ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how the traditional practice has jeopardized the welfare of the Crow people and asks why this politics of risk has characterized the Crow government. The Crow reservation covers more than 2.2 million acres, the largest of Montana's seven Indian reservations. It is located in southeastern Montana, east of Billings and north of the Wyoming border. The Crow tribe itself owns 18 percent of the reservation acreage, while members of the tribe hold 50 percent of acreage through individual allotments. The Crow tribe had its birth in factionalism, and divisiveness has marked its social organization ever since. In the seventeenth century the Crow resided with the Minnetarees along the Missouri River in what is the Dakotas. The principal arena of Crow politics for centuries has been the general council. Crow reservation government experienced in 1910 a temporary transition from the traditional general council to a small business committee.
