request for financial drawdowns to pay its bills and Government employees since the first of June, 1989. According to Crow Tribal Officials the Billings Area Office [of BIA] has continually denied the Crow Tribe’s request for financial drawdowns to pay its bills and Government employees since the first of June, 1989. Each of these allegations will be addressed in Federal District Court, which will be presented as a Sovereign Nation acting under its own laws...”
In the trials the District Court did NOT treat the Crow Tribe as a sovereign nation, and refused to hear testimony against BIA, based on the judge’s ruling that BIA was not on trial. It was not a trial by Real Bird’s peers, since that would call for an Indian judge and jury in Indian country. The dominant society forbids that sort of thing.
I offered to appear as a witness against BIA in these trials, but based on the judge’s ruling such testimony could not be considered, so I was not be called by the defense attorney. In other words, Real Bird was not allowed to fully present a defense against the charges. The Court side-stepped the issue, a very powerful weapon the Court used to aid the crooks at BIA.
This all started (or became apparent) on October 22, 1987 when a combination of BIA, FBI and Justice Department armed agents entered the Crow Government offices and seized their books and records, carrying them away in trucks. It appears that all the records were copied before they were returned to the tribe, and then the copies were studied (by federal attorneys, CPAs and FBI agents) with the goal of finding something illegal. The Federal Government’s purpose, as I see it, was to seize the initiative, and discredit the tribal officials who had dared bring a lawsuit against BIA. I call it vicious reprisal, an insult to the American ideals of freedom and equal justice.
My friend Richard was in trouble as an “uppity” Indian who was unwilling to keep his mouth shut about Federal crimes and misdeeds. If you now accept my belief that freedom of speech is not available for federal employees, just try to imagine yourself as an Indian with even fewer rights, while a score of FBI agents try to find something, anything, to hold over your head and to bring you down.
Shortly after Richard filed his lawsuit against BIA, and following the seizure of tribal records, a score or more of FBI Agents and investigators headed for the Crow Reservation, to dig up whatever dirt they could find to bring down the Real Bird Administration. It’s impossible to get exacting information from the FBI on this, because they claim they are unable to find the information requested by me in “freedom of information” requests. The polite term for this is stonewalling, so I’ll simply do some estimating. If the FBI would like to provide more facts, I’d be delighted to hear from them, but they hide their deeds carefully. It appears to me they spent not less that forty man-years on this investigation, at a cost of not less than two million dollars for salaries, travel and the cost of paying informants. The cost of the sting could easily be twice my estimate.
You need to know that the Crow People frequently give gifts to each other. Popular gifts are fine Hudson Bay blankets (sealed in plastic covers), and hundred dollar bills. These items generally are not consumed. The plastic wrappers are not removed from the blankets and the hundred dollar bills are not spent, but instead they are carefully hoarded for the next occasion when it is appropriate to pass them along as a gift to another Crow.
In this way relatively poor people can give generous gifts whenever the need arises. Occasions are frequent, and a giveaway is often done in public to honor someone who has done an act of kindness. By ancient custom, gifts are given for such things as sponsoring a Sundance, conducting a naming ceremony or offering prayers of healing for those who are sick, and relating to the modern world, for providing a job or some economic benefit. Gifts for such things are not mandatory, but you are expected to share good fortune with your benefactors.
If a Crow tribal official awards a contract to a supplier who is also Crow, it would not be unusual for the official to be given one of those fine blankets or a well worn hundred dollar bill. To the Crow this is good manners, but by whiteman’s rules it is a bribe, which is a felony punishable by a year or more in the federal penitentiary. Tribal officials who are convicted of a felony can never again hold a Federal office. By following this process, it’s easy for an FBI agent to come up with a felony conviction, or the threat of one, to tame an “uppity” Indian who complains too loudly about BIA. The Government has taken away the primal right of Indians to govern themselves on important matters, and has substituted federal laws to govern Indians, so Indians are held accountable for following the whiteman’s rules, even on such matters as giving gifts to each other.
While the “sting” was quietly taking place as an under-cover operation, Chairman Real Bird needed to buy some land (for the tribe) near the tribal offices, and got permission and price approval in advance from the local BIA Superintendent, Bud Moran, to do so. He was assured by Moran that the tribe would be able to draw the necessary money out of its BIA trust funds for the approved purpose.
Several Crow friends were witnesses to this, and assure me that this is an absolute fact. I was not present, but believe their statements are true.
Since getting action out of BIA is a slow process, the tribe applied for a loan from a bank in Hardin, Montana, and filed the required tribal balance sheet with the loan application. As an optimist, or perhaps simply because he lacked financial experience, Real Bird showed the money coming from BIA as an accomplished fact rather than as a promise for the near future.
In the non-Indian world, many young people who are buying a first house get some financial help from Mom and Dad. There is a promise of a loan or a gift of cash to help with the down-payment. Generally the buyer enters this on the financial statement filed with the mortgage lender as cash. I don’t know of any non-Indians who have found the FBI coming after them for this very common and fairly innocent “fraud.”
From the FBI’s point of view, this is grounds for the crime of conspiring to defraud a bank by filing a false financial statement. It is true that the financial statement was wrong, but I see no evil motive here. At Real Bird’s trial, his attorney raised this point and summoned Bud Moran as a witness. Now just before the trial took place, BIA transferred Bud Moran to an office in another state, and although he remained on BIA’s payroll, he could not be found by BIA or by the Marshal.
Real Bird’s attorney asked for a delay until the witness could be located, but after a short delay Moran could still not be found and the judge ruled that the trial must proceed. Even though no personal motive was shown, and Real Bird’s action was not evil, BIA got it’s fraud conviction and Real Bird headed for the federal penitentiary. As a convicted felon he would be marked for life, which is what BIA was after.
There is no evidence that BIA told Bud Moran to hide, but it looks very unusual to me that a BIA employee currently on the payroll could not be located after several tries. Do you think Richard Real Bird received a fair trial?
Time and space won’t allow me to describe the other trials here. There truly were some bad actions on the part of some tribal officials, but I believe they were no worse than our politicians in Washington, and indeed a lot better. A major difference is that the federal politicians make laws exempting themselves from what most of us call bribery, and control the budget of the FBI and Justice Department. They don’t get “stung” unless they fail to share the goodies with their buddies, and they collect more than just Hudson Bay blankets.
On November 21, 1992, a Saturday, I had the honor of picking-up Richard from the half-way house (Alternatives, Inc.), a prison pre-release center, in Billings. The two of us rode together in my Jeep to the Crow Reservation, for a “sweat” at the family sweat-lodge, and then a feast with family members and Clan Elders.
Richard is marked for life as a convicted felon, and had just been released from the federal penitentiary on parole after more than two years of confinement. By some good fortune I was serving on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit corporation that operates the half-way house. Not that I would or could get him preferential treatment, but at least I could protect him from further attack by those who wanted him destroyed. This trip marked his return to Indian Country on parole.
As the old Jeep chugged up the second range of hills east of Billings, we stopped to get out of the car to simply stand in the wind and look in silence at the beauty of the hills. This is part of the “ceded land,” buffalo country that was beloved by the Crow Nation for ten thousand years. This land, thousands of square miles of it, all you could see to the horizon from our perch high on the ridge, was taken from the Crow (“ceded”) at the turn of the century to be exploited by the cattle barons, and now is largely ruined by over-grazing with it’s productivity reduced to as little as a tenth of what it was before.
Richard excused himself, and walked to the far side of the hill to pray, and express thanks for returning to this beloved Indian Country. Later, after we arrived at his mother’s house, he would mount a horse and ride alone to sit on a hill overlooking the Little Big Horn (Custer) battlefield. He apologized for not offering me a horse to ride along with him, he wanted to be alone to pray.
It was a glorious day under a clear Montana sky. You could smell freedom in the air, and with First Maker all things are possible. It was a good day!