A Radical Return Bacone College Once Redefined What Native Art Could Be

Home , Jerome Tiger, Oscar Jacobson, Rainbow flag, Silver Horn

INDUSTRY’S BLM | A UTAH WATER SKIRMISH | OREGON’S RURAL ANGST

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A Radical Return Bacone College once redefined what Native art could be. Can it do so again? By Graham Lee Brewer CONTENTS

Editor’s note Indigenous art, subversive ideas One of the best things about working on High Country News’ Tribal Affairs Desk is the opportunity it offers to report, write and publish stories that no other non-Indigenous outlet would dare to touch. Our reporters produce amazing work, but I would argue that some of the most incendiary material we print initially appears harmless to the passing eye. From beadwork to dance, painting to film, Indigenous art is as much an expression of sovereignty and identity as it is of diplomacy and law. In the Western tradition, art has often been used to demonstrate power and wealth, regarded as merely a commodity to be consumed. From the monumental sculptures commissioned in ancient Greece to Rembrandt’s moody portraits, and from Remington’s idealized visions of the American West Gerald Cournoyer, the newly hired art director at Bacone College, stands next to a Kiowa 6 painting in the college’s library. Cournoyer hopes to restore Bacone’s tradition of producing some of the most influential to Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup cans, such works, Indigenous artists in the country. DYLAN JOHNSON FOR HIGH COUNTRY NEWS when placed within their cultural, regional and historical contexts, provide insight into the ways white FEATURE artists have traded influences and become central to understanding European worldviews. 12 A Radical Return This analysis is somewhat true of Indigenous “art,” but the role of cultural production in tribal Bacone College once redefined what Native art could be. communities often takes on deeper, more complex By Graham Lee Brewer Can it do so again? layers. From communicating familial and tribal relationships to a form of visual journalism and CURRENTS expressions of identity, Indigenous art reflects 3 The Latest: Portland nightclub discrimination lawsuit settled constantly evolving ideas about history, colonialism, kinship and innovation. But many viewers are too 5 Sounding the alarm at the BLM Staff complaints reveal concerns distracted by form, function — and, of course, market On the cover that the Carlsbad Field Office violated environmental laws value — to even notice the information stored within Sign of Spring, an 6 A ‘preposterously’ big water tank An affluent Utah the work. original silkscreen community spent millions to extinguish its fear of fire. Decades later, In this issue, Contributing Editor Graham Lee by Woody Crumbo, they’re still trying to buy their way out of a bottomless pit. Brewer takes a deep dive into the rich history and a member of the current life of Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Citizen Potawatomi 8 Oregon’s derailed climate plan Fewer places have influenced 20th century Native Nation and one of Many state policies have failed to address rural anxieties art more than Bacone, but its future is in peril: Bacone College’s Crushing debt threatens to permanently close the most influential art 9 Forest Service might limit public comments The revision would directors and artists. allow the agency to approve more projects without environmental review institution. Brewer eloquently brings the past into the COURTESY OF CITIZEN present through the presentation and explication of POTAWATOMI NATION early art forms: “In Kiowa calendars drawn by Silver DEPARTMENTS Horn,” he writes, “the goal was simply to document 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG everyday life, everything from tornadoes and crops to battles and deaths. Using images for record-keeping 4 LETTERS and storytelling was common among the Kiowas; preserving and displaying those images as artwork 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, On the Road to 50 was not necessarily the intention. Rembrandt may 81 MARKETPLACE have worked well with light, but Silver Horn worked with time.” Brewer describes the school’s rich mix 22 PHOTOS Close encounters: Colorado’s booming growth clashes of art and intellectual influence: from Swedish Complete access with the state’s wild inhabitants Photos by Andria Hautamaki to subscriber-only immigrant Oscar Jacobson to Chickasaw scholar content 23 BOOKS Mary “Ataloa” Stone, legendary painter Woody HCN’s website Seasons: Desert Sketches by Ellen Meloy. Reviewed by Michael Engelhard Crumbo, and contemporary artists like painter Gerald Cournoyer and filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. Their stories hcn.org PERSPECTIVE reveal that the things we do, the tiny details of our Digital edition 24 What the outdoor rec industry doesn’t get about the LGBTQ community lives, have their origins in extraordinary events. These hcne.ws/digi-5112 Opinion by Mikah Meyer originate in times and places we may not see, but they 25 Lawmakers are failing to address the crisis of missing and murdered retain influence and determine how we live in and Follow us Indigenous women News Commentary by Mary Kathryn Nagle understand the world. These are the kind of stories 26 The Columbia River Treaty, six decades later that other non-Native outlets don’t dare to touch, and  Reckoning with History by Adam M. Sowards that is what makes the work in this issue unique. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Tristan Ahtone, associate editor

2 High Country News July 22, 2019 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG

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Backstory Trending In May 2017, a black man named Sam Critics wary of Thompson was moving BLM denied entry to a Portland, Oregon, The Interior Depart- nightclub. The club ment is considering cited a dress code, relocating the Bureau common in Portland, A girl works on a of Land Manage- that has often been drawing next to ment’s headquarters used against non- an unused viewing from Washington, white residents. A scope as a smoky D.C., to the West. week later, a white haze obscures the Advocates like Inte- friend of Thompson’s Space Needle and rior Secretary David entered the bar in downtown Seattle Bernhardt say it would identical clothing with during wildfires last put the BLM closer to no trouble. Thompson summer. AP PHOTO/ stakeholders and the sued, and the incident ELAINE THOMPSON public land the agency publicized something manages. But some already obvious to Seattle Seattle has suffered some of the world’s worst that five buildings are not enough and are former staffers say the Portland’s non-white will offer air quality in recent summers due to wildfire exploring expanding the program. But clean- D.C. location makes citizens. Despite its smoke; on several occasions, the air has been air shelters alone do not address the warming it easier for Interior progressive political residents declared “unhealthy for all.” Drought and a climate driving the wildfire crisis. “We see more to weigh in on policy reputation, Oregon shelter from warming climate mean the wildfire problem is and more that climate change is affecting issues with Congress was founded explicitly the smoke not going away. In June, Mayor Jenny Durkan communities in ways that really go to our and coordinate with for white settlers, with announced plans to build five public clean-air everyday life,” Durkan said. other federal bureaus, laws barring African- shelters. Set to debut in late July, the buildings HALLIE GOLDEN/CITYLAB VIA CLIMATE DESK adding that the BLM Americans. Many will filter out toxins and monitor the quality Read more online: already has regional discriminatory policies of the air outside. City officials acknowledge hcne.ws/seattle-smoke-shelter offices and in-state endure today (“Racist managers. Web extra: policing plagues Read Jonathan Thomp- Portland’s nightclubs,” son’s perspective on HCN, 2/18/19). why the BLM ought to The university system is a lot more flexible. move West after all. Followup It’s not a big, slow, grinding engine. LIZ WEBER Thompson’s lawsuit was settled in —Michael Banks,“ director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resource Studies at Oregon State University Cooperative You say June, according to Institute for Marine Resource Studies, one of the 43 independent universities that partners with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on projects that help predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts. The studies continue GENE BLANKENBAKER: the Willamette Week. ” “There is significant In court documents, despite the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to roll back environmental protections, remove the United States from international climate treaties and cast doubts on climate science. LIZ WEBER Read more online: hcne.ws/climate-research value to having senior numerous former leadership presence employees of club in D.C. in terms owner Chris Lenahan of budget, policy, said he would coordination with explicitly limit the other department number of black Photos agencies and bureaus, patrons in his clubs, and legislative affairs, something Lenahan Homeless teens to name just a few.” denies. As part of find community t Residents the settlement, In Las Vegas, Shannon LYNN JACKSON: Lenahan must end gather for dinner West Homeless Youth at the Homeless “Virtually all BLM the dress code used to Center provides housing, lands are west of discriminate against Youth Center in meals and community Las Vegas, Nevada. the Mississippi, so Thompson. for a demographic that how is Washington, NICK BOWLIN qCraig gets a too often lacks all three. haircut from D.C., central to those The homelessness rate for another resident, lands?” youth in southern Nevada left, and Tiffany is among the nation’s and Sam talk LORI LAIDELLA: highest. BRIDGET BENNETT in the center’s “Trump is doing the See and read more online: laundry room. same thing to the hcne.ws/homeless-teens BRIDGET BENNETT USDA and other important agencies.”

MIKE CORONELLA: “It’s a brain drain meant to get rid of our professional government workers Patrons outside who can’t or won’t Dirty, a Portland move.” nightclub whose owner settled after Read more online: being sued for hcne.ws/blm-move discrimination. and Facebook.com/ LEAH NASH highcountrynews

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 LETTERS Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News THOSE WERE THE DAYS the Bureau of Land EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Management’s office Paul Larmer I grew up in Spokane and in Monticello, Utah. In EDITOR-IN-CHIEF northern Idaho, and I your most recent article Brian Calvert remember the toxic streams regarding the Bears Ears ART DIRECTOR feeding into Lake Coeur National Monument, Cindy Wehling d’Alene when the mines were DIGITAL EDITOR you are totally incorrect Gretchen King still working when I was when you indicate there ASSOCIATE EDITORS a kid (“Losing Lake Coeur has not been a visitors Tristan Ahtone d’Alene,” HCN, 6/24/19). I center available to Emily Benson learned to swim in the lake Paige Blankenbuehler the public before they Maya L. Kapoor and worked on small farms explore this fragile area ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR and ranches in the area, as (Bears Ears’ guerrilla Luna Anna Archey well as the railroad. Before visitor center,” HCN, ASSISTANT EDITORS the lakefront development, 5/13/19). The ranger Carl Segerstrom golf course, etc., there was station has been located Anna V. Smith a small amusement park EDITOR AT LARGE on Cedar Mesa since Betsy Marston on a pier downtown that we the early 1980s and COPY EDITOR would hang out at as kids. Diane Sylvain JEFF KOTERBA, OMAHA WORLD HERALD has been continuously CONTRIBUTING EDITORS I just hope I didn’t swallow staffed by rangers and/ Graham Brewer too much lake water while or volunteers for nine Ruxandra Guidi we were swimming! Of NARCISSISTIC GEOTAGGING Michelle Nijhuis months of each year. The rangers and course, we didn’t know much about the Jodi Peterson Selfies are narcissistic and obnox- the volunteers are very knowledgeable Jonathan Thompson environmental consequences in those ious (“Five reasons to keep geotag- about conditions in the canyons, CORRESPONDENTS days, but we could tell something wasn’t ging,” HCN, 6/10/19). Social media is including trail conditions, water Krista Langlois, right. Sarah Tory, Tay Wiles, a time-wasting, jealousy-producing availability and the importance of the Joshua Zaffos Brent Steel machine that most of us should abstain fragile archaeological resources. To EDITORIAL FELLOW Corvallis, Oregon from as much as possible. Electronic indicate that there is no such facility Nick Bowlin available within the boundaries of the DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR addiction is a serious problem. Don’t Laurie Milford BLINDSIDED BY POVERTY underestimate the damage it’s currently new Bears Ears National Monument is MAJOR GIFT ADVISER doing to society. Geotagging is unneces- not only incorrect, but does a disservice I hope we haven’t forgotten Barbara Alyssa Pinkerton sary at best, irresponsible at worst and to everyone who works tirelessly in Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE a symptom of Silicon Valley’s irrespon- this visitor center. On a daily basis, published in 2001 by Metropolitan Hannah Stevens sibility — just like Donald Trump win- BLM rangers and/or volunteers spend DIGITAL MARKETER Books (“Life below the poverty line,” ning the last election with the help of time patrolling the canyons to ensure Chris King HCN, 6/10/19). In Chapter 2, “Scrubbing the Russians and Facebook. visitor safety and to protect fragile EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER in Maine,” Ehrenreich works in a place COORDINATOR Laura Dixon archaeological resources. We are very that, like Montana, could be known William Gretz WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPER disappointed that your author did not Eric Strebel for its whiteness. On the basis of that visit this ranger station before he wrote IT MANAGER Alan Wells one piece of camouflage, we watch LESSONS LEARNED the most recent article. DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS her infiltrate the low-wage workforce. The article on the vigilante parade Erica Howard Ehrenreich has running laments Janet Bartolomucci was excellent (“Montana’s vigilante ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT throughout her book, as she procures Tucson, Arizona obsession,” HCN, 6/24/19). I would Mary Zachman a series of low-wage jobs, complete CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER have missed it but for an out-of-state with a gantlet of “opinion surveys” Editor’s response: While the Kane Gulch Kathy Martinez friend who shared the link. Author judging her attitude toward drugs. Ranger Station is certainly a valuable CUSTOMER SERVICE Gabriel Furshong put into words what Christie Cantrell (office The questions appear to be a check resource for visitors to southern Utah’s has always been disturbing about the manager), Karen Howe, on her understanding of hierarchy Cedar Mesa area, including Grand Josh McIntire (IT parade. His short history lesson is and subordination. Yet there are no Gulch and other ecologically and support), Doris Teel, one that most of us conveniently fail quizzical looks from interviewers. No culturally significant canyons, it was Rebecca Tiedeman, to recall as we watch our youth in the Tammy York one questions that a smart, articulate not designed specifically for Bears Ears parade, year after year. It’s sad when GRANTWRITER Janet Reasoner woman cannot escape a menial job. Not National Monument. Nor would it fall folks watching from a distance recognize [email protected] a single person is in the least curious within the Trump administration’s [email protected] the false teaching this provides and about her circumstances, or what diminished monument boundaries. The [email protected] can see the connections to social ills we [email protected] brought her to her position of poverty. BLM rangers and volunteers at Kane continue to struggle with. Thank you for [email protected] Ehrenreich nails what it is like living Gulch are helpful, the book selection offering such a clear picture. It will help FOUNDER Tom Bell below the poverty line, including its useful, but there is still no federally me more effectively explain to friends BOARD OF DIRECTORS loneliness, hopelessness and dismal run visitors center specifically for the Brian Beitner, Colo. why I do not attend the parade. John Belkin, Colo. outlook. Apparently this story must national monument. Until there is, Seth Cothrun, Calif. still be retold endlessly, because, as Barbara Lancaster readers are encouraged to learn more Jay Dean, Calif. Ehrenreich says, “America is blind to at Kane Gulch or the nearby Natural Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Anastasia Greene, Wash. the downside of its poverty.” WHAT ABOUT KANE GULCH? Bridges National Monument visitors center, run by the National Park Service, Wayne Hare, Colo. Mike Fried For 12 years my husband and I lived Laura Helmuth, Md. in addition to the Bears Ears Education Broomfield, Colorado in Moab, Utah, and we volunteered Samaria Jaffe, Calif. Center. Nicole Lampe, Ore. and worked at the Kane Gulch Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Ranger Station, which is overseen by Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, Colo. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Rick Tallman, Colo. media organization that covers the issues that define the offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Andy Wiessner, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Florence Williams, D.C. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Luis Torres, N.M., Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Director Emeritus News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Printed on recycled paper. 4 High Country News July 22, 2019 CURRENTS

sary signoff from the biologists and cave experts tasked with ensuring that sensi- Sounding the alarm at the BLM tive resources were protected. He was un- Staff complaints reveal concerns that the Carlsbad Field Office violated aware of his colleagues’ OIG complaints, environmental laws in favor of industry but said, “I’m glad to hear it. They were getting overruled by the managers; I’m BY TAY WILES glad that they didn’t just let it go.” Oil and gas has long been a priority n early fall 2017, two Bureau of Land southeast New Mexico. in southeast New Mexico. Pair and other I Management archaeologists drove to a Through documents and interviews former employees said that even under Chevron oil and gas site in the dry grass- with former employees, HCN found that President Barack Obama, Interior and lands of southeast New Mexico. The oil Carlsbad BLM staffers tried to sound the BLM leadership encouraged drilling. But company had damaged a Native American alarm, warning that their agency was en- in 2017, industry and national officials archaeological site, and they needed to gaging in favoritism and skirting environ- ramped up the pressure. Drillers made assess the situation. What they found mental regulation in favor of drilling. It’s new oil discoveries, and Trump signed an raised thorny questions about what’s hap- been over a year, yet the whistleblowers’ executive order that prioritized energy pening on the ground — out of the public complaints have languished without any development over other public-land uses. eye and inside the BLM, an agency tasked apparent response. Jim Goodbar, a national cave and karst with managing 245 million acres of land expert in Carlsbad who worked for the for the American public’s benefit. n 2018 the OIG received at least six BLM for 38 years, noticed a significant The archaeologists, who worked at the I complaints about alleged corruption shift in office culture before he retired in WEB EXTRA Carlsbad Field Office, saw a bulldozed at the Carlsbad office, according to docu- January 2018. “Some staff have lost sight See the documents area where, judging by a thermal feature, ments HCN obtained. of what the BLM mission is and are only obtained as part of a centuries-old fire pit or earthen oven According to one OIG investigation, focused on what will move them forward this investigation at used to be. “They had blown a road right an employee described what investiga- in their careers,” he said. hcn.org through it,” Jasmine Kidwell, one of the tors summed up as a “general apathy to- In another anonymous complaint, a archaeologists, told High Country News. ward regulations” at the Carlsbad Field staffer described decisions related to a 6 The BLM had recommended that Chevron Office. The highest levels of the agency million-acre new resource management For years, the reroute a road in order to avoid the site, exuded this apathy, one tipster said, blam- plan as “arbitrary and capricious,” adding Carlsbad Field Office which was probably Apache or Jornada ing Mike Nedd, BLM acting director at that national leadership gave direction over in southeast New Mogollon. But according to documents the time. “(Nedd) stated that (natural re- the phone or in person, “since having a pa- Mexico may have HCN obtained through Freedom of Infor- source specialist) staff should protect any per trail ... would leave evidence of (Federal been neglecting environmental and mation Act requests, the company stuck staff that chooses to overlook regulations,” Land Policy Management Act) violations.” archaeological laws. with its original plan. one anonymous complaint reads. (Nedd HCN looked into six complaints. OIG With the high volume The other BLM archaeologist, whose was moved to a different position that has found no wrongdoing in two of them, of drilling applications, name was redacted in the documents, told year, and at least two other appointees though it provided little explanation for a former BLM a supervisor that the destruction needed have since held his job. Two and a half its findings. The other four were sent to employee said that “no to be fully assessed under the National years into the Trump administration, the the BLM to handle. one was paying enough Environmental Policy Act. Her supervisor BLM still lacks an actual director.) The BLM did not respond in time for attention to anything.” disagreed. Over several months, the ar- In a 2018 interview with OIG investi- the deadline to comment. KIM KAFTON chaeologist found more damaged sites, yet gators, one BLM employee recalled a top assessments were still denied, she says. official promising a roomful of staffers in The lack of response created a chilling ef- 2017 that they would be “protected” in ex- fect for employees raising environmental pediting drilling permits. One employee concerns or providing professional opin- asked, “Protected from what?” According ions, she later told investigators after fil- to another, the official then “back-peddled,” ing a complaint to the Office of Inspector (sic) trying to indicate that he wasn’t en- General (OIG) at the Interior Department. couraging them to skirt any laws. By November, the archaeologist ex- When the OIG asked the official about pressed concern that if nothing was done, the exchange, he called the report “grossly oil and gas companies “would simply con- inaccurate.” The OIG concluded that it tinue destroying other sites.” A colleague “found no evidence” of wrongdoing, though scolded her for being “too emotional” only three interviews appear in the inves- and taking her job too seriously. She ul- tigation, one of them with the top official timately “felt she (had) no options but to himself. find a new job,” and she no longer works Though Randal Pair, a BLM employee in Carlsbad. OIG spokesperson Nancy at the Carlsbad Field Office from 2012 DiPaolo confirmed that a complaint was through 2017, was not one of the anony- made 17 months ago, but said that her mous whistleblowers, he expressed con- agency referred it to the BLM. cern about the pressure inside the agency. This is one of several official com- Now retired, Pair told HCN that the office plaints that staffers made in 2018, alleg- was understaffed and overloaded, and ing that the BLM violated environmental that, during his stint there, the pressure and archaeological laws to expedite oil increased over time. “There were a lot and gas development near Carlsbad, New more requests for applications (for drill- Mexico. The allegations come amid a mas- ing and rights of way) than we had the sive oil and gas boom in the Permian Ba- personnel to process,” Pair said. “No one sin, which stretches from West Texas into was paying enough attention to anything.” Pair added that managers often ap- proved drill plans without the neces- Tay Wiles is a High Country News correspondent.

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Gary Bowen outside his multigenerational family cabin beside Emigration Creek. While currently robust after a wet spring, the creek ran dry for the first time last summer after a very dry and hot season. Some believe the district’s water system might be responsible for the draining of the creek. KIM RAFF FOR HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

to fight the flames. A ‘preposterously’ big water tank “The people who were making these decisions were living in the canyon … An affluent Utah community spent millions to extinguish its fear of fire. when the canyon had a fire and there Decades later, they’re still trying to buy their way out of a bottomless pit. was no water system,” says Eric Hawkes, the general manager of the Emigration BY EMMA PENROD Canyon Improvement District. “Can you have too much water if you have a fire?” ary Bowen and his wife cut short their it would protect their town from future At that time, many residents figured G vacation in 1988 when they heard the wildfires. Today, after years of unexpected they’d rather be safe than sorry. Some also news: Emigration Canyon, the site of his costs, maintenance woes and mismanage- probably hoped that the project would multigenerational family cabin in the ment, the affluent community is divided help them get fire insurance for homes mountains east of Salt Lake City, Utah, about what to do next: Do they pay the priced at an average of $700,000. was on fire. unanticipated fees for what most now So the district borrowed $1.8 million By the time they’d hurried back to agree was a massively oversized project, from the federal government. The tank Salt Lake City, firefighters had already or hire the mysterious outsider who wants they built was more than three times evacuated and closed the canyon. Bowen to sue it out of existence? larger than the population required. watched the news, worried about the log Faced with ever-rising maintenance Community managers merrily dotted the home where he’d spent summers with his costs, Emigration Canyon is loud with canyon’s wooded neighborhoods and windy grandparents as a child in the 1940s. accusations of fraud and yet still anxious roads with brightly colored fire hydrants. Three days passed before a damage about fire protection. Some local leaders, The decision to build the project, local report was released. The fire claimed 5,000 including Bowen, worry that their com- leaders acknowledge, was based in emo- acres, but spared the canyon’s homes and munity has been backed into a corner tion. Lack of water wasn’t a problem in the businesses. The hill just above the Bowen from which it can’t escape. 1988 fire. Firefighters say the steep, rug- family home was scarred where firefight- ged terrain is the greatest challenge when ers had cut a trench-like barrier to stop migration Canyon’s 1 million-gallon it comes to fighting fires here. And even the blaze. The trench, Bowen says, is E water tank, its concrete walls stained those who argued in favor of the large still visible from his current home — his from unrepaired leaks, is buried beneath tank acknowledge that any sizeable fire is grandparents’ expanded and remodeled an artificial hill above the canyon’s prici- likely to be fought from the air, not with cabin. And the blaze, he says, is seared est subdivision, Emigration Oaks. water on the ground. into the collective memory of one of Utah’s The new system was first proposed in Even so, Danny Egbert, the local fire wealthiest canyon communities. the early 2000s, when two recently elected inspector, defends the oversized water “In Emigration Canyon,” Bowen says, members of the board of the Emigration system. “The potential for property loss “we’re paranoid about fire.” Canyon Improvement District suggested and loss of life is very high,” he says. In 2002, elected officials and residents building a water tank capable of storing 1 Emigration Canyon is a high-risk area, spent nearly $2 million in federal funds to million gallons. A 2002 memo from a state with difficult terrain, dead and dying build a community water system, hoping engineer described the tank as “prepos- scrub oak, and a relatively dense popula- terously oversized” for a community that tion concealed by trees. “Having all that needed only 300,000 gallons in storage. water available is on the positive side.” Emma Penrod is a journalist based in rural Utah But the new trustees argued that if the The project bought residents peace who covers science, technology, business and canyon caught fire again, a larger tank of mind — and made it easier to get fire environmental health, with an emphasis on water. would ensure that they had enough water insurance. Bowen, now a member of the

6 High Country News July 22, 2019 Emigration Canyon Community Council, alleging that it had defrauded taxpayers but refused to so much as read the pro- couldn’t properly insure his $900,000 by using federal funds to build an over- spectus on their funds. cabin home until the water tank and sized water system designed to support “It’s outside their area of expertise,” hydrants were constructed. To Bowen and large-scale development on properties he says. “Whether it’s making an invest- his neighbors, the water tank wasn’t over- owned by trustee owners. Shortly there- ment, listening to your attorney, or listen- sized; it was just right. after, he formed the Emigration Canyon ing to a hydrologist — people are going Once the tank was built, Emigration Home Owners Association, or ECHO. In to go with the quick, easy path that feeds Canyon residents breathed a sigh of relief. exchange for membership, Tracy promises their emotion.” But their real problems were just beginning. to fund legal services for members who are fighting water bills or who may lose water or the better part of a decade, the new service due to what he calls the water dis- F water system seemed to work fine. trict’s malpractice. He refuses to disclose Behind the scenes, though, the improve- who his members are, how much they pay ment district struggled to manage it. The him, or how many employees he has, and concrete tank had cured improperly, caus- he claims he does not take a salary. So far, ing it to spring a leak shortly after it was his suits have been unsuccessful. installed, and connected wells suffered Tracy’s legal case has been repeatedly frequent mechanical failures and water- dismissed on the ground that it falls well quality concerns. Then-District Manager outside a six-year statute of limitations. Fred Smolka, who also ran an account- The most recent ruling, issued this past ing firm, became overwhelmed by the February by the U.S. District Court for demands and hired several relatives to the District of Utah, ordered Tracy to pay help him; former board member William the water district thousands of dollars, in Bowen (no relation to Gary Bowen) says part, Judge Jill Parrish concluded, because he paid family members six figures for Tracy “began taking liberty with the facts. part-time work. Within a decade, the dis- … Each time the underlying facts were trict was struggling to pay its bills. disproved, Tracy changed the basic factual The residents of Emigration Canyon assertions giving rise to his complaint.” were happy to throw money at their wild- Tracy plans to appeal. Meanwhile, his fire problem in 2002, but when the costs opponents, including Gary Bowen, argue rose — when people were charged $15 a that his aggressive tactics threaten the dis- month for fire hydrants near their prop- trict’s ongoing efforts to address the water erty — they got angry. crisis collaboratively. They worry that the When the district was first created, fighting could cause some residents to lose residents were offered three options. access to water service entirely. They could connect to the district water If that happens, Tracy says, so be it; system and become customers in a tradi- as he sees it, anyone who built a home in tional sense, paying monthly bills based Emigration Canyon after his allegations on water use. They could also opt to pay a of fraud deserves to lose water service. smaller monthly fee to become “standby” customers — eligible to begin water ser- he fear of fire has only grown. Last vice upon request. Or they could opt out T summer’s extreme drought — the entirely. Town leadership promised the worst in Utah’s recorded history — dried roughly 600 households that opted out up the canyon’s iconic creek. Tracy spread that they would never be charged. rumors that dozens of household wells had But with just 300 paying customers, the run dry; a few of them had. Pointing to a district lacked the revenue base it needed 1966 master’s thesis from the University to maintain the oversized water system. of Utah by Jack Barnett that insinuated In 2013, district managers assessed the Emigration Canyon’s main aquifer cannot hydrants and calculated that non-paying support large wells, Tracy warns that the residents were still using the water. When district’s water system might be respon- the district began to issue monthly service sible for the draining of the creek and the fees to anyone living within 600 feet of a desiccation of the surrounding vegetation. hydrant, Hawkes says, the real fire in the The water district disputes this claim. canyon began. Gary Bowen believes there’s a third Residents were outraged. reason for the canyon’s problems. Many of In the midst of this turmoil, a myste- the affluent community’s newest residents, rious outsider arrived to fan the flames he says, have never lived in a rural area. with rumors of unfair water bills, stolen The broken-down wells, the over-pumping, water and taxpayer fraud. Mark Tracy, the water contaminated by septic tanks a translator who says he trained as an — all these could stem from poor manage- attorney in Germany, regards himself the ment by the residents themselves, he says. canyon’s personal advocate and protector. But he’s unsure whether his wealthy Recounting his story in a downtown Salt neighbors are willing to consider their Lake City café, Tracy blithely refused to own role in the canyon’s plight. When he discuss exactly how he makes a living. worked as a financial advisor, he says, Mark Tracy, top, who formed the Emigration Canyon Home Owners Association, filed a lawsuit against the Emigration Tracy says he learned about highly paid professionals like his neigh- Canyon Improvement District, alleging that they defrauded Emigration Canyon’s problems while bors were often his most difficult clients taxpayers. Above, one of the canyon’s plentiful hydrants, helping his ex-wife buy property there. — lawyers and doctors were convinced controversial because residents have been forced to pay for In 2014, he sued the water district, they knew more about investing than he, them in what was originally an opt-in program. KIM RAFF www.hcn.org High Country News 7 Protesters gather outside the State Capitol in Salem, Oregon, at the end of June. Loggers feared that fuel taxes proposed in House Bill 2020 would lead to a loss of milling and manufacturing jobs. ALEX MILAN TRACY/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES

the reasons why, according to a 2018 state report. International politics also play a role. For example, the ongoing trade war with China added uncertainty to an eco- nomically strapped agricultural industry, costing Northwest cherry growers $86 million in 2018. Railing against environmental rules and shifting blame from big-picture economic forces to regulations harks back to earlier fights over logging, said Peter Walker, an author and University of Oregon geography professor. In the 1980s, before spotted owl regulations cut old-growth logging in federal forests, the state’s timber industry had already lost nearly one in five jobs, due to a recession, technological changes and increased competition from other markets. “The flash- point issues — spotted owls and climate bills — belie the bigger economic forces Oregon’s derailed climate plan that shape the state’s economy,” he said. As the Republican party harped on Many state policies have failed to address rural anxieties the costs of the proposed climate legislation, proponents of the bill countered that BY CARL SEGERSTROM it would benefit rural Oregon. An analysis conducted by University of California For environmental s Oregon moved toward joining an restructuring the economy to address car- Berkeley economists, for example, esti- A international market to cap carbon bon pollution. While the potential costs of mated that it would create 50,000 jobs activists, Oregon’s emissions in late June, truckers, loggers the climate legislation took center stage, by 2050, and that rural areas would get a legislation was the and farmers chugged into the capitol a deeper economic truth went unspoken larger share of those jobs. in Salem. With horns blaring, they pro- — that the issues that hamper the fiscal But a job created isn’t the same as a job cream of the crop tested a proposed bill to rein in green- well-being of rural Oregon have less to do lost. Any upheavals in the job market as of the new bills, house gases, rallying behind slogans like with environmental regulations than with workers shift from one industry to another “Timber Unity” and “Cap Kills Jobs.” broader market forces, from international — from timber harvesting to solar installa- with its cap on As demonstrators gathered, Oregon’s policy to demographics. tion, say — take a toll on workers’ self-con- greenhouse gases Republican state senators absconded to Since 2018, Democrats in Colorado, fidence and the social networks they rely Idaho in a last-ditch effort to prevent a New Mexico and Washington have fol- on. “Even for people who get re-employed extending across Senate vote on the bill. Political wrangling lowed through on promises to limit carbon quickly, the change can have big impacts,” all sectors of the over the emissions-reducing legislation was emissions. For environmental activists, said Jennie Brand, a sociology professor at punctuated by arrest threats, menacing Oregon’s legislation was the cream of the University of California Los Angeles. economy, not just remarks aimed at state police, and pledges crop of the new bills, with its cap on green- Regardless of government interven- transportation of support for the senators from militia house gases extending across all sectors of tions, the economy and climate are both members. More than a week later, the the economy, not just transportation or changing. In Oregon, plans for transition- or electricity Republicans returned — once Democratic electricity generation. ing to a less fossil-fuel-intensive economy generation. leaders declared that they didn’t have But, at least initially, the climate have been pushed down the line as politi- enough votes to pass the climate bill. bill would have cost rural Oregonians cians wrestle over the details. In a press After the climate legislation was more. According to an analysis by The conference the day after the legislative shelved, lawmakers passed more than Oregonian, fuel taxes would hit wal- session ended, Democratic Gov. Kate 100 bills in a frenzied weekend before lets harder outside urban centers, where Brown pledged to spend more time trav- the legislative session ended on June 30. people drive longer distances in less fuel- eling the state and listening to people’s But the battle over the carbon emissions efficient vehicles and lack access to public concerns, even as she explores executive legislation revealed a deepening politi- transportation. Higher energy costs also actions to curb the state’s emissions. cal chasm between Oregon’s conservative raised concerns about milling and manu- Former Republican Rep. Lane rural areas and liberal population centers. facturing jobs leaving the state for friend- Shetterly, who for seven years repre- Republicans held firm to their base, align- lier economic conditions. sented a timber district in the Willamette ing with legacy industries and the rural Still, Oregon’s rural communities face Valley and Coast Range and is the current jobs they support, rather than engaging in larger forces than the proposed carbon- board president for the nonprofit Oregon pricing system. For nearly three decades, Environmental Council, said climate the state’s less-populated counties have change isn’t a rural or urban issue. People Carl Segerstrom is an assistant editor at fallen behind urban centers in wages and across the state feel its impacts, and must High Country News, covering Alaska, the Pacific employment. Lack of industry diversifica- rally around solutions. “Climate change Northwest and the Northern Rockies from tion, reliance on natural resource indus- won’t go away,” he said. “And the need to Spokane, Washington.  @carlschirps tries, and an aging population are some of address it won’t go away.”

8 High Country News July 22, 2019 Forest Service might limit public comments The revision would allow the agency to approve more projects without environmental review BY NICK BOWLIN

nder President Donald Trump, fed- engagement for anything but an environ- to reduce hazardous fuel loads. Rural U eral agencies have chipped away at mental impact statement,” he said. Oregon is a “tinderbox,” he said — a mas- the reviews and permitting required under sive forest fire hazard. The backlog is already long. the National Environmental Policy Act The NEPA permitting bottleneck The changes will almost certainly end up in (NEPA), one of the nation’s bedrock envi- is a legitimate public concern. Permits court. ronmental laws. Earlier this month, the to remove buildup of fire-prone organic Wyden called the revisions a “full Forest Service proposed a significant over- material and to build roads take far too employment plan for lawyers” because haul of the NEPA process for logging and long, Squillace said. In the introduction to they invite litigation, further slow- development on millions of acres of federal the rule, the Forest Service claims more ing permitting for projects that might forest and grassland across the West. than 5,000 new permit applications and help lower wildfire risk. Environmental In a statement, the Forest Service existing permit renewals await decisions, groups, including the Center for Biological said NEPA environmental reviews are while 80 million acres of national forest Diversity and the Western Environmental time-consuming, redundant and prevent land need work to curb “wildfire, insect Law Center, are already hinting at legal active maintenance of healthy forests. The epidemics, and forest diseases.” challenges. These cases could involve the agency called it the first serious change to Western lawmakers of both parties Forest Service’s justifications for weaken- NEPA’s regulation of forest management have shown an interest in streamlining NEPA, as well as possible violations in more than 10 years. ing NEPA, but there is disagreement of other environmental laws, like the The public has 60 days to weigh in on over the recent proposal. In a statement, Endangered Species Act. these significant changes. The proposed Congressional Western Caucus Chairman In determining whether a project that NEPA revisions comment period closes Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., called the new rule a impacts protected species warrants envi- Aug. 12. Here are some key takeaways: necessary correction to “costly, burdensome ronmental analysis, the proposed rule gives The proposed changes would reduce and uncertain” environmental reviews. agency officials authority to judge whether A timber site in Kaibab environmental review for logging and In a Senate committee hearing on “there is a likelihood of substantial adverse National Forest, infrastructure. June 13, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, D, took effects to the listed resource conditions.” Arizona. Under new The Forest Service wants to expand the opposite view. Wyden, who supports But the Endangered Species Act contains changes to the National the number of projects that would qualify streamlining forest thinning projects, no wiggle room. If an agency knows a proj- Environmental Policy Act, some forest for “categorical exclusions” — projects accused the Trump administration of try- ect could impact a protected species, it is projects might not be that can bypass environmental analysis ing to further “ideological pipe dreams of supposed to consult the Fish and Wildlife required to undergo or environmental impact statements. The rolling back environmental laws,” rather Service. The leeway in this clause could be environmental review. exclusions would apply to forest thinning, than working to approve existing projects used in future lawsuits, Squillace said. LANCE CHEUNG/USDA various types of road and trail building, brush removal and recreational site management. More controversially, forest projects of up to 7,300 acres (with logging on up to more than half of those acres) could be excluded from NEPA review. Mineral and energy exploration — such as using seismic testing to gather geological data and various small-scale infrastructure building — could also be exempt if it lasts less than one year. The changes would undercut public engagement. Since its inception, NEPA has established public engagement as a core prin- ciple of environmental review. Citizens should know what’s happening on public land — from being notified of potential projects, to having some input on whether or not a project should go through. The changes would undermine the public’s role in NEPA permitting, said Mark Squillace, professor of natural resource law at University of Colorado Law School; people would be less informed about proposed projects and less able to weigh in on them. “The proposal leaves it up to agency officials whether or not to allow public

Nick Bowlin is an editorial fellow at High Country News.  @npbowlin

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

10 High Country News July 22, 2019 Development in Bozeman and the basin THE WHITE STUFF FALLING FROM THE SKY ON JUNE 7, to mountain bikers and snowmobiles, and retains too the day of High Country News’ board meeting in little for actual wilderness, where elk and grizzlies and Bozeman, Montana, wasn’t quite snow and it wasn’t other wild animals don’t have to contend with humans quite sleet. “That would be graupel,” one local told on machines. Others argued that the plan simply re- me at Wild Joe’s Coffee Spot, one of the half-dozen flects the area’s changing demographics and the need or so cafes on the bustling Main Street. Outside, the for greater access to public lands. “It’s time to move on. miniature snowballs were forming a layer of slush on Public lands are not just about designating wilderness the sidewalk, while dozens of flame-orange and red anymore,” one longtime conservationist said. western tanagers huddled in the bushes on the side Several readers praised the broadening scope of BY PAUL LARMER streets, waiting for a break in the storm. HCN’s coverage, with one middle-school teacher de- The weather didn’t stop 75 or so hardy Bozeman- scribing how her students loved our January graphic- ites from attending HCN’s first official “On the Road novel-style feature about an all-girl Navajo rock band. to 50” reader event, held that night at the historic Another reader, who identified herself as a member of Baxter Hotel. After Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert, the Navajo Nation, said she appreciated our expanded who oversees the magazine from Gunnison, Colorado, coverage of tribal issues. and Associate Editor Emily Benson, who reports from Thank you, Bozeman. Our next “On The Road to Moscow, Idaho, described how our geographically 50” event takes place Sept. 13 in Salt Lake City. Stay dispersed editorial staff generates on-the-ground tuned for details. reporting from our 12-state beat, the audience shared story ideas and gave feedback on HCN’s direction as WITH HIS FLOPPY HUCK FINN STRAW HAT, white plastic we launch into our second half-century of existence. Walmart sunglasses, and baggy boat pants big enough One thing on everyone’s mind: growth. With a for two, Thomas Minckley doesn’t look like your typi- population of 112,000, Bozeman is one of the nation’s cal scientist. Then again, I haven’t met that many fastest-growing small cities, and demographers pre- paleo-ecologists — certainly not the sort who spent dict another 55,000 residents by 2045, drawn here by their youth riding flash floods on sheets of plywood Montana State University, a burgeoning tech industry in the desert outside Phoenix. Perhaps that experi- and the stunningly beautiful mountains and valleys, ence helped inspire him to become the fearless leader all within an hour’s drive of Yellowstone National of this summer’s 77-day voyage down the Green and Park. There’s a reason former HCN Senior Editor Colorado rivers, 150 years after John Wesley Powell’s Ray Ring’s column, “Top Ten Reasons Not to Move to epic river trip. Minckley has never been one to avoid Bozeman,” has remained our most-read online story a challenge; a longtime HCN reader, he now teaches since it was published in 2013. “When do we kill the students at the fossil-fueled University of Wyoming goose that laid the golden egg?” asked Tim Crawford, that climate change is a reality, not a debate. a longtime local business-owner. Shortly after the Bozeman board meeting, I joined Bozeman’s growth has led to heated fights over Minckley and the crew of his Sesquicentennial Colo- everything from the height of local buildings — sev- rado River Exploring Expedition (SCREE), on one leg eral giant cranes loomed over the low-slung down- of their 1,000-mile float through the Colorado Basin, town area — to the management of Custer-Gallatin from Green River, Wyoming, to Lake Mead on the National Forest, just outside of town. Several readers Arizona-Nevada border. Our group — which included told me that the U.S. Forest Service’s recently released a couple of water scientists from the U.S. Geological draft management plan gives too much roadless land Survey and several longtime HCN readers, including Western historian Paul Hirt of Arizona State Uni- versity, and Dan McCool, a political science professor at the University of Utah — set out to navigate the Green River’s Desolation and Gray canyons down to Green River, Utah. The 86-mile stretch hasn’t changed much since Powell described it back in 1869: The river is very rapid and many lateral canyons enter on either side. … Crags and tower-shaped peaks are seen everywhere, and away above them, long lines of broken cliffs; and above and beyond the cliffs are pine forests, of which we obtain occasional glimpses as we look up through a vista of rocks. … We are minded to call this the Canyon of Desolation.” It’s still a wild and remote place; one evening, a “On the Road to black bear scampered through our shady campsite un- 50” is a series of derneath old gnarled cottonwood trees. But SCREE’s community gatherings task is to document not only the canyons’ enduring in cities across the beauty, but also the changes in the basin, from oil and region, collecting gas fields in the north to the depleted reservoirs in the feedback about HCN’s south, and to ponder the uncertain future facing the future direction as we 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River. approach our Would Powell be surprised by today’s landscape? 50th anniversary in Minckley doubts it. “We like to think of John Wesley 2020. See more: Powell as a visionary conservationist, but his mission hcn.org/otr-50 was to ‘reclaim’ the Colorado River basin for human use. I think he would be just fine with all of the dams, Paul Larmer is Artist Patrick Kilkut from the University of Wyoming agricultural fields and oil and gas wells.” You can executive director/ made drawings and paintings while on the expedition follow the SCREE team’s progress this summer at publisher of High down the Green River. PAUL LARMER Powell150.org. Country News.

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE | BY GRAHAM LEE BREWER

people, reminding them not only of who they had been, but of who they still were and could be, said Stephen Fadden, program director at the Poeh Cultural Center and Museum, a Bacone alum and citizen of the Mohawk Nation. “It was a place to, in a sense, resist detribalization by expressing the spiritual and cultural ideas they held dear through their art,” he said. As more and more Native artists thrived there, what became A known as the “Bacone style” left an indelible mark on modern Native art. More than 50 years after it redefined the Native artistic canon, and almost a century after Ataloa’s arrival, the college has quietly fallen into decay and near-financial ruin, its student body dwindling and its old buildings in disrepair. But Radical the institution’s new leaders are ambitious. Hoping to once again produce some of the country’s most vibrant artists, new President Ferlin Clark announced last year that the school would soon offer classes in film production. It will also, after a several-year hiatus, offer an arts degree again. But clawing back from a $2.5 million debt and regaining accreditation, both ReturnBacone College once redefined as a private and a tribal college, will not be easy. In 2018, the Higher Learning Commission, which accredits post-secondary educational institutions in 19 states in the what Native art could be. Central and Western U.S., put Bacone on probation, citing its Can it do so again? lack of proper infrastructure and “systematic and integrated planning.” The school’s financial woes damaged recruitment efforts and caused many students to leave. The student body hen Mary “Ataloa” Stone arrived at Bacone College in plummeted from a record-breaking more than 700 the year the summer of 1927, the small tribal school in Muskogee, before to fewer than 300, and all but five of the college’s 95 Oklahoma, had no art program. Hired to work in the English employees were let go and rehired only after the college department, the Chickasaw scholar, originally from Indian sold some of its newer properties. In a May 2018 interview Territory, had an impressive résumé: an undergraduate degree with KJRH, then-President Franklin Willis blamed Bacone’s from Redlands University in California and a new master of financial woes not on poor investment decisions and financial arts degree from Columbia. Despite the very clear racial and practices but rather on the students, citing $2 million in unpaid gender divisions in the male-dominated America of the 1920s, tuition. “If we had that money, we’d be open. It’s the $2 million Stone — who is usually known simply by her Chickasaw name, we need, and there’d not be a care in the world.” But Bacone’s “Ataloa” — was better educated than most white men of her problems will likely cost far more than $2 million to fix. When generation. it temporarily suspended Bacone’s accreditation in 2018, the Turning down job offers that included a proposed tour of Higher Learning Commission noted that the college had no Europe as a singer, Ataloa chose instead to teach at Bacone. existing policy or procedure for monitoring its finances and The school was unlike other tribal schools at the time: Bacone’s could provide no evidence on how it would meet its future WIndigenous students studied advanced academic subjects like obligations. It made no mention of unpaid tuition. social science and Indigenous history, rather than elementary Last fall, the college hired renowned Oglala Lakota painter education and agriculture. Established as a private Baptist Gerald Cournoyer to head the art department. When we first institution a quarter century before Oklahoma became a state, spoke in December, about a month before art classes resumed, it is Oklahoma’s oldest college, and Native students have long Cournoyer sounded optimistic despite the school’s setbacks — sought intellectual refuge there. Ataloa, whose own intellectual eager to recapture some of Bacone’s old magic. “It is my dream journey began with the stories of her Chickasaw grandmother, that we get a new art building large enough to encompass all wanted to teach students how to navigate the Western world the the art, where we can do more outreach to the communities and way she had. “Realizing the only hope for the Indian is the right have basket weaving, beadwork, silversmithing, things that you kind of education, I know my task must be in helping raise the wouldn’t be able to find at another institution,” he said. standard of our schools,” she told The Literary Digest in 1931. Given Bacone’s historic accomplishments — the fact that Bacone became a bastion of Indigenous culture as well it offered Indigenous students in Indian Territory a proper as a place where Native students learned to use stereotypes education when other institutions refused to do so, even as and myths to their own advantage. When raising funds for it empowered a generation of artists to change the art world the college, Ataloa implored white Americans to “save” the — it’s easy to understand why Cournoyer and Clark are best of Native culture, “since it is you who have taken the determined to save what is left. When I visited Bacone, the look responsibility in changing our old civilization.” This tactic would in Cournoyer’s eye told me he doesn’t want to consider a future prove to be one of the most important lessons her students without the historic Indian school.

u learned, and it helped the small tribal college radically reshape Cheyenne Warrior LEDGER PAPER FROM TRADERS’ NOTEBOOKS and military by W. Richard the world of modern Native art. West, from the Throughout the middle and later 1900s, as the United commanders’ rosters made its way slowly across North America mid-20th century. States government sought to suppress tribes and erase their in the 18th and 19th centuries. Combined with commercial West was one of cultural and societal structures, the Indian Arts Program at paints and inks, the new medium began to take hold, and several influential Bacone inspired Indigenous artists to test the perimeters of the gradually it replaced animal hide. Paper eventually became and prolific art Native artistic canon and assert their own identities through essential for record-keeping after white settlers decimated the instructors at their work. Instructors like W. “Dick” West, Acee Blue Eagle and buffalo to near-extinction. Bacone. Woody Crumbo, some of the most prolific and influential Native Shading and perspective are typically absent from early GILCREASE MUSEUM, TULSA, OKLAHOMA artists of their day, gave hope and continuity to displaced 19th century Indigenous ledger drawings, which have a

12 High Country News July 22, 2019 www.hcn.org High Country News 13 p Women Gathering distinctive two-dimensional quality — images defined by crisp generations. The young artists, most notably Spencer Asah, Corn by Marian black outlines as much as by their bright colors. Backgrounds, Monroe Tsatoke and Stephen Mopope, excelled at the easel Terasaz, c. 1938. for the most part, are nonexistent. But aesthetic appeal was painting, becoming some of the most prolific Native artists of The piece’s bold necessarily not the primary concern; in the Kiowa calendars their time. colors and absence drawn by Silver Horn, for example, the goal was simply to Many of the artists at Bacone saw themselves as keepers of of background are document everyday life, everything from tornadoes and crops their culture, which they took one step further by incorporating indicative of many Indigenous artists to battles and deaths. Using images for record-keeping and modern artforms, said Tall Chief. They established the rules in Oklahoma at the storytelling was common among the Kiowas; preserving and of the new world based on those of the old; Bacone simply time. displaying those images as artwork was not necessarily the played its part in a progression of visual storytelling that began GILCREASE MUSEUM, intention. Rembrandt may have worked well with light, but millennia ago. “That is why the art that came out of (Bacone) TULSA, OKLAHOMA Silver Horn worked with time. was so ‘Oklahoma,’ ” Tall Chief said. “That came straight off It’s unlikely that the Cheyenne and Kiowa prisoners, among the hide, straight off the tepee and onto the paper and tried to others, who created prolific art in the ledger style in the late keep that essence, while starting to apply some of the Western 1800s ever worried about “style” or what future art patrons techniques that make art interesting. You can’t live in a bubble, might think. But their distinctive style of portraiture, with its and they knew that.” stark absence of background, would later propel the Kiowa 6, a Jacobson and his University of Oklahoma students were group of Kiowa artists active in the early 1900s, to international deeply involved with their Bacone counterparts, and Bacone’s stardom. instructors took that influence and ran with it. Texture, The Kiowa 6 are best known for their depictions of dimensionality and movement became hallmarks of the “Bacone Indigenous dancers in motion, dressed in regalia. Working style,” as did abstract imagery, like the darting birds and with the University of Oklahoma Art Department’s director, a geometrically entrancing blades of grass in Acee Blue Eagle’s Swedish immigrant named Oscar B. Jacobson, they seized on paintings or the crystal-blue deer in Woody Crumbo’s work. It the fact that, on a practical level, European art stood the test was the natural evolution of the old ledger drawings, and the of time, said Russ Tall Chief, former director of the Jacobson work of the Kiowa 6 that moved into a new phase of design and House in Norman, Oklahoma, now a museum just off campus. structure, “a rearticulation,” said Lisa K. Neuman, a professor European art was carefully preserved in museums, highly of anthropology and Native American studies at the University valued by the art world and the broader culture. “Whereas of Maine and the author of Indian Play: Indigenous Identity at we’ve lost a lot of traditional arts in wood and hides and stuff Bacone College. that just disintegrated,” he said. “Think about the hundreds of Artists like Blue Eagle, Crumbo and West taught their years of Native art that we will never see that happened in the students to harness traditional culture and ceremony 1700s. It had its life, it ran its course, and then it went away. and express them in newer mediums and styles. And the That’s a natural phenomenon.” college launched generations of young Native artists into Though Jacobson gave the Kiowa 6 easels and a studio the mainstream art world — people like Jerome Tiger, in his home, the present-day museum, the artists’ forebears Ruthe Blalock Jones, Mars Biggoose and Marcelle Sharron had been recording history through visual representations for Ahtone Harjo, whose growing influence not only gave them

14 High Country News July 22, 2019 an opportunity to make a living as artists, but also enabled around the barns often enough, but I never got a pedigree.” them to reclaim their own narratives, redefining art through Cournoyer knows the sentiment well. Today’s buyers, he the eyes of Native artists, rather than the expectations of the said, are no more sensitive or forgiving. “They want to know all white patrons who bought their work. It was a chance to tip these things about your history in order to make a judgment on the balance of power in the art world, and Bacone’s leaders whether this is true Indian art or not.” Some people only buy took advantage of it. When one of the respected Yanktonai work from the reservation, he said, “because that is real art, the Dakota artist Oscar Howe’s post-Cubist paintings was rejected struggling Indian artist,” not work by somebody who left to earn at the 1958 National Indian Painting Competition at Tulsa’s a master’s degree, or, in Cournoyer’s case, more than one. “We Philbrook Museum of art, which was then the country’s largest can tell our story, but if we want someone to buy it, we got to Native art market, because the jury said his work did not meet tell the story the way you want it to be told,” he said. the definition of “traditional,” Howe responded forcefully by His understanding of that reality should serve Bacone’s letter. “Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian students well, as it did for those of his predecessors. Cournoyer painting, with no right to individualism, dictated to as the is regarded as an accomplished painter, and Bacone’s Indian always has been?” he wrote. Bacone’s instructors and supporters have a lot of confidence in his ability as an students were also steeped in traditional art, and as the Indian instructor. The big, bold colors of modernism are obvious in Annual began to include more modern elements, thanks to his work, but so too are the experiences of the Lakota Sioux. pushback by artists like Howe, Bacone’s artists started moving His paintings feel at once modern and traditional. “I think he from small galleries to museums. represents that balance Native artists have found, good Native At the same time, the program’s leaders played up their artists who have been able to hang onto that Native aesthetic,” “Indianness” to sell Bacone and its art to white donors and Tall Chief said. collectors. To woo white audiences, West would often don a Cournoyer wants his students to feel connected to their large feathered headdress, face paint and regalia that did not heritage, much as he did at the Institute for American Indian represent his own Cheyenne heritage. Most of Bacone’s art Arts in Santa Fe, where class was just a short walk from the directors exploited the stereotype that Indians were naturally sweat lodge. He wants Native artists from across the country spiritual and artistic to garner more funding or promote their to find their way to Muskogee. But for now, his goals have to students. “Their politics, we would look at them as being a be more modest. When we spoke in February, his tone was little bit odd today. But they were playing the system, gaming more urgent; he’s focused on getting his students the credits it,” said Neuman. “I use the phrase ‘playing Indian to Indian they need to transfer to an art institute. Currently, Bacone advantage.’ ” The artists were confronted, both personally and can only offer a two-year associate’s degree in art. He hopes to q Stickball Game professionally, with what white buyers thought “Native” art implement a seven-year plan to raise funds and eventually offer by Jerome Tiger, should be, as well as the question of who was qualified to make studio credit hours. The art department needs a newer facility c. 1965. The use of it. Neuman writes that in 1939, Crumbo lamented to the Tulsa with more studio space. Supplies are scant, and he has to be movement became Tribune that he was often asked to certify his own authenticity creative. While eating at the local Chili’s, he asked if he could a central part of the as Indigenous. A potential buyer once asked him how Indian “Bacone style.” take home some empty wine bottles. Those bottles are now part GILCREASE MUSEUM, he is. “Lady, I wouldn’t know,” Crumbo said he replied. “I hung of his still-life display. TULSA, OKLAHOMA

Pullout goes here quay sans medium 14/18 aligned toward spine —Tag

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Across the hall from the still-life models, on the second floor Cournoyer sometimes has his doubts — they are walking among of the small, rough stone art building, Cournoyer stands in the legends. Kiowa 6 paintings awaiting restoration are in the midst of desks, each covered with piles of sketches. It’s May, library, sometimes leaning against shelves; a Dick West mural and classes ended just a couple of weeks ago. Cournoyer, with of a dancer adorns a classroom wall on the art building’s steamy “We can tell his first semester of art instruction at Bacone under his belt, second floor, and prints from Jerome Tiger’s studio are piled in our story, but had recently returned from a recruiting trip to the Pine Ridge a room full of decades of art from past students. The college’s Reservation, where he grew up. He wanted to show kids there museum overflows with treasures, from oil paintings to beaded if we want that making art is a viable and fulfilling way to make a living regalia; even stones in its fireplace are etched with hieroglyphs. and to see the world. Bacone’s student body is currently about But the old silversmithing basement is often flooded, the boilers someone to 42% Native American, and if the college can get that number fail, and priceless works of art spend decades in buildings that buy it, we got to 51%, it will be one step closer to regaining accreditation as are not climate-controlled. a tribal college. Both the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Cournoyer walks through all of this, the history and struggle, to tell the Indians and the Osage Nation have recently agreed to charter with a sense of purpose. Every corner, every aging façade or Bacone, another necessary step. The college will also have to dusty sketch, evokes a smile. To Cournoyer, the past is alive story the way establish a trustee board that is majority Native American. and moving all around Bacone. To him, the murmur is a shout. Looking among the sketches stacked throughout the Behind the modest duplex on the edge of campus Cournoyer you want it to classroom, it wasn’t hard for me to find impressive examples of shares with another professor, he had a sweat lodge built, and be told.” promising young Native talent, the likely source of the gleam in when he speaks about the process, the heating of the stones Cournoyer’s eye. Cournoyer and Creek filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, and the seating arrangement, or how he will soon dig a trench — Oglala Lakota who has offered to help create a film program, know there are the way he had been taught, he can’t help but smile again. painter talented Native artists, writers and filmmakers everywhere, “Everything has a purpose, and we’re trying to teach that.” Gerald Cournoyer, sometimes concentrated in areas just a short drive from Bacone. head of the Bacone College “I had a hard time leaving Holdenville. I have a hard time ATALOA, WHO HELPED PRESIDENT BENJAMIN D. WEEKS BUILD Art Department leaving Tulsa now,” Harjo said, mulling over whether or not to Bacone’s art program in the late 1920s, believed deeply move to Los Angeles, where he already spends much of his time that Indigenous people should be the ones in charge of the working. “If they want to stay in Oklahoma, like a lot of us do, preservation of their culture. At the time, genocide was still very then I’d like to create space for them to stay there and work.” much a daily reality in the United States. In her travels across The stone buildings where Cournoyer has stacked his the country, Ataloa saw a generation of Native youth who too students’ work may be musty and prone to flooding, but there often knew little about their history, the collective memories of is life here still. And whether or not the students know it — their tribes scrubbed away by the government. “The Indian has

16 High Country News July 22, 2019 t Oglala Lakota painter Gerald Cournoyer looks at some of the Kiowa 6 paintings awaiting restoration in Bacone’s library. Cournoyer was hired last fall to lead the college’s art program. DYLAN JOHNSON FOR HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

q Contest Dance by Spencer Asah, c. 1940. Asah and the rest of the Kiowa 6 became internationally known artists when Bacone’s art program was still in its infancy, and their influence is seen in the art produced at the college during the 20th century. GILCREASE MUSEUM, TULSA, OKLAHOMA

been studied as a curiosity — a ‘dead’ and ‘vanishing’ race, not deliberately played up the idea that Native people were natural as a living contributor to the art, music, and religious moral artists, but even as their patrons saw their art as merely code of later Americans.” Ataloa and Weeks worked together a colorful novelty, an interesting depiction of Indian life to to build an institution that set itself apart from other Indian decorate the mantelpiece, the artists knew it was more than schools by cultivating their minds, rather than just teaching that; it was how they carried their ancestors into the future, them “from the shoulders down.” and how their children escaped the confines of their dreams. “The trouble has been that the Indian’s education has Cournoyer may have just recently decided to call Oklahoma never fitted him for anything worthwhile,” Weeks said in 1935. home, but the legend of Bacone found him long ago — in South “We have been trying to make carpenters out of artists, house Dakota, when he dreamed of making art, and in Santa Fe, when painters out of musicians, and printers out of poets. We are he studied to make a career of it. When he strips outdated wood beginning to realize that the Indian is an artist in the truest paneling from the walls of his almost century-old art building sense.” so that he can slather on plaster and a fresh coat of paint, he Bacone is no longer solely an Indian school; the private might as well cleaning a precious stone to later smooth and cut college teaches students of any background. But Ferlin, into a gem. Cournoyer is every bit as much of a culture keeper Cournoyer and Harjo want it to be a place where young as his predecessors were. This place, with its generations of Native artists can encounter a way of life that has shown their artwork stacked on desks, its peeling walls and its flooded Graham Lee Brewer is teachers, and their kin, value and purpose. “There is something basements, is his church, and he’s putting in the work to keep it a contributing editor amazing about having Native professors,” Harjo said. “People going. at High Country News who share the Native student’s life and perspectives. It just In the basement, the waters have receded for now. This and a member of the makes a big difference.” summer has been particularly rainy, and the thick Oklahoma Cherokee Nation. Ataloa, Crumbo, the Kiowa 6, Blue Eagle and countless summer heat makes for some unbearably humid afternoons,  @grahambrewer Bacone students were all rooted in an artistic tradition that but for now the lower floor of Bacone’s art building feels cool thrived long before them and will continue long after. But and smells like mold and swollen wood. The old silversmithing This story was funded what sets them apart, what makes them so important to the classroom’s small windows don’t provide adequate circulation with reader donations to the High Country Indigenous experience, is not how their work was perceived for the craft. But Cournoyer looks around the dusty room, its News Research Fund. as “different” or “new,” but rather how it preserved the true jeweler’s hammers idle and no silver bars waiting inside its histories of this place we currently call the United States and thick iron safe, and he grins. He imagines tables and benches WEB EXTRA hurtled that truth into the future. The popularity of their art full of students crafting necklaces and rings — things that For a gallery of works in the white world contrasted with, and was likely bolstered remind them of home or give them a passport to another world from Bacone artists, by, the invisibility of tribal life in America. Bacone’s art leaders — and then there’s that gleam in his eye again. n see hcn.org.

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 MARKETPLACE

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www.hcn.org High Country News 19 MARKETPLACE

20 High Country News July 22, 2019 www.hcn.org High Country News 21 PHOTOS

A girl touches a rubber bear paw, left, at the Estes Valley Bear Education Close Task Force “Bear Booth” table set up at the weekly farmers encounters market. Kelsey Persyn, below, Colorado’s booming growth clashes a Rocky Mountain National Park with the state’s wild inhabitants interpretive ranger, utilizes the help of PHOTOS BY ANDRIA HAUTAMAKI eager volunteers and props to teach At the height of the tourist season at Rocky visitors the difference Mountain National Park in 2018, a plump black between black and bear ambled into the lobby of a nearby hotel. grizzly bears. It climbed onto a wood table, examined an antique couch and then sauntered back out the same door again. Overly curious bears regularly wander into inappropriate human places in Estes Park, the gateway community to Colorado’s most popular national park. As the population of the Front Range swells, visitation to the area has grown, reaching a record 4.5 million people in 2018. That means more wildlife encounters with “problem” bears accustomed to humans and their delicious munchies. And yet it’s the possibility of encountering animals that encourages so many to visit the West’s wildish areas. As much as this challenges natural resource managers, it continues to delight many humans. In recent years, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Estes Park have adopted practices to better cohabitate with the non-human neighbors. In 2015, the town passed an ordinance to limit bears’ access to their greatest temptation: trash. Residents must either use a wildlife-resistant container or put trashcans outside only on pickup days. The town also replaced all its public trash containers in 2016 for a whopping $1,200 per canister, funded by a sponsorship program. And while watching adorable bears awkwardly navigate the human world is fun, our responsibility is clear: We need to discourage them, and let them be wild. PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER

A Jeep, far left, was totaled after a bear smelled lemonade left in it, and then opened an unlocked door with its paws. Once inside, the bear’s weight rocked the car, closing the door. The owners tied a rope to the door handle, and then stepped back before pulling the door open to release the animal.

At left, a man carries a baby along a popular walkway in downtown Estes Park as a black bear peers out from nearby bushes.

22 High Country News July 22, 2019 BOOKS

Last words from a desert scribe

ho hasn’t wondered desert bighorn sheep, which she per- what a favorite writer sonalized and immortalized in Eating might still have Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the bestowed on the world Wild (2005). They, like their domesti- if not silenced too cated cousins, make an appearance in soon?W What fan doesn’t long for more — Seasons. The tame ones bounce around letters, a journal, unpublished fragments, a truck bed “like berserk piñatas,” alas, even an annotated grocery list? slaughterhouse-bound. Devotees of the late southern Utah For this reviewer, a former Moab essayist Ellen Meloy need no longer guide, the magic portal into Meloy’s wait. The sketches gathered in Seasons universe was Raven’s Exile: A Season on predate her untimely 2004 death by up the Green River, her 1994 distillation of to 10 years and are not, strictly speak- eight years of floats through Desolation ing, last words. But for those who haven’t Canyon with her husband, Mark, a yet discovered Meloy, they can serve as a Bureau of Land Management ranger. It is gateway drug to her profound, sometimes hard to resist an author who so down- deceptively breezy work. Seasons’ open- plays her considerable outdoor skills, ing salvo, the thoughtful but hilarious the kind of person who named one place “I Stapled My Hair to the Roof,” encap- “Deviated Septum Riffle” after her oar sulates her approach. Outspoken and struck bottom and its shaft was rammed passionate, Meloy skewers grandstand- into her nose. ing, mindless consumption, militarism, This sagebrush sage delighted in patriarchy: “In pioneer times, while the the bizarre. Who knew that European men mumbled about posses and punched classical violin virtuosos palmed toads each other’s lights out, the grandmoth- before a performance so that neurotoxins ers of my Anglo neighbors simply got off from the amphibians’ glands would numb their horses and took care of business.” their own and prevent sweating? Or that She makes an absolute gas out of much medieval science posited that geese hatch that is ghastly. Meloy’s eloquent lev- from mussels? Meloy’s own behavior ity, however, is no mere parlor trick; the displayed streaks of eccentricity, as when humor sugarcoats the pills we’ll have to she crossed barbed wire and in socks and swallow if our planet is to heal. It threads pajamas thrashed through tamarisks through all of her books, even The Last in the dark, alerting geese about to be Cheater’s Waltz: Beauty and Violence in ambushed. Or when she swapped notes the Desert Southwest, her 1999 account tucked under windshield wipers with of a nuclear road trip. Such light-hand- a literary stalker, as recounted in The edness has been lacking in too-often dour Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on and preachy “nature writing” ever since Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky. That collec- Edward Abbey rowed off into the back-of- tion, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist, also beyond, followed all too soon by this Bluff, brought her visual verve to the fore. A Utah, philosopher-clown. plein-air watercolorist and one-time art Seasons’ gems all originated as radio curator, she’d studied at the Sorbonne, so pieces. The “Roof” story in particular it is no surprise that her writing sparkled showcases Meloy’s structural genius. with haiku-like lines, conjuring scenes Stapled between her gables, she contem- worthy of Van Gogh. Sunbathers’ skin plates the view rippling concentrically “blushes in lambent coral air or ripples outward from the house to include the in a stab of lemony sunlight.” One wishes San Juan River, Diné Bikéya (the Navajo samples of Meloy’s paintings were at heartland), the Colorado Plateau, Earth, hand to augment her writing. Seasons’ and the universe — a mirror of this writ- few black-on-white drawings give only er’s bio-centric orientation. In the essay’s inklings. Her artistic training taught her final scene, she flips the perspective, see- patience, to just sit and watch the light ing herself through the eyes of gyre-borne change and notice nuances — terracotta, vultures: a speck in the landscape, a “two- blood red, salmon, vermilion, the “tem- legged smudge on a plywood platter.” perament of iron” scoring mesa flanks. Among countless other things, This latest outing is a slim volume, Seasons’ 26 one-to-two-page vignettes but you shouldn’t be fooled. It telescopes portray quotidian acts: birding, fishing, decades spent exploring home and the boating, listening, voting, herding lizards, desert, two terms that for Meloy became Seasons: chauffeuring dough, and — yes — watch- synonyms. Stuff it in your pocket, perch Desert Sketches ing TV. Chop wood, carry water. Go to atop the Goosenecks or the Raplee Ellen Meloy the town dump, but pay attention: “If Anticline, where wind gusts can make the 100 pages, your Tevas melt, it’s probably not a good roots of your hair ache. Relish it, and if softcover: $14.95. day to scavenge.” Like the critters and you’re lucky, some bighorn sheep might Torrey House Press, plants Meloy cherished, nothing was pop up from the limestone, “all springs too commonplace to escape her laser- and coils.” 2019. beam attention. She kept returning to BY MICHAEL ENGELHARD

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 PERSPECTIVE

What the outdoor rec industry doesn’t get about the LGBTQ community OPINION BY “Nature doesn’t care if you’re gay,” I’ll often hear in outdoors fans are seen the same as everyone else. MIKAH MEYER reaction to articles by myself or my outdoorsy LGBTQ In that world, other nature enthusiasts’ reactions peers. And it’s true. Nature doesn’t care if I’m gay. to a photo of a flag-bearing hiker would be the same But people do. whether it was an American flag or a rainbow one. If Two months ago, I finished a world-record jour- outdoor companies follow the example of the rest of ney to all 419 National Park Service sites. For three corporate America, they could use their influence in years nonstop, I lived in a van, hiked trails every- a way that both helps their bottom line and improves where from American Samoa to the Arctic Circle, and the lives of outdoor lovers. accomplished an outdoors journey no human had As civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman ever done before. But comments about the trip have said, “It’s hard to be what you can’t see.” The back- included things like, “Well, now I need to be careful ing of inclusive values by outdoor brands will help in the bathroom at national parks,” and “Why do you nature enthusiasts like the Eagle Scout who wrote have to shove your lifestyle down our throats!” And a me via Instagram, saying that he’d never had an sponsor terminated our partnership halfway through outdoorsy gay role model until he learned about my the project, saying over the phone and in writing national parks record. Better representation will that I was doing too much LGBTQ outreach. invite more people to experience our great outdoors. This month, a camping website called The Dyrt Even though discrimination posted an interview with me on Facebook featuring a still causes vastly higher rates of thumbnail photo in which I’m holding a rainbow flag suicide attempts among LGBTQ If outdoor companies follow in front of Yosemite’s Tunnel View. The comments youth than their straight peers, the example of the rest of were so inflammatory that the publishers decided this moment in time still gives after just a few hours that it was inappropriate to me hope. corporate America, they leave it up. They later denounced the hateful com- When I started my national could use their influence in ments and reposted the story with a call for civility parks journey in 2016, the — which went unheeded. A rainbow flag incited such outdoor recreation industry had a way that both helps their anger from a community of nature lovers that they never had a Pride Month ad. Now, bottom line and improves the ignored what so many outdoor enthusiasts have told several companies and nonprof- me is their “dream trip.” its sponsor an annual LGBTQ lives of outdoor lovers. This happened in June of all months, the one Outdoor Summit, an outdoors- month when my social media feels like an explosion themed drag queen is command- of rainbows due to worldwide Pride festivals. When ing attention from brands, and REI (which I work with historic anniversaries like the Stonewall uprising to help promote LGBTQ inclusion in the outdoors) and marriage-equality decisions are remembered. received the Kenji Award at 2019’s Outdoor Retailer And when seemingly every corporation, from tradeshow in part for its “Outside with Pride” apparel. Listerine to Disney, is releasing products that cel- The promotions and the work for inclusion of the ebrate these culture-changing moments. last three years have expanded the size of the tent Yet even as the rest of America chases this “Pink for people who see themselves in outdoors culture. Dollar,” the outdoor recreation industry seems less Every day, we come one step closer to a goal: A hope Mikah Meyer rafts interested in the near $1 trillion purchasing power of that one day, the readers of an article about a gay through Dinosaur the U.S. LGBTQ community. Or the shift in culture man visiting all of America’s national parks won’t National Monument evidenced by the fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ care about the sexual orientation of the adventurer. as part of his 2019 “Pride Night” was their best-attended game in After all, if nature doesn’t care that I’m gay, why do national park tour. Adventurer Mikah seven years. Or — as I can attest after seeing Tinder people? MIKAH MEYER Meyer was recently photos from every corner of the United States during named one of NBC’s my parks journey — the vast market of gay men “Pride 50” for his hoping to look cute in athletic clothes on top of a groundbreaking work with LGBTQ mountain. communities. He is Some in the LGBTQ community argue that a regular speaker corporate Pride promotions are simply “rainbow on topics ranging washing” to increase profits. But as someone who from epic outdoors didn’t meet an openly gay adult until I left my home experiences to the state of Nebraska at age 19, and 14 years later can benefits of inclusion get married in any state across the U.S., I’ve seen the for businesses and progress our culture has made. And I believe compa- individuals. He is nies had a large part in it. based in Minneapolis. In an age when corporations are afforded some of the same rights as individuals, financial power plays WEB EXTRA a significant role in our society, from politics to cul- Read more tural acceptance. When Marriott, a company started from all our and owned by Mormons, is willing to sponsor Pride commentators at festivals and has an entire annual #LoveTravels hcn.org campaign aimed at making LGBTQ travelers feel welcome, even people in so-called “flyover states” We welcome are influenced by ideas more progressive than they your feedback. might see at home. Send letters to In the same way, the outdoor recreation industry [email protected] has the power to help build a future where LGBTQ

24 High Country News July 22, 2019 Lawmakers are failing to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women

Just over a week ago, the Canadian government Native women are invisible due to systematic and released its National Inquiry into missing and mur- ongoing racism,” said Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of dered Indigenous people. The report, titled Reclaiming the Urban Indian Health Institute. “Since the release Power and Place, garnered some attention here in of our report, we have been calling it a genocide, the United States, albeit mostly in Native communi- but it has rarely been acknowledged as that. … It is ties, primarily due to its declaration that high rates of about time that this epidemic is being described as a violence against Indigenous peoples are the result of genocide, but with that, we will need concrete action.” genocide — violence stemming from “state actions and Action could — and should — come from Con- inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.” gress, where an unprecedented number of bills have According to the report, Indigenous women and been recently introduced to address the crisis, from NEWS girls in Canada are 12 times more likely to experi- the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women COMMENTARY ence violence than non-Indigenous women. Between Act to Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act. Con- BY MARY 1997 and 2000, homicide rates for Indigenous women gress seems poised to do something, but advocates KATHRYN NAGLE were nearly seven times higher than for non- worry that this “something” may not address the Indigenous women. In the United States, murder actual roots of the crisis, particularly when it comes is the third-leading cause of death among Native to the theft of tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians. women, and on some reservations Native women are Recently, the National Indigenous Women’s murdered at 10 times the national average. Tribal Resource Center identified five solutions lawmakers advocates hope the Canadian inquiry will elevate the could implement immediately to address MMIW: re- discussion here. storing tribal jurisdiction to handle cases at the local, In fact, Congress could begin to address the tribal level; allocating resources MMIW crisis in the U.S. by acting on currently pro- for victim services; improving posed legislation. For instance, the Senate could re- access to federal criminal data- authorize the Violence Against Women Act by passing bases; establishing consultation Congress seems poised to do a bill that incorporates tribal provisions — provisions protocols with tribes to respond to that would restore jurisdiction stolen by the Supreme MMIW cases; and improving data something, but advocates Court in its 1978 decision Oliphant v. Suquamish. In collection. “If tribes have the re- worry that this “something” that decision, the court declared that tribal nations sources and authority to respond could not prosecute non-Indians who perpetrate to these crimes before they esca- may not address the actual crimes against Native women and children on tribal late in seriousness and lethality, roots of the crisis, particularly lands, even though, according to the Department at least some, if not many, poten- of Justice, a majority of violent crimes committed tial MMIW cases would have a when it comes to the theft of against Natives are committed by non-Indians. meaningful intervention prior to tribal jurisdiction over non- “The border line between Canada and the United fatal escalation,” the center testi- States is relatively recent in origin — the stories of fied before the House Subcommit- Indians. our relatives in the United States are very similar to tee on Indigenous Peoples of the the stories of First Nations women in Canada,” says United States in March. Sarah Deer, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen and The uptick in legislative activ- University of Kansas professor. ity is due in no small part to the According to Reclaiming Power and Place, visibility that Native women have gained with the Mary Kathryn Canada is largely responsible for the high levels of introduction of the first two Indigenous women mem- Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the violence against its Indigenous citizens. The report bers of Congress: Deb Haaland, D-N.M., and Sharice Cherokee Nation goes so far as to identify individual state actions, Davids, D-Kan. “The Canadian apology and declara- and a partner at laws and policies that have directly contributed: tion is a significant step to make this crisis visible Pipestem Law P.C., a “This genocide has been empowered by colonial and points to a severe failure on the government’s law firm dedicated structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the part to ensure the safety and wellbeing of Native to the preservation Sixties Scoop, residential schools, and breaches of people. Now, we’ll have more momentum to address and restoration of human and Inuit, Métis and First Nations rights.” missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic tribal sovereignty The colonial structures identified in Canada’s on a larger scale,” said Congresswoman Haaland. and protection of National Inquiry have parallels here in the United “The epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous Native people. States, from the Supreme Court’s decision in Oliph- women has been a silent crisis for far too long. Now ant to the boarding schools created by the U.S. War that Indigenous communities are finding their voice WEB EXTRA Department. The MMIW crisis is well-documented through advocacy, we’re raising this issue so that our Read more here thanks to advocates like the Urban Indian mothers, daughters, and sisters stop disappearing from all our Health Institute, which recently conducted re- without a trace.” commentators at search across 71 urban areas and cities. It came to a Without a doubt, Canada’s National Inquiry hcn.org disturbing conclusion: A majority of urban area law brings us one step closer to replacing silence with enforcement agencies simply do not keep data or actual solutions. The first test will be whether the We welcome records to indicate if and when a Native woman is Senate re-authorizes a Violence Against Women Act your feedback. murdered or missing on tribal lands. with tribal provisions that restore tribal jurisdiction. Send letters to “Canada’s MMIW report confirms many of the But until we restore the right of tribal nations to [email protected] issues that we outlined in our report, including how protect their citizens, MMIW will remain a crisis.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 PERSPECTIVE The Columbia River Treaty, six decades later On Memorial Day 1948, as Oregonians traveled home from holidays on the coast and the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia River breached a dike at Vanport, an industrial suburb north of Portland. Swollen by abnormally deep snowfall, rapid melting and region-wide rainstorms, the river submerged the town, displacing some 18,000 residents (one-third of them African American), killing at least 51 and dam- aging property valued at more than $100 million. In addition to those immediate, devastating ef- RECKONING fects, the Vanport Flood also catalyzed changes in WITH HISTORY international relations in the Columbia River Basin BY ADAM M. — an area roughly the size of France — hastening plans to build three flood-control dams in Canada Adding ecosystem function as a pillar of the Columbia River Treaty during SOWARDS renegotiations could help address the environmental harm wrought by and authorizing another in the United States. Those Grand Coulee Dam and other dams. DANITA DELIMONT / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO projects were codified in the Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada, in 1961. The treaty emerged from the belief that the eco- Now, with parts of the treaty due to expire in five nomic and social benefits of dam-building outweighed years, the two countries are renegotiating it. But the any ecological and cultural losses, regardless of the political landscape has vastly changed since 1961. harm produced. But now, societal values around ac- The original treaty was implemented before the ceptable tradeoffs have begun to transform. 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, the 1973 The U.S. and Canada excluded Indigenous peoples Endangered Species Act and a host of legal shifts from the negotiating table the first time around. Since that bolstered Indigenous rights in both countries, then, tribal nations have organized politically and de- including 1974’s Boldt Decision, which affirmed veloped crucial organizations within the basin, includ- Pacific Northwest tribal nations’ right to co-manage ing the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission salmon. These historic changes emphasize the need and the Upper Columbia United Tribes. Dozens of to include environmental protection and equity in an tribal nations are influencing the renegotiations — updated treaty. attending meetings, publishing position papers and Over its 1,243-mile course to the Pacific Ocean, remaining present. Sort of. Despite asking for tribes’ the Columbia River squeezes through several nar- input and their central role as co-managers of the row spots, ideal for hydropower generation. In 1927, region’s fisheries, American negotiators have excluded Congress directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers them from any official status, while Canadians have to survey American river basins and create plans extended official observer status to only three First to fully exploit their power potential via dams that Nations. These sovereign Indigenous nations bring to would also offer navigation, irrigation and flood- today’s negotiations a deeper history with the river control benefits. The Corps’ Columbia River and Its than either of the nations renegotiating the treaty, Minor Tributaries, published following the directive, and they express that history through distinct values forecast a future river full of dams, capturing energy and goals. For instance, they are exploring ways to and transmitting it through wires to light homes and restore fish runs above the dams, proof that greater power industries throughout the Northwest. involvement produces better ideas and results. The first dam across the Columbia River, com- Environmental values and laws have also been WHY BUILD WHAT pleted in 1933, was a small, private one, a puny revolutionized since the original treaty was signed. Dyneema content more preview of what would soon transform the basin: Today, for example, federal laws make it much harder than doubles the fabric’s behemoths like Bonneville Dam in 1938 and Grand to build a dam or highway that eradicates a species WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic cotton is Texas-grown Coulee Dam in 1942. But there were problems: Lack- or excludes stakeholders. And fewer Americans or ing fish ladders, Grand Coulee prevented salmon and Canadians would dismiss social or ecological costs steelhead from migrating hundreds of miles up the as easily as they did two generations ago. Conse- To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large quently, in 2013, the treaty’s managing U.S. entity, the Columbia and its tributaries, including into British the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets Columbia. It also flooded 21,000 acres of the Colville Bonneville Power Administration, recommended add- hold small tools and Indian Reservation. The effects of this inundation ing ecosystem functioning as a third treaty purpose, The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones were multifold and tragic, according to former Tribal alongside flood control and hydropower. But Sen. Jim Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a Judge Mary L. Pearson. The Bureau of Reclamation Risch, R-Idaho — chair of the Senate’s Foreign Rela- Adam M. Sowards fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger waited too long to relocate more than a thousand tions Committee, through which any treaty must pass Double-fabric knees is an environmental than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, accommodate knee pads, graves, and many of them were flooded. Compound- before ratification — insists that the concern for eco- historian, professor and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings ing this cultural tragedy, the reservoir ruined system function could jeopardize Idaho’s sovereignty and writer. He that allow easy cleanout important hunting, farming and gathering spots. It over its water and will not support that measure. Still, lives in Pullman, nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years was a multi-pronged attack against Native nations’ widespread public concern about salmon and climate Washington. of demanding work. WEB EXTRA sovereignty and cultural foundations. change may not be easy to ignore in the 21st century.  @AdamMSowards Dyed with natural indigo Read more Then, the 1948 Vanport disaster accelerated When the Army Corps produced its plan for the Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out fl oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log grown in Tennessee, from all our regional and international discussions on how to basin and the negotiators first signed the treaty, “Reckoning with & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- commentators at control unruly rivers, spurring the signing of the Co- floods and lightbulbs were the issue, not fish and History” is an derived synthetic dyes ongoing series that hcn.org tribal sovereignty. Those blueprints were shot lumbia River Treaty, which went into effect in 1964. seeks to understand It specified that Canada’s new dams would hold through with oversights. More people involved today the legacies of We welcome back 15.5 million acre-feet of water. In exchange, the will complicate diplomacy, and changing values will the past and to your feedback. United States paid just shy of $65 million, secured challenge the management of this massively complex put the West’s Men’s Send letters to flood control and received a share of the hydropower river system. Yet for the sake of communities and present moment in Steel Forge [email protected] generated north of the border. places, nothing else will suffice. perspective. 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26 High Country News July 22, 2019

PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM WHY BUILD WHAT Dyneema content more than doubles the fabric’s WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic cotton is Texas-grown

To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets hold small tools and The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger Double-fabric knees than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, accommodate knee pads, and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years that allow easy cleanout of demanding work.

Dyed with natural indigo Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out ﬂ oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log grown in Tennessee, & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- derived synthetic dyes

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www.hcn.org High Country News 27

PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

THE WEST our review.) In an interview with the Sometimes it pays bigly to go bankrupt, university’s Montana magazine, Land especially if you’re the boss. Cloud Peak said many readers have told her Energy, the coal behemoth that owns that her book made them think, with three mines in Montana and Wyoming, some adding that it spurred them declared bankruptcy May 10, but that to tip at hotels or learn “the name of didn’t stop its board from giving CEO the woman who cleans my office at Colin Marshall a “retention bonus” of work.” Land hopes Maid gives people $1.15 million earlier this year. Other some empathy for the unseen people top executives fared well, too, receiv- whose hard work makes the lives of ing bonuses that, in total, “could exceed others easier: “Take the time to really $16 million” for the year. This generous look at people,” she suggests. For payout to the people who helped drive the author, the book’s success means the company off a financial cliff “comes that these days, she can afford a new on top of a whopping $78 million that vehicle to travel the West “without Cloud Peak’s top brass took home be- fearing her car would fall apart.” tween 2010 and 2017,” reports Sightline Institute. Over the years, according to MONTANA EcoWatch, the giant coal company has Missoula, home of the University of also bankrolled a network of groups Montana, is going its own way when that deny global climate disruption, it comes to shedding fossil fuels. Driv- including the Washington, D.C.-based WYOMING A classic from the “hayday” of automobiles. GREG KRUSH en by “moral imperative and public Institute of Energy Research, which demand,” the Missoula Current dismisses renewable energy as a waste reports, the county joined the city of resources and stubbornly insists that WASHINGTON in adopting a resolution to achieve there’s no scientific consensus about our warm- Kitsap County Public Works officials warned locals 100% renewable electricity by 2030. That makes ing climate. Cloud Peak-funded groups have to “hang up” on any calls appearing to be from the the county and city the first in the state to buck also aggressively attacked the Sierra Club as Silverdale Chamber of Commerce after a prank- the Montana Legislature, which is moving in “dangerous radicals” while backing organizations ster “spoofed” the chamber’s phone number, the the opposite direction by trying to find a way to that want to deregulate mining and sell off our Seattle Times reports. Someone claiming to be a prop up coal. They join 110 cities that have also public lands for energy development. Unfortu- public-works employee alarmed residents with pledged to find green alternatives to fossil fuels. nately, not everyone associated with the corpora- oddball warnings, telling people that their street For their part, Montana’s Republican-dominated tion will get rich by its bankruptcy; the many name was changing to “Cannabis Way,” or that a Legislature and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock Montana and Wyoming companies that supplied cell tower was going up at the end of their drive- “have done little to address climate change.” the mines will probably get pennies on the dollar. way. One robo-message sounded quasi-believable: Other losers include the company’s rank-and-file “We’re going to be digging a 60-foot hole in your WYOMING employees: Last fall, Cloud Peak “terminated its yard on Monday. There was money left in a budget A while back, the Gillette News Record recounted retiree health plan to save some money.” and someone needed to learn how to dig a hole.” the story of a shoplifter who liked a store, or at least its merchandise, so much that he wanted THE WEST MONTANA to work there. On his first trip to the Sports- April was indeed a cruel month for coal: That After Stephanie Land enrolled in the University man’s Warehouse in Gillette, the man allegedly month, a combination of hydro, wind, solar and of Montana’s Creative Writing Program, she pocketed some ammunition and sunglasses. A geothermal energy generated more electricity asked director Judy Blunt if a writing career few hours later he was back, only this time he than coal-fired power plants. And according to really made sense. Blunt’s blunt advice: Think of “asked to fill out a job application.” Police say the Energy Information Administration, renew- writing as “the same as refinishing a floor.” Land he followed that up by snagging two more items ables might continue to trump coal. The Institute appreciated that workmanlike approach. She’d without paying for them. A sales job is probably for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis already faced hard times, she said: Being broke, not in his future — unless, of course, companies reported that in 2018, natural gas supplanted pregnant and without any work except the low- with the high standards of, say, Cloud Peak coal as the country’s top power provider. Natural paying jobs that she cobbled together. That expe- Energy are hiring. gas provided 35% last year while coal’s share rience taught her firsthand about life at the bot- dropped to 27%. Maybe the times they are a- tom of the economic ladder, a place where many WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see changin’ after all. people say they feel invisible. Happily, Land’s hcn.org. memoir about her experience, Maid: Hard Work, Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, hit the often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag jackpot, becoming a bestseller. (See hcn.org for photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

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High Country News covers the important issues and stories H igh that are unique to the American West with a magazine and a Country website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write News High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or For people who care about the West. [email protected], or call 970-527-4898. 28 High Country News July 22, 2019