Former Rock Boy tribal chair guilty of violation of protection order

A former Chippewa Cree tribal chair has pleaded guilty to violating a no contact order and a Great Falls judge ordered him to not have contact with the victim.

Kenneth Blatt St. Marks appeared before a judge at the Great Falls Municipal Court Wednesday, where he pled guilty to a charge of a violation of a protection order, according to the sentencing order.

St. Marks was released from custody with a 180-day suspended sentence and fined $385, the order said.

The judge also instructed St. Marks to have no contact with the victim.

The probable cause document filed by the arresting officer said the Great Falls Police Department had arrested St. Marks after a woman reported Tuesday that her ex-husband was on her property in violation of protection order.

St. Marks was arrested on Seventh Avenue Northwest in Great Falls and taken into custody.

St. Marks was arrested by the Hill County Sheriff’s Office Feb. 28 on charges of violation of a protection order filed by his ex-wife Karen St. Marks. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The charges were dismissed without prejudice. According to the motion the reason for the dismissal “was in the interest of justice.”

Karen St. Marks had previously filed a protection order against Kenneth Blatt St. Marks with the Chippewa Cree Tribal Courts Jan. 30.

St. Marks had a tumultuous tenure while he was the chair of the Chippewa Cree Business Committee. He was removed from office several times by the committee, arrested by the tribe at one point for attending a meeting after he was told to stay away, and charged with fraud.

A tribal court acquitted him of the fraud charge, and he won several special and regular elections to get back into office.

He was chair while multiple officials and workers at the reservation were charged with fraud and embezzlement after investigations by the U.S. attorney for the District of Montana’s Guardians Project. The Guardians Project brings together multiple agencies that cooperate in investigations in Indian Country. St. Marks cooperated with the investigation and the U.S. Department of the Interior ruled in his favor on a whistleblower complaint that the tribe had removed him from office for cooperating with the officials.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a petition from the tribe to overturn Interior’s finding.