Montana Attorney General Opinion 16-162

Opinion No. 162. Schools-SchooI Districts-Indians -Reservations. HELD: A school district, with boundaries coextensive with the boun- daries of the Fort Belknap Indian Res- ervation, may be created providing that all of the necessary statutory requirements are fulfilled. August 31, 1935. Miss Elizabeth Ireland state Superintendent of Public Instruction The Capitol You have submitted a letter from Norman B. Hinds, Education Field Agent at the Fort Belknap Indian Agency, Harlem, with a request for the opinion of this' office as to whether or not a school district may be created with boundaries coexten- sive with the boundaries of .the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. Upon the authority of Grant v. Michaels, 94 Mont. 452, 23 Pac. (2) 266, it is our opinion that such a dis- trict may be created, provided that all of the necessary statutory require- ments are fulfilled. Since the decision in Grant v. Michaels, is controlling, we quote from it at length: "Dehors the record, counsel for the commissioners have called our attention to the fact that the terri- tory embraced within the proposed OPINIONS OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 165 district is within the Blackfoot In- dian Reservation, and that most of the persons interested are Indian wards of the government, and as- serts that these are not taxpayers. Counsel asserts that we should take judicial notice of these facts, and further, that within such territory there is a large parochial boarding- school, and a large government boarding-school, which schools take care of and board several hundred Indian children, and that each year the Congress finds it necessary to appropriate large sums for the re- lief, food, clothing, housing and med- ical care of these people. It is fur- ther urged that to create separate schools within the new district in order that none of the 212 children would have to travel more than 4 miles to school 'would be to create an impossible tax condition upon the taxable property in that district.' * * * "That many of the children of the proposed district are the offspring of illiterate Indians is all the more reason why they should be afforded adequate free public school facilities; their parents cannot instruct them at home, and, while a truant officer is authorized to return truants to a parochial or government school, which they have been attending, the parents of such children cannot be compelled to pll\ce their children in such schools or return them thereto if the children leave with their con- sent. "The government, recognizing the necessity of educating the Indians, has made provision for and estab- lished Indian schools, but neither by treaty have the Blackfoot Indians surrendered to the United States the right to compel their chHdren to at- tend school (if it may be assumed that Indians exercise such a1lthority over their children), nor has the United States assumed to possess or exercise such right. (United States .ex reI. Young v. Imoda, 4 Mont. 38, 1 Pac. 721.) The government board- ing-school mentioned does not fill the place of the free common school re- quired by our Constitutic;m, and the fact, if it be a fact, that such a school is open to' the children of the pro- posed district, does not relieve the state of its duty to furnish public school facilities to those children. Even though a government school ex- isted within the territory under con- Sideration. that fact would be im- materiul in considering the petition for a dis~rict. (Piper '-. Big Pine School Dist., supra.)" See also Lebo v. Griffith, 42 S. D. 198, 173 N. W. 840; state v. Mount- rail County, 28 N. D. 389, 149 N. W. 120; Section 1204, R. C. M. 1921; Vol- ume 1, Report and Official Opinions of Attorney General, page 411; Vol- ume 11, page 50.