In July the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council passed the Blackfeet Tobacco Free Act making all Reservation public places smoke

Handsel Art

PRESS RELEASE

Date: 12 September 2005

For Immediate Release

Contact: J.R. Few at

(870) 427-1365 or email

Native Americans Challenge Big Tobacco

In Montana the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has passed the Blackfeet Tobacco Free Act making all Reservation public places smoke free and spit tobacco free beginning September 1. The act states it is "dedicated to all the Blackfeet members who have died and suffer from commercial tobacco-related cancers and illnesses" and "to protect the public health of the Blackfeet Nation, now and in the future." Though not the first sovereign nation to provide smoke free air for citizens, it is a watershed step in protecting the public health of Native Americans from big tobacco.

The relationship between Native Americans and tobacco precedes the United States by thousands of years. The introduction of tobacco to Europeans financed the economy of the colonial powers that began the genocide of Native Americans. Today we can see the effects of tobacco on historical markers here in Marion County noting the Trail of Tears where thousands of Natives were displaced and marched to their deaths to accommodate the growing demand for land in a plantation economy. This economy would not have been possible without exporting tobacco, the major cash crop of North America for 200 years after colonization.

Early settlers were woefully unprepared to survive much less prosper until the welcoming Native tribes introduced them to tobacco. Exporting what had been a ceremonial herb motivated an economy that was both labor and land intensive. Tobacco mono-cropping mandated slave labor and soil degradation. By 1830 the white demand for land prompted the Indian Removal Act. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cherokee land claims. President Andrew Jackson, in an impeachable offense, defied the court by sending U.S. troops to forcibly remove the Native population east of the Mississippi. This death march to Oklahoma through Arkansas and Missouri cost the lives of nearly 4,000 Natives. This was neither the first nor last treaty the United States broke, nor the last damage done to Native Americans by those profiting from tobacco.

In 1913 R.J. Reynolds began using the image of Chief Joseph in advertisements for Prince Albert pipe tobacco and even today markets American Spirit cigarettes with Native American symbolism. Native American Activist Iona Star notes, "They use the ‘Natural American Spirit’ tobacco and they put our images on these things and it makes people think the Indians are helping them do this; that we condone this, but it isn't so." In August the Guilford Native American Art Gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina presented "A Story of Indian Tradition, Not Addiction," an exhibit organized by the gallery's assistant director Alicia Thomas. “They used our culture to sell cigarettes,” says Thomas. Today 41% of Native Americans are addicted to what was once - and should still be - a strong and sacred tradition. Commercial tobacco use causes 3 out of 5 Native American deaths.

After the Revolutionary War royal land grants given Natives were nullified by the United States government who then perpetuated as brutal an ethnic cleansing as any on the planet. It is ironic that today Native communities have partnered, by marketing tobacco, with the capitalist heirs of the plantation economy, the tobacco cartel. Even more irony notes that the Internet Tobacco Sales Enforcement Act, allowing states to sue not just businesses located in Indian country but the actual Tribal governments, is supported by both The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the National Association of Convenience Stores. John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians says of this legislation, “What's unusual about this bill is giving states the authority to enforce federal laws. This is a very tough issue for us. Very few Indian tribes are involved in this [online cigarette sales]. It is mostly individuals living on tribal grounds."

The issue of tribal sovereignty also comes into legal question regarding the states’ authority to regulate smoke free air in Casinos on tribal land. Native American tobacco prevention activist Mark LeBeau says, “One option that tribal governments might consider using to protect their sovereignty could be the adoption of their own smoke-free policies in these buildings that goes beyond state standards.” The Blackfeet Tribal Council decision anticipates a Montana law passed in April making all public places smoke free by October 1, eventually including bars and casinos by 2009.

Native tobacco prevention activists want to emphasize the difference between the sacred and commercial use of tobacco. Unique to the progressive Blackfeet Tribal action is a recognition that, “Blackfeet cultural, spiritual, and ceremonial use of tobacco is an inherent immutable component of the Blackfeet cultural landscape...[and] does not ban, prohibit or restrict in any manner the traditional, cultural, spiritual and ceremonial tobacco use by the Blackfeet people."

Consultant to Tobacco-Free Marion County, Dr. James Wise, says of smoke free legislation, “What is important to note about smoke free air is the message that everyone has the right to control their own body but no one has the right to threaten another’s in public space. The relationship between indigenous peoples with indigenous flora cannot be denied but today’s cigarette has as much to do with Nicotiana Rustica as fat free barbecue Pringles do with a potato. “

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This marker west of Yellville near the intersection of Hwy 62 and Hwy 202 notes the route economic forces of the early 19^th century marched displaced Native Americans from concentration camps in Alabama through Marion and Baxter Counties to reservations in Oklahoma during the winter of 1838.

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