GREAT FALLS — The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has banned a convicted drug dealer from coming onto the reservation in northern Montana.
Tribal Council Chairman Harry Barnes tells the Great Falls Tribune the decision is a message to drug dealers who would prey on reservation residents and is a reaction to concerns that the U.S. attorney’s office is not doing enough to prosecute drug cases on the reservation.
Barnes says the council passed a resolution 5-3 on June 7 saying that 58-year-old Mark John Keuter “is immediately excluded and banished” from the reservation. Keuter was sentenced in April for criminal possession of dangerous drugs. He is reportedly in a diversion program and could not be reached for comment.
The tribal council voted in 2015 to banish drug dealers, but Barnes says he believes this is the first time they’ve done so.