A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Here’s the scene I think former State Senator Mike Taylor (R-Dayton) wants you to imagine:
The CSKT Water Compact has been fully ratified. The CSKT now own instream flow rights on the Flathead River all the way to British Columbia, with a priority date of time immemorial. You own private property along the Flathead mainstem south of Kalispell. The river teems with fish. It’s a fine late Saturday afternoon, so you’re holding your daughter’s wedding reception in your backyard, the river shining, the Swan Range approaching the hour of alpenglow.
As you sit down to dinner, two smoke belching old pickups filled with profane beer drinking men rumble into your backyard. It’s a CSKT fishing party, asserting its Hellgate Treaty treaty fishing rights. You are told to move your tables and keep out of the way while the fish are netted, and on your shore, gutted and smoked.
Do you object? Of course you do. But writing in the 16 March 2015 Daily InterLake, Taylor says your objection has no legal merit:
…water given to the tribes off the reservation will give the tribes and their members access to the private property that the water flows through, without having to gain your permission. The tribe’s able lawyers confirmed this to be so.
Taylor provides no citation for his assertion that the lawyers for the CSKT back his position on access. He’s not the only one making that argument, which people knowledgeable with the issue tend to dismiss with a contemptuous weariness.
But a weary wave of dismissal won’t be enough. In the absence of a cogent rebuttal from the CSKT’s attorneys, Taylor’s argument will carry great weight in the court of public opinion.
That rebuttal needs to be released no later than sunrise on Monday.
Mike Taylor’s wife is Sen. Janna Taylor (R-Dayton).