Can Indians and Environmentalists Find Common Ground?

...At a more pragmatic level, the Indians said they need money to press their legal battles against the coal companies, and the environmental representatives said they could provide opportunities to help with mailing lists, solicitation campaigns, and related ventures...

...It was a significant step toward Indian cultural renaissance and economic advance, since it permits the Cheyenne to define their children's educational needs and attempt to meet them...

...The land, so much of which their forebears lost before they quite realized that any mortal force was large enough to fill it and restrict its uses, continues to be an angry, painful issue to the Indians...

...Fred Coyote, an Indian rights organizer from California, said, "The reservation used to be a concentration camp...

...The Indians clearly succeeded in stining a sense of guilt among environmentalists whose national groups have ignored or opposed native people's claims in focusing their concern wholly on the natural, nonhuman environment There was talk of appointing Indians to the boards of these organizations, and of bringing Indians to Washington to be part of the organizations' lobbying efforts...

...Jiggs Yellowtail of the Crow tribe, who is a cattle rancher, suggested that environmentalists who want Indians to resist coal development are being hypocritical if they then try to deny Indians the right to compensate for the coal income, and for the needs of their growing populations, by expanding their customary pursuits — among which, for the Crow and Northern Cheyenne, cattle ranching has a prominent position...

...The Indians confirmed that there is no unanimity on the reservations on how to face the temptation and threat of coal mining At first, the coal agents were welcome, and leases were signed — at what the Indians later perceived to be rip-off royalty rates of seventeen cents per ton of coal...

...Nevertheless, in raising the claim he exposed the basic contradictions inherent in an Indian-environmentalists-agriculturist coalition — contradictions that must be resolved before the coalition can hope to be effective...

...But other Indians indicated that the price environmentalists would have to pay for Indian cooperation was support for the Cheyenne claim to Custer Forest, and perhaps for other claims like it The environmentalists also would have to renounce any claims of their own to manage, use, or enhance the natural value of Indian lands — which, they were told, are outside the white man's purview...

...As a rule, the Indians were given the worst available lands for their reservations, and in the century since, parcels that turned out to be economically valuable in one way or another have been taken from them...

...But the cost, in increased social dislocation and aggravated identity crises, would be too great, Parker insisted...

...I always had the notion that environmental groups were college students hustling for a reputation, or ranchers out hustling for land," said Bill Parker, the Northern Cheyenne tribe's economic development officer...

...Each group for its own reasons — and for some reasons they hold in common — fears the despoliation and loss of this land...

...So much of the world's coal wealth lies beneath these reservations that it has come to be called "Indian coal...

...Under the relatively small (455,600 acres) and superficially impoverished Northern Cheyenne reservation alone there are coal reserves that tribal development officer Bill Parker estimates at a value of $20 billion...

...By the second day, midway through the conference, a considerable degree of rapport had developed among the participating Indians, environmentalists, and agriculturalists, but it was suddenly shattered when Allen Rowland, the Northern Cheyenne tribal chairman, announced that his tribe was laying claim to a half-million acre tract of adjacent Federal land, the Custer National Forest...

...They see the land and the life that it naturally supports as their sole and essential hope for survival...

...The influx of coal miners, construction workers, and other non-Indians threatens to shatter the isolation of their reservations, which they have come to rely on as refuges and buffers against assaults on their fragile cultures...

...They suggested benign neglect: leave the land alone so that nature can heal itself...

...It is these virtually uninhabited public lands to which the Indians — asserting need as well as justice — have recently laid claim...

...water, the fouling of the air, and the destruction of their way of life...

...While there might well be justice in the claim, they said, the precedent would be a long-term threat to the public lands...

...Last year, the environmentalists lost a contest with the tiny Havasupai Indian tribe in Arizona when Congress gave the Indians 185,000 acres of land that the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth wanted instead to be added to Grand Canyon National Park...

...Perhaps reacting to this inherent contradiction in the environmentalists' position, the vice chairman of the Crow tribe, Jiggs Yellowtail, caustically predicted, "You're going to go along with [us] until it hurts — and then you'reigoing to get out...

...Bill Parker told how the Cheyenne had fought for, and finally won, control of a public school board that serves their reservation...

...He and other leaders saw a slow nurturing of Indian self-help and self-confidence as the only practical solution to their many present problems...

...But the population base upon which this victory was won — the total Indian population of the Northern Cheyenne reservation —is 2,950 men, women, and childrea Energy development plans for the area forecast an influx of 40,000 non-Indian miners, industrial workers, and their families...

...A Northern Cheyenne, John Woodenlegs, observed, "Coal has been under the Cheyenne reservation a long time, and it can stay there until we know the best thing to do...

...The Indians' consciousness that coal development threatened their way of life grew along with their awareness that they had, as before, been cheated on the price...

...NRAG staff members helped individual Indians draft position papers, and tried to limit the number of non-Indians attending so that the Indians would not feel outnumbered...

...Threatened, they have been led to take a hesitant first step toward cooperation and, conceivably, formation of a united front against the coal and power companies and the Federal Government, which is the prime advocate of Great Plains energy exploitation...

...The environmentalists could envision a case-by-case assessment of claims, such as that of the Cheyenne for the Custer Forest But they offered little encouragement that their national organizations were ready to relax categorical opposition to removal of land from the public domain...

...The five reservations whose leaders came to the conference at Billings— the Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Fort Peck and Fort Belknap in Montana, and the Fort Berthold in North Dakota, which currently harbor 17,450 Indians on 4,680,600 acres of land — have coal deposits which may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars...

...A major NRAG achievement, Indian and non-Indian participants agreed, was to establish a cordial, low-key atmosphere in which the Indians could speak freely...

...The time also may have come, environmentalists said, to broaden their own definitions of ecologic concern to include the people who still live on the land, and depend on it for their livelihood and cultural survival...

...Restoring Custer Forest to the Cheyenne would require an act of Congress, and Rowland forecast that this would take years to achieve...

...The environmental groups represented included Trout Unlimited, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and Friends of the Earth...

...Some environmentalists conceded that Custer Forest, whose Federal ownership they are sworn to uphold, has been badly over-grazed and mismanaged by the Bureau of Land Management and the ranchers who now use it...

...The Indians were particularly determined to make clear to the environmentalists that they wholly own their reservation lands, as sovereigns, under treaties signed with the Federal Government...

...Nevertheless, the reservation is the Indian's last refuge...

...While the Indians were eager to explore legal and other strategems to keep vested economic interests off their reservations, the environmentalists seemed more intrigued by the Indians' protective beliefs and practices regarding the land...

...Now, it's a sanctuary...

...Even the fraction of this wealth that the Indians might hope to receive for the rights to mine the coal promises substantial relief from the brutal poverty that continues to afflict them...

...And the Northern Cheyenne tribal chairman, Allen Rowland, ventured the view that wildlife organizations "have been very hostile toward Indian causes...

...They were not inclined to discuss how their lands were to be used, either with coal companies or with environmentalists — whose penchant for habitat enhancement, game management, and sportive exploitation of wildlife they regard with distaste...

...The primary mission of these organizations has been to increase and enhance the public domain — wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges, national parks and forests, and other Federally controlled tracts...

...They also invited a third group — ranchers and farmers, who traditionally have been antagonists of Indians and environmentalists, but who now also fear that strip mining and energy exploitation will mean the loss of their land and David R. Zimmerman is a free-lance writer based in New York...

...But few of the Indians were interested in elucidating their beliefs, or in winning converts to them...

...The venture was planned and coordinated by a handful of young, university-trained eco-activists who have set up shop in Helena, Montana, as the Northern Rockies Action Group (NRAG) to organize the future victims of energy development into an effective resistance...

...The remaining conference sessions largely were devoted to this effort Conference organizers, Indians, and environmentalists who have dealt with the coal companies repeated their warning that only a coalition could slow or stop them...

...Now they face what both groups perceive to be an overwhelming threat to the land: coal strip mining and the development of huge electric power plants on the Northern Great Plains of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and the Dakotas...

...The prospects of coal strip mining on reservation land sharply aggravates their dilemma...

...This first step was a conference convened last summer at Eastern Montana College in Billings to bring Indian and environmentalist leaders together...

...Part of the Indians' present appeal to the environmentalists is for cash to support suits that they subsequently filed to abrogate their agreements with the coal companies, on grounds that the agreements themselves and the companies' plans are detrimental to the environment — and therefore illegal...

...The Indians did not conceal their disdain for environmentalists...

...The forest, named for General George Custer, whom the Northern Cheyenne killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Interior Department Rowland said the Cheyenne's culture now is "livestock oriented," and the Custer Forest — which is larger than the Cheyenne reservation — is needed for rangeland and for the harvest of timber...

...For the ranchers at the conference, the threat was more immediate and direct Several ranchers rely on the Custer Forest for summer grazing for their cattle, and they would be forced to shut down if deprived of access to it...

...The environmentalists said they doubted that the national leaderships of their organizations would agree to the reduction of the public domain that ceding Custer Forest to the Cheyenne would entail...

...At a more philosophical level, environmental representatives spoke enthusiastically of the need to integrate Indian values into white America's environmental vision...

...But the non-Indians were shocked and stunned...

...This was a new, apparently fruitful approach to encounters between Indians and non-Indians, one tribal leader observed...

...But their traditional perspectives are so profoundly different that they have ignored or opposed each other's past conservation efforts...

...They suggested that Indian stewardship could not be much worse for the land — and might well be better...

...But the catch, as they laid it out to the environmentalists, is that coal strip mining and energy conversion plants will degrade and destroy the land surface, the water, and the clean air that they rely on for their way of life and welfare...

...The Indians' major goal now is to regain control of coal development on and near their reservations, with the option of deciding later whether and how mining will proceed...

...For the environmentalists, there seemed to be a compelling logic — and pathos — in the Indians' self-analysis of their dependency on the reservation, and their mortal peril if the fragile balance in which they now live on these lands is suddenly disrupted by coal mining and miners...

...Taken aback by this defeat, and embarrassed by the anti-Indian image their opposition had won them, environmentalists at Billings let it be known that they were rethinking their position on Indians, whose help they want in ecological battles, whose concern for preserving the land they admire, but whose claims to the public domain they are innately bound to resist...

...There is no doubt, Parker predicted, that Indian control of the schools, and of all social and cultural facilities in the area, would be irrevocably lost Poverty, mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide prevail at epidemic levels on the Cheyenne and other reservations, so Indians are strongly tempted by the immediate cash offered for coal rights, and by the social service bonuses — like a new hospital for the reservation — that the coal companies promise...