Northern Cheyenne
Reservation
Sacrificing the
Water
Cheyenne fear
the effects of coal bed methane drilling
Story by Sadie
Craig
Photos by Adam Bystrom
It’s pitch-black inside Ernie Robinson’s sweat lodge. His
family gathers every Sunday to sweat, often inviting guests to join.
They pray for the well-being of their friends, their tribe, their state,
their nation, and their world.
.A long day, a long week. Ernie Robinson rests outside his
Ashland home after working with his cattle all day. He grew up
on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and now owns a home and
land along the Tongue River, giving him a strong spiritual connection
to the water.
|
The heat intensifies with the sound of sizzling water as it bounces off
the red-hot rocks in the center. Steam fills the lodge and sweat soaks
everyone. The sound of one woman’s voice is piercing as four other
family members sing in Cheyenne.
The sweat involves four rounds of prayer and song. Between each round,
Robinson passes a cup of water. This cup can be used to rinse off one’s
face or body, or it can be passed along to the next person in the sweat.
But if one person uses some of the water, it should be emptied, passed
back to Robinson, and refilled before it moves along. The water should
not be compromised.
The sweat is one Cheyenne ceremony that is reliant upon water. A sweat
feels much like a steam room. The steam allows the leader to intensify
the heat by adding water throughout each round of prayer. It gets hotter
as the voices get louder. Without water, the temperature would slowly
decline as the heat from the rocks fades.
Though the Northern Cheyenne tribe is sovereign over its reservation
of approximately 700 square miles in southeast Montana, they are learning
they may not be sovereign over the water beneath their land. Coal bed
methane drilling removes an enormous volume of water, and the drilling
is getting closer and closer to the reservation.
“It’s our life, water, it’s our life,” says Douglas
Spotted Eagle, known by the tribe as a keeper of the bundle, a collection
of sacred artifacts.
T he Northern Cheyenne Reservation stands in contrast to surrounding
areas where the land has been mined for coal and other minerals. The
Cheyenne have not mined the land, though the reservation sits atop what’s
estimated at billions of dollars worth of coal. They’ve chosen
not to develop, though the reservation is plagued by poverty.
“It is no secret that the Northern Cheyenne Reservation is among the poorest
regions in the United States,” reads a report by the tribe.
The tribe doesn’t have adequate housing for members who live on
the reservation. There is no system for disposing of trash, so litter
is everywhere. Septic pools are overflowing. Only 30 percent of the people
have jobs.
Yet, even with extreme poverty on the reservation, mining is not a part
of the Cheyenne way of life.
“I guess you could say we’re in touch with our Mother Earth,” says
Donna Spotted Eagle, a soft-spoken woman with glasses and dark hair,
who is married to Douglas Spotted Eagle.
In the early 1990s, the Cheyenne considered coal bed methane development
but felt that the removal of water wasn’t worth the potential profit
or jobs – and found through trial and error that the water removed
wasn’t good for Cheyenne agricultural uses, according to former
Tribal Councilman Ernie Robinson. Developing coal bed methane could bring
the tribe millions.
“Money isn’t important,” says Lavonda Brady, a Cheyenne who
opposes coal bed methane development. “We don’t want so much
that we’re so rich that we could buy the world. What’s important
is being able to get by, to stay alive and give life. Life is important.”
And at the center of life, according to Cheyenne beliefs, is water.
“To me, water means life,” Myrna Burgess, Lame Deer representative
to the tribal council, explains as she strokes her tiny dog. “Because
it’s life for everything. My plants, pets, my Chihuahuas.”
I n the past few years, coal bed methane development has expanded in
the coal-rich West. An estimated 24 trillion cubic feet of recoverable
methane lies beneath the Powder River Basin, east of the reservation.
Though the tribe does not now permit development inside its reservation
boundaries, some fear the effects on the reservation could be profound.
Extracting methane from coal bed seams can result in significant drawdown
of groundwater – estimates in one federal Environmental Impact
Statement range up to a drop of 20 feet. The tribe is currently part
of numerous lawsuits to slow down development and create stricter environmental
regulations.
Tribal members hang prayer cloths near a trickling spring a few
miles south of Lame Deer. The tribe believes a water spirit resides
here.
|
A leader in coal bed methane development is Fidelity, a company located
in Decker, a tiny Montana town just north of the Wyoming border near
the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. To remove the trapped methane,
a producer like Fidelity drills a well and pumps water from the coal
seams, releasing the gas. As the methane is removed, so are thousands
of gallons a day of warm, salty groundwater, some of which is kept in
holding ponds above ground. According to the Bureau of Land Management,
the discharge water is also dumped into the Tongue River and used for
mining and agricultural purposes, though its sodium content is so high
that such use is not generally recommended.
As methane and water are taken out of an area underground, water from
surrounding areas seeps in to fill the gap. This, the Cheyenne say, is
their main concern: in spite of their decision not to develop, they could
suffer the loss of groundwater from development off the reservation.
They also worry because Fidelity is permitted to discharge extracted
coal bed methane water into the Tongue River, which flows along the eastern
border of the reservation.
The tribe shares water rights in the Tongue River as well as in the aquifer
under the reservation. One lawsuit the tribe has fought and won asked
that coal bed methane discharge water be called a pollutant. But naming
the water a pollutant does not prevent it from being discharged into
the river – rather the state will monitor how much is put into
the river. What impacts will that have on water quality, landowners,
fishing and, indirectly, the economy?
Mining
around the reservation for coal or coal byproducts is not new to the
Cheyenne, Robinson says.
He has come in from a day of farming
and is covered head to toe in dust. His long hair falls in a braid
down his back. He’s sitting at his dining table, having stopped eating
to talk about coal bed methane. Once he starts, he doesn’t stop – not
to take a bite, or even a sip of water.
He remembers when strip mining started in Colstrip, a town 20 miles north
of the reservation.
“We learned some real lessons there, with the EIS (environmental impact
statement) and what we could do,” Robinson says.
In the 1980s, Robinson says, the tribe sued to be allowed into the EIS
process, which included a public comment period that he says the tribe
never had the chance to join.
“The tribe was always a little bit on the outside looking in,” Robinson
says.
When the tribe did get involved, the people asked for and received preference
for jobs at the Colstrip mine. But the reality, according to several
Cheyenne, has not been preferential in most ways. Robinson says friends
were called “blanket-ass” and “chief” when they
worked at the mine.
“It was always hard working at the mine,” he says. “Union
people always resented that we could get preference for jobs.”
The Colstrip power generating plant, which processed the coal, also raised
important sovereignty questions, these regarding clean air. In 1977 the
tribe designated its reservation as Class 1, the most pristine status
allowed under the Clean Air Act and the same status given to Yellowstone
National Park. That designation was upheld in court, meaning that no
significant erosion of the air quality is allowable. Monitoring stations
around the reservation watch for pollution from developments off the
reservation.
But such control over water quality isn’t as clear-cut. The reality
is that the Cheyenne do not entirely control the aquifer under the ground.
Robinson is concerned that the state of Montana makes energy development
in the state a high priority, with less interest in ensuring environmental
quality.
“Montana needs the money,” Robinson says. “At this point the
political bodies are all pro-development.”
Another discomforting
issue for some members of the tribe is a land swap engineered by the
federal
government to protect Yellowstone Park.
Gold mining
proproposed just outside the park elicited protests from many conservationists
over possible harm that would come to the park’s geothermal features.
So Congress and Montana Gov. Judy Martz agreed to a mineral rights land
swap in a deal that could have consequences on the reservation.
Montana now holds the Otter Creek Tracts mineral rights as part of a
settlement that scuttled the New World/Crown Butte gold mining proposal.
Otter Creek forms the eastern boundary of the reservation. Coal in the
tracts is said to be worth up to $600 million in taxes and royalties
for the state. What will the tribe see as part of the deal? Tribal president
Geri Small made an agreement with the Montana State Board of Land Commissioners
that calls for “Programs for Recruitment of Indians and Other Local
Residents” for jobs on the Otter Creek Tracts. The tribe also wants
assurances that cultural sites near the tracts will be preserved.
Maggie Rising Sun, a member of a women’s group known as the Grassroots
Advocates, says she is frustrated by the agreement.
“They took it from Yellowstone and decided to put it at Otter Creek,” Rising
Sun says. “It was affecting the wildlife. And we’re humans.”
The Grassroots Advocates don’t believe the agreement and its provision
for Indian recruitment will improve unemployment on the reservation.
“They make it so hard for the Cheyennes,” says Rising Sun. “They
bring in big dollar signs. And we know what those dollar signs are. Nobody
gets services. They’ve never helped the general public.”
Donna Spotted Eagle, another Grassroots Advocate, says she doesn’t
believe developers will follow through with the agreement.
“They can go to agreement and train people, but will they hire them?” Spotted
Eagle asks. “When it actually comes down to it, they don’t
really live up to their end of the agreement.”
In March of this year, the U.S. Senate passed a bill called the Montana
Mineral Exchange Act regarding these tracts. The bill calls for developers
to provide the Northern Cheyenne tribe with revenue from energy resources
from land bordering the reservation.
According to David Briesch of the BLM, the Otter Creek tracts may be
used for either coal bed methane or strip mining, both of which could
result in loss of groundwater.
Robinson remembers a time
when “the world stopped at the reservation
line.” That was before the mining in Colstrip, back when the Cheyenne
were an impoverished tribe that was in the middle of rural southeastern
Montana. Now, Robinson says, the tribe hasn’t reaped much benefit
from the mining in Colstrip; on the contrary, he thinks the tribe has
suffered the bad effects of development without gaining the employment
or economic boosts. They’re still an impoverished tribe, but now
in a less-rural Montana.
“It’s made a real distinction between the haves and have-nots,” Robinson
says.
“One of the things that did come across the line were the drugs, the social
problems that all that development brought. All that’s done is
embittered the people.”
On a quiet afternoon in Birney, a young man plays a game of basketball.
Resting within several hundred yards of the Tongue River, this
small reservation town will most likely feel the impacts of coal
bed methane mining first.
|
So why not develop? Advocates of coal bed methane say it is a good source
of energy that results in little surface impact – especially when
compared to strip mining.
“The gas itself is what we call clean, in that it's almost pure natural
gas,” says Briesch of the BLM. “The gas itself doesn't have
other constituents mixed in it that have to be separated out. It's an
inexpensive gas to locate and get to market.”
But the real cost, according to the tribe, can’t be measured in
dollars.
“Without water, there’s not a lot can happen in this country,” Robinson
says.
The sun catches a glimmer
of water trickling through an old, rusty pipe by the side of a road
that runs through the reservation. All around this
pipe, tied to bushes and trees, are pieces of cloth in many colors.
These are prayer cloths: an offering to the spirit of Iron Teeth, a
Cheyenne
woman whose spirit is believed to reside in this spring, watching over
the people and the water.
“They pray to the water spirits, good spirits to recognize their needs,” says
Douglas Spotted Eagle. “Native Americans don’t have a certain
church, you know, it’s anywhere. We can pray anywhere.”
Spotted Eagle says he
is worried as he watches the youngest generation on the reservation
learn as much from television as from their parents.
He says they are learning the materialism of MTV culture.
“We’re trying to preserve our culture, traditional ways, and it’s
hard because they run with the mainstream,” he says. “Keeping
up with the Joneses.”
Spotted Eagle’s role as the keeper means that he protects a sacred
bundle that belongs to the tribe. The bundle is used annually as part
of the sun dance ceremony. Tribal members come to him with their concerns
and he prays for them. He sees the ways of the off-reservation world
seeping into—maybe saturating—his culture, and he listens
to the sorrow those changes bring his tribe.
While some of the concerns he listens to involve day-to-day needs, he
feels like the biggest concern for his tribe is economic change as development
gets closer and closer.
“I think it’ll bring jobs but it’ll be like culture shock
to the people here,” Spotted Eagle says. “Probably do a lot
of damage to our way of life. It’d be kind of devastating, you
know, for the tribe. People earning that much wages would really impact
them.”
But the tribe suffers from its poverty. They don’t have adequate
housing, for example, and money could help with that. The Cheyenne have
a nomadic history of living off the land, moving from place to place
depending on where the water was.
“Our livelihood is based on simple things,” says Brady. “We
cherish what we have – our air, our water, our land.”
But European settlement changed the tribal way of life. As the tribe
struggles to remember its past, those concerned with maintaining the
culture have a hard fight against the backdrop of capitalistic America.
“It scares some of us, our ability to hold the world back for the long
term,” says Robinson, covered in dust after a day of farming. “In
the end, it’s just the last generation that realizes that all the
gold in the world isn’t going to keep our culture together.”
Robinson sees the disintegration of his culture as a threat to Northern
Cheyenne sovereignty. The loss of groundwater furthers that threat.
“The real shell around our sovereignty is our culture,” Robinson
says, “and it’s tied to the land. The most precious thing
in all that circle is water. No water, no life.”
Robinson says he is not surprised by the encroaching development. He
is disappointed, yes, but not surprised. His eyes are fierce and sorrowful.
His family rarely drinks the well water from the Tongue River, choosing
bottled water instead. He believes in his culture and the Cheyenne right
to sovereignty, but does not trust the government that granted that sovereignty.
“This Manifest Destiny has never really ended,” Robinson says with
a sigh. “Whenever there was resources on Indian land they always
found a way. They took the Black Hills. They took most of the West.”
In the village of Birney,
people once thrived on the river, using the water for drinking, fishing
and washing. Now, they are afraid. The village
is a scattering of run-down homes. Stray dogs wander the dirt roads.
The river is nearly silent, drifting along the east edge of the village.
Though the river has coal bed methane discharge water dumped into it,
the village is still dependent on it.
“We still depend on the bedwater from the Tongue,” says tribal council
member Florence Running Wolf, standing on her porch in Birney. “That’s
what the whole village uses.”
Running Wolf’s one-eyed dog eats rice from a bowl on the porch
as Running Wolf stands in her pale-blue terrycloth dress. She speaks
softly, but with conviction. She is concerned that her constituents don’t
know enough about coal bed methane development and don’t have any
way to stop it.
“It’s devastating knowing that it’s going to happen,” she
says. “It’s like we just have no choice. Maybe the people
will start waking up, start screaming around.”
But she’s not sure doing so will help. The sense of being forced
is an often-repeated theme among the Cheyenne.
“We don’t really have a voice,” says Brady. “Money is
far more important than people’s lives. When the United States
government sees you as something that gets in the way of progress, what
kind of respect do you think we have for the government? There are a
few of us that would fight to keep what we have. It’s so hard for
them to respect the way we live.”
Some Cheyenne are tired of feeling helpless. They are angry with the
U.S. government, the Montana government and the tribal council because
they don’t feel their concerns are being heard.
“It’s going to destroy all our water,” says Lavonda Brady. “If
the majority of the people are against methane, then where can we go?
What can we do? It’s like a death sentence to us.”
"Here Eli, I'll teach you how to tie a catfish special," says
Kyle Robinson to Eli Robinson. The two have grown up and worked along
the Tongue River their entire lives; tonight they look to its waters
for recreation.
|
And Running Wolf explains that she is afraid to disagree with the U.S.
government.
“If they’re going to siphon any energies we have, I don’t
think we can fight that against the government,” she says.
The
Cheyenne have been fighting mining for decades now. In the 1960s, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs
approved mineral leases on the reservation.
Tribal members feel the BIA did not uphold its obligation to help the
tribe get a fair deal from the leases – the tribe would have gotten
roughly 17 cents per ton from the leases. They sued the Bureau of Land
Management to stop the mining.
That history is not easily forgotten. Distrust of the government and
outside developers is long-standing among the Northern Cheyenne.
“My grandmother told me we were going to get money when the frogs get
teeth,” says Burgess, still holding her Chihuahua. “I’ve
been looking all these years. I just found out they don’t grow
teeth.”
|