A Land Divided Can a Groundbreaking Settlement ﬁx a Century of Bad Policy in Indian Country? April 4, 2016 | $5 | Vol

‘GRAND’ DEVELOPMENTS | AG TECH FOR ALL? | A SPACE FOR BISON

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A Land Divided Can a groundbreaking settlement ﬁx a century of bad policy in Indian Country? April 4, 2016 | $5 | Vol. 48 No. 6 | www.hcn.org 48 No. | $5 Vol. April 4, 2016

By Sierra Crane- Murdoch CONTENTS

Editor’s note A quiet revolution

Forty-five years ago, John Echohawk, a Pawnee who grew up in New Mexico among Navajos, Hopis, Utes, Apaches, Latinos and Anglos, got in on the ground floor of a revolution. While attending the University of New Mexico, he was encouraged to enter a new program focused on training Indian lawyers. It was a novel idea in the late 1960s; although the civil rights movement had elevated awareness of the struggles of Natives, “there were only a dozen lawyers” practicing Indian law, recalls Echohawk, who joined the board of High Country News in February. “Today there are over 2,500.” Fifteen of them work with the Native American Rights Fund, based in Boulder, Colorado, a nonprofit Echohawk has directed since 1977. The blossoming of Indian law has had an enormous impact, he says. It’s brought forgotten tribes federal recognition, protected Native rights to hunting and fishing grounds, and secured tribes’ ability to establish gambling casinos, Edward Afer Bufalo Jr., right, plays with his which have become major economic engines. cousin, Jef Skunk Cap, on his family’s land on the But success in the courtroom has also been met Blackfeet Reservation of northern Montana. with resistance. As the NARF website states, “an TERRAY SYLVESTER increasingly conservative federal bench has made FEATURE Indian rights cases more difficult to win. Combined with the huge cost of litigation, this means NARF and 12 A Land Divided its Indian clients are always attuned to opportunities Can a groundbreaking settlement fix a century of bad policy for negotiation, consensus and settlement.” On the cover in Indian Country? By Sierra Crane-Murdoch Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet tribal treasurer, surely had all this in mind when she brought a lawsuit in Ranchland on the Blackfeet Reservation CURRENTS 1996 on behalf of 450,000 plaintiffs against the of northern Montana. federal government for mishandling Indian Trust Originally a 320-acre 5 State of the Grand Development proposals look to cash in accounts, which hold funds earned from leasing lands parcel allotted to a on the Grand Canyon’s growing popularity owned by tribal members. Though Cobell’s lawyers single forebear, it now 6 Future (tech-savvy) farmers of America In the fields south of initially estimated the government had mislaid up has 131 shareholders. to $170 billion since the late 1800s, she and her co- TERRAY SYLVESTER Silicon Valley, young Latinos tackle agriculture’s most pressing challenges 7 plaintiffs ultimately accepted a $3.4 billion settlement The Latest: Arch Coal puts mine plan on hold in 2011, shortly before her death. 8 Herds around the West Can small herds of wild bison help trigger Each plaintiff received a small payment, but most a large-scale recovery for the species? of the settlement is earmarked for consolidating land 8 The Latest: Delisting the Yellowstone grizzly owned by individual Indians under tribal ownership. As writer Sierra Crane-Murdoch reports in our cover DEPARTMENTS story, it’s an attempt to remedy a messy and destructive federal policy that divides land allotted to families at the 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG turn of the 19th century among more and more family Complete access 4 LETTERS members with each passing generation. But the fix isn’t to subscriber-only getting very far — many tribal members don’t want to content 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends sell, and the land “fractionation” policy remains in place. HCN’s website 20 MARKETPLACE The settlement, in the end, is “little more than a Band- hcn.org Aid on a gaping wound,” writes Crane-Murdoch. 24 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Digital edition The surgical operation needed to finally close it hcne.ws/digi-4806 How to develop clean energy on tribal land may be years away. But when it happens you can be Tablet and mobile apps By Jade Begay sure that the robust Indian law community, plugging away lawsuit by lawsuit, will be a critical factor in hcne.ws/HCNmobile-app 26 BOOKS fixing this misguided policy and empowering the Half an Inch of Water: Stories by Percival Everett. people who have suffered because of it. Reviewed by Eric Sandstrom As a colleague of Cobell tells Crane-Murdoch: Follow us The Animals: A Novel by Christian Kiefer. Reviewed by Annie Dawid “(Elouise) used to tell me, ‘Winning money wasn’t the thing. Indians winning a case against the federal 27 ESSAY By Julie Gillum Lue Risk, goats and kids in the mountains government — that’s the point of the whole thing.’ ” @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher 2 High Country News April 4, 2016 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG

Trending Crime’s punishment out West BLM patrol cuts Last year, congressional representatives from both sides of the aisle introduced In February, HCN federal prison reform bills. But it’s state covered the Bureau of lawmakers who hold the real key to lowering Land Management’s incarceration rates, since most Americans three-decade struggle behind bars are housed in state and to adequately enforce county facilities. Many Western states have the law on federal enacted criminal justice reforms in order lands. In March, to cut costs and comply with court orders. Utah House Rep. For example, beginning in 2012, California Jason Chaffetz, shed tens of thousands of inmates from along with other its state prison facilities. The release came Utah representatives, after a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling introduced a bill that found that conditions inside the state’s would abolish the prisons — which were overcrowded and U.S. Forest Service’s lacked adequate medical and mental health and BLM’s law care — violated the Eighth Amendment’s enforcement agencies ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Last and pay local police year, Utah lawmakers passed a measure to patrol federal lands aimed at reducing the number of offenders instead. who return to prison for minor parole and MARSHALL probation violations. Alaska, Montana, SWEARINGEN New inmate housing at the Madera County Jail in Madera, California, completed in 2013 as part of Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada have reform Gov. Jerry Brown’s prison realignment plan, which sent some inmates to county lockup instead of efforts underway as well. SARAH TORY You say state prison. RICH PEDRONCELLI /AP PHOTO MORE: hcne.ws/crime-reform-west BRUCE WILSON: “This is how it was done in the early years of Clean energy rising Colorado doubled its rate of wind power my career. The locals generation. Even coal strongholds like Montana could not meet the minimum number of ALEC- Despite the Clean Power Plan’s uncertain legal and Wyoming saw notable expansion of state needs of federal law inspired 77 bills undermining environmental future thanks to a Supreme Court stay, one thing wind operations. Experts say those numbers, enforcement.” laws that were introduced in state is clear: Renewables are on the rise, even in the coupled with state trade networks for emissions HUCK FERRILL: legislatures in 2013 Western states contesting the plan’s legality. credits and renewables’ increasing cost- “Probably a very In the last five years for which data is available, competitiveness, could make even the plan’s most good idea. Local Arizona saw its commercial solar production daunting emissions goals attainable. BRYCE GRAY law enforcement 17number of those that became law increase two-hundred-fold. In the same period, MORE: hcne.ws/CPPwest will connect much 15 better with their local The American Legislative Exchange Council, Renewable energy as percentage of constituency.” the conservative policy group funded by state total generation, and source Colorado 96.7% corporations like Koch Industries and * Figures are for 2014 and reflect commercial MATT WEINRICH: “This happened with the coal giant Peabody Energy, creates model 12 sources greater than 1 MW of Predominant Percentage legislation for lawmakers to pick up. The generating capacity renewables source of renewables Oregon Department effectiveness of its “unified front” strategy generated by it of Fish and Wildlife. of presenting a coordinated conservative It is really hard to get push has caught progressive groups’ 9 Wyoming a sheriff down to a attention. They aren’t necessarily writing 100% remote area when a cookie-cutter bills, but they have created a department employee Montana finds someone fishing centralized state-level network, called the 6 State Innovation Exchange (SiX), which has a without a license.” sample legislation library. Other groups have 100% MORE: hcne.ws/BLM- started small-scale efforts to distribute model Arizona enforcement 3 87% policies, including a push to get Colorado and Facebook.com/ citizens to take similar anti-fracking policies highcountrynews LYNDSEY GILPIN (percentage generation of stateRenewable total) Utah to their local legislators. 99.7% MORE: hcne.ws/be-likeALEC

0 ADMINISTRATION ENERGY INFORMATION U.S. SOURCE: 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Photos “My hunch is he gets more Death Valley blooms attention to his cause and Death Valley, California, is usually one of the hottest, driest spots in the West, gets more robust backing but this year, El Niño weather patterns created more rainfall and perfect if he goes for the jugular.” conditions for a phenomenon known —Sarah Binder, political science professor at as the “super bloom.” Over 20 species George Washington University, commenting of wildflowers bloomed in enormous on Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s holding of a numbers and carpeted the valley floor. bipartisan bill that would help Flint, The last time the valley saw so much Michigan, and other communities with color was in 2005. drinking water emergencies DESDEMONA DALLAS ELIZABETH SHOGREN MORE: hcne.ws/CAsuperbloom MORE: hcne.ws/UTblocks-flint DESDEMONA DALLAS 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 WE THE PEOPLE, AND PUBLIC LANDS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer I appreciate Hal Herring’s candid MANAGING EDITOR description of his personal longing for Brian Calvert freedom and his disappointment in the SENIOR EDITORS low intellectual content of the Malheur Jodi Peterson Jonathan Thompson National Wildlife Refuge occupi- ART DIRECTOR ers’ motivations (“Making Sense of Cindy Wehling Malheur,” HCN, 3/21/16). Half a lifetime ONLINE EDITOR ago, I would have had more sympathy Tay Wiles with the malcontents. Even now, I think ASSISTANT EDITOR Kate Schimel that while the Hammonds abused their D.C. CORRESPONDENT too-generous access privileges to public Elizabeth Shogren grazing land, their jail sentences (under WRITERS ON THE RANGE EDITOR Betsy Marston a mandatory minimum law enacted ASSOCIATE DESIGNER by a Republican-dominated Congress)

Brooke Warren were draconian. And like most of us, LAKE TRIBUNE VIA CAGLECARTOONS. COM

COPY EDITOR I’d like to see a few changes in the way ALT Diane Sylvain our country is run myself. But at my CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cally Carswell current age, I understand that while too Sarah Gilman little liberty is tyranny, too much liberty Glenn Nelson would result in a war of each against all, S BAGLEY/THE Michelle Nijhuis AT P CORRESPONDENTS with the tyranny of the strongest the Ben Goldfarb result. I’ll take the rule of law, thanks. Krista Langlois Sarah Tory As co-owner of our federal public TRAILING AWAY NO NEED FOR NEW PARKS Joshua Zaffos lands, I have every right to a say in The Oregon Trail was my introduction to I lived in the Los Alamos area for over EDITORIAL FELLOW how they are managed, and I say no the West (“Oregon’s Trail Through Time,” 26 years, and I am very dismayed and Paige Blankenbuehler grandiose self-appointed patriot is INTERNS HCN, 3/7/16). In 1975, I embarked on an saddened to see what has become of the allowed to seize them for the exclusive Lyndsey Gilpin auto trip along as much of the trail as beloved Valle Grande (“A park ‘in the Bryce Gray use of crooked welfare ranchers like the I could manage, using the late Gregory raw’,” HCN, 3/7/16), now Valles Caldera ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Hammonds. Am I not the people? Alexis Halbert Franzwa’s The Oregon Trail Revisited National Preserve. It was always so DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Karl Anderson as my guide, along with a huge roll of special to know that there was at least Alyssa Pinkerton Santa Fe, New Mexico county road maps at one-half-inch-to- one place where tourists could not go. DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT Christine List the-mile scale, with the route of the trail My former husband and I ran our sled SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETER WORLDS APART painstakingly inscribed by hand. At dogs up in the Jemez Mountains for JoAnn Kalenak the time, I was a 30-year-old teacher of years. Then, in the middle ’80s, Fenton Hal Herring writes thoughtfully and WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel American history who’d never been west Hill became crowded with cross-country deeply about a misled and misdirected DATABASE/IT ADMINISTRATOR of Kansas City, except for an airplane skiers from Albuquerque, and the day Alan Wells tragedy of ignorance (“Making Sense ride to L.A., and retracing the ruts of a creep hit one of my dogs with a ski COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT of Malheur”). His frustration at the the Oregon Trail was truly an epiphany pole, we started driving farther and Gretchen King lack of discussions of substance is what FINANCE MANAGER as teacher, citizen and — not least — as discovered U.S. Hill south of Taos, where so many of us experience when trying Beckie Avera a thoughtful human. Over the next few the native Hispanos treated us much ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE to have a meaningful give-and-take years, and the course of not just one, but better. Turning over this beautiful area Jan Hofman dialogue with people who care not about three treks along the trail, I took copi- to the National Park Service makes no CIRCULATION MANAGER any history other than that they’ve Tammy York ous notes and hundreds of photographs, sense. The Park Service is always short constructed in their own mind, and who CIRCULATION SYSTEMS ADMIN. some of which were inflicted on my of funding, and our park system is in Kathy Martinez then create their world under a banner American history students over succeed- shambles. Congress needs to provide a CIRCULATION of what they think they hate. ing years. The story of the trail was not lot more funding, and the Park Service Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, And he expresses the fears that those Stephanie Kyle always pretty, or even admirable, but on needs to catch up on maintenance of of us who love the land, have spent years ADVERTISING DIRECTOR the whole, I think the trail records an the established parks before it goes David J. Anderson outdoors on the priceless treasures of our epic tale of thousands of people willing making new ones. It breaks my heart ADVERTISING SALES public lands, and know would be the out- REPRESENTATIVE to press against boundaries, whether to know that there will be people in the come of that sell-off. Land barons from Bob Wedemeyer political, financial, practical or cultural. once-unspoiled backcountry of the Valle the earliest times of Manifest Destiny GRANTWRITER Every year, the remaining traces Grande. Janet Reasoner have exhausted it for what they want, are threatened by corporations and [email protected] and then left it behind, torn, wrecked, Penelope M. Blair individuals with no knowledge of, or [email protected] dredged, eaten down to the dirt. Moab, Utah [email protected] interest in, the trail’s historic role in I look forward to reading more of [email protected] the development of the West. Amid the [email protected] Herring’s writing in the future, as he multiple and competing demands upon FOUNDER Tom Bell joins Jon Krakauer and others among the trail corridor, I hope we won’t forget BOARD OF DIRECTORS my favored authors writing about the John Belkin, Colo. that there will never be more of the trail real issues and people of the West. Beth Conover, Colo. remaining than there is at this moment; Jay Dean, Calif. John Echohawk, Colo. Astrid Olafsen there will only be less. Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Tempe, Arizona Wayne Hare, Colo. Ray Schoch Laura Helmuth, Md. Minneapolis, Minnesota John Heyneman, Wyo. Samaria Jafe, Calif. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. High Country News is a nonproft 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Dan Stonington, Wash. recycled paper. Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post ofﬁces. Luis Torres, N.M. Country issues that defne the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News April 4, 2016 CURRENTS State of the Grand Development proposals look to cash in on the park’s growing popularity

BY KRISTA LANGLOIS

n 1903, Theodore Roosevelt stood on the I South Rim of the Grand Canyon, infi- nite layers of sunset-colored rock unfold- ing into the earth behind him. “I hope,” he later said, “you will not have a building of any kind … to mar the wonderful gran- deur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it.” Two years later, a new hotel went up where Roosevelt had stood. In 1919, the Colorado River the most endangered river incorporation until the 2010 election. Then, Traffic backed up at area became a national park, and train- in the country. Today, the outlook is rosier: amid allegations of voter fraud, Tusayan the south entrance loads of visitors began clamoring to see it. A 2015 election ousted Escalade’s most became a town — albeit one divided over to Grand Canyon Since then, the Grand Canyon has been powerful supporter, former Navajo Nation its future. Stilo stacked the new town coun- National Park, caught between competing visions: One President Ben Shelly, and replaced him cil with members who were later revealed where waits can be 30 minutes or more, that subscribes to the spirit of Roosevelt’s with underdog Russell Begaye, who has to have accepted thousands of dollars and and parking lots can words and another that seeks to accommo- shelved the project. traveled to Italy on Stilo’s dime. fill up by 10 a.m. A date an ever-growing number of tourists. In early March, Kaibab National Forest But environmentalists, river run- major development Over the past century, proponents Supervisor Heather Provencio rejected ners, nearby communities, and the Hopi, project proposed for of the latter have had considerable suc- the road expansions necessary to build Havasupai and other tribes remained Tusayan, seven miles cess. Though some proposals were aban- five-star hotels, a spa, dude ranch, “retail opposed, submitting tens of thousands of south, was recently doned, including an 18-story hotel that village” and 2,100 houses in Tusayan, a comments that helped sway Provencio’s turned down, would have been built into the canyon desert town now home to 500 people and decision. Of particular concern was water: with insufficient wall and dams that would have flooded a few modest hotels, company housing and The developers didn’t explain how they’d infrastructure cited its floor, hundreds of others went forward. helicopter tour companies. The proposal, supply it to thousands of new guests and as one of the causes. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Roads, hotels and parking lots now spider- Provencio explained, “is deeply contro- residents. The obvious solution was drill- web the surrounding lands. In 2007, the versial, is opposed by local and national ing for groundwater, which could dry Hualapai Tribe built a glass platform over communities, would stress local and Park up some of the Grand Canyon’s natural the canyon’s edge that visitors can pay infrastructure, and have untold impacts to springs, like Havasu Canyon’s sacred blue $75 to walk on. Or they can spend $300 to the surrounding Tribal and National Park waters. helicopter over the chasm. lands.” “I’m incredibly happy right now,” says Still, the thirst to cash in on the can- Tusayan town manager Eric Duthie Kevin Dahl, senior Arizona program man- yon’s popularity remains unquenched. If says the decision “absolutely surprised” ager for the National Parks Conservation anything, it’s grown, as 5.5 million visi- him and deprives local workers who live Association. “But there’s a part of me that tors a year have bestowed on the Grand in company housing of the opportunity to worries that about the next big campaign. Canyon the dubious honor of being the own their own homes. Tusayan (working We thought we stopped (Tusayan) once, nation’s second-most popular park (after in partnership with Italian investment by a vote of the people, and it came back. Great Smoky Mountains). And though firm Gruppo Stilo) is still considering its I have to admit that it might come back the park is protected, two of the biggest next move. again.” potential projects fall beyond its jurisdic- If Stilo’s past record is any indication, Indeed, Tusayan could submit a new tion: a private development known as the though, this isn’t the end. Starting in the proposal, should it address park and tribal Grand Canyon Escalade, which would 1990s, the company bought up 75 percent concerns. So, too, might Escalade: A recent bring restaurants, shops and a gondola to of the private property around Tusayan. Navajo Times editorial claims legislation the confluence of the Colorado and Little County residents voted down its develop- to override Begaye and push the devel- Colorado rivers, on Navajo land, and a ment plans, but Stilo sidestepped them opment through is slated for the tribal plan to turn the scrappy gateway commu- after Arizona passed a 2003 law enabling council’s spring session. And even envi- nity of Tusayan, near the South Rim, into Tusayan to become an incorporated town. ronmentalists who oppose both projects a luxury village. Knowing that local officials could trump agree that with annual park visitation Just over a year ago, the looming the county’s objections, Stilo and its affili- expected to double to 10 million by mid- possibility of these projects caused the ates poured money into an incorporation century, more beds and infrastructure are nonprofit American Rivers to deem the campaign. They even launched a weekly needed. The challenge will be to figure out newspaper that ran front-page editorials how to provide them without sacrificing Correspondent Krista Langlois lives in Durango, promoting it. the natural resources that make the can- Colorado. @cestmoiLanglois Still, Tusayan voters rejected yon so grand.

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Jacob Martinez, founder of Digital NEST, talks with volunteer instructors Juan Morales, Stephanie Barraza and Ximena Ireta, as they plan for an upcoming workshop. GLEN MCDOWELL

outside of school or look for opportunities,” Magana says; her family owns a clunky computer and her school lacks adequate equipment. But at Digital NEST, she finds bright, open working spaces, comfy furni- ture, whiteboard, and brand new laptops she can borrow. It’s open all week, from noon to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, offering workshops and lectures on a variety of subjects, including Web development, videography, social media, and graphic design, to people aged 12 to 24. Watsonville, with its strip malls, school sports fields, farms and warehouses, has little to offer in the way of art or culture. Crime rates are high, particularly gang violence. Young people are starving for something productive to do. “There’s a lot of youth that never realized they have an opportunity here,” Magana says. Martinez designed Digital NEST to train local youth for careers that meld Future (tech-savvy) farmers their agricultural heritage with the high- tech modern world. Experts teach classes of America on coding and Web design, and Martinez connects students with entrepreneur net- In the fields south of Silicon Valley, young Latinos are learning works through speaker series and trips new skills to tackle agriculture’s most pressing challenges to Silicon Valley. Ideally, they’ll become eligible for higher-paying jobs with food BY LYNDSEY GILPIN and agriculture companies in their own community. Thirty-one percent of Watsonville’s he 90-mile drive south from Silicon Many of her classmates are grappling population is under the age of 18, in stark T Valley to Watsonville, California, runs with the same struggle. Here, where the contrast to the average American farmer, mostly through coastal forest and along unemployment rate is 9 percent and 20 who is 58. Food and agriculture companies Highway 1, with intermittent views of the percent of people live in poverty, career are in serious need of a younger, tech-savvy “It’s an Pacific Ocean. Then the road turns inland, decisions are complicated by a lack of workforce. At the same time, Watsonville, economic and the redwoods and briny air give way access to resources like wireless Internet, like other farm towns in the Central Coast to the aromatic strawberry fields of the computers and the wealth of informational and Valley, faces the challenge of climate justice issue. Pajaro Valley. and educational tools those technologies change and extensive drought. “They’re any You have a Though the two communities are geo- offer. Too many Watsonville young people farmers’ challenges,” Martinez says. “Lack graphically close, they feel very far apart. drop out of school, get stuck in low-paying of water in California, lack of labor work- huge demand Silicon Valley is an overcrowded center jobs, or leave town to find work elsewhere. force or issues with immigration, not being and need for of technological innovation, made up of Jacob Martinez hopes to change that able to attract a new young generation.” mostly white, affluent residents, with a pattern by connecting Watsonville’s farm- Some California farmers have switched technology median income of over $90,000. The quiet ing industry to Silicon Valley resources. to new crops or left agriculture altogether. talent, but this town of Watsonville is 81 percent Hispanic, The 38-year-old California native looks But others are turning to technological with a median income of $44,000, and is like a young entrepreneur, with his solutions, such as predictive analytics segment of culturally and economically defined by its ever-present laptop, thick rectangular software, sensors and robotics, to better the population strawberry crop. glasses and gray hoodie. A 12-year resi- understand weather patterns, irrigation Jennifer Magana and her older sister dent of Watsonville, he founded Digital techniques and soil health, and to reduce that’s not grew up watching their parents work the NEST, which stands for “Nurturing their costs and increase productivity. Food represented fields for major companies like Driscoll’s, Entrepreneurial Skills with Technology,” and agriculture technology startups are as they came home exhausted every in 2014 to cultivate technology career cen- now a $4.6 billion industry, and huge cor- at all.” night, only to get up and do it again the ters in California’s most vulnerable com- porations like Google and Monsanto are Jacob Martinez, next morning. Magana, now a high school munities. “It’s an economic justice issue,” investing heavily in farming data proj- Digital NEST founder and senior, has no desire to labor in the fields. Martinez says. “You have a huge demand ects. Companies are tackling everything executive director But she also doesn’t want to leave her and need for technology talent, but this from reducing food waste to building family, friends and the culture she adores. segment of the population that’s not rep- underground farms to creating lab-grown “I want to stay here and work here in my resented at all.” meatless meat. Farming operations need community,” she says. Digital NEST gives people like Magana system analysts, robotics and automation a chance to ask questions, gain new skills technicians, and GPS and GIS operators. Lyndsey Gilpin is an HCN editorial intern. and learn about her post-graduation The U.S. Department of Agriculture @lyndseygilpin options. “It’s awful for me to try to do work reports that nearly 60,000 high-skilled

6 High Country News April 4, 2016 jobs open annually in the food, agricul- accountant. They were one of the few talented people, and that would be the ture, and environment fields, with almost families of color in their affluent neigh- best for them,” says Jess Brown, director a third of those requiring science, tech- borhood. When Martinez graduated high of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau. nology, math or engineering skills. The school, he went to San Francisco to study “People weren’t getting the education nation’s yearly 35,000 college graduates environmental science and technology. He that was needed to move into agriculture, with degrees in agriculture-related fields bounced around colleges in the Bay Area, because it has changed so much.” can’t keep up with the demand. And yet, but felt isolated in advanced science and After two years, in February 2016, the movement to improve computer sci- math courses, as one of the few minority Digital NEST moved into a 4,500-square- ence education tends to focus on urban students. foot building in downtown Watsonville. It centers like San Francisco and New York In his mid-20s, Martinez earned an buzzes with energy: Members experiment City. Very few programs reach out to rural ecology and evolutionary biology degree with cameras, tap away on keyboards, populations like Watsonville, widening from UC Santa Cruz. He was engaged and bounce from meeting to meeting, and col- the gap between places that desperately in debt, but he wanted to pursue teach- laborate on projects. Up to 50 kids swing need a new industry’s economic boost, and ing science and technology to members of through each day. The program, which ECOFLIGHT the people who reap the rewards of such a underrepresented communities. In 2006, is funded mostly by foundation grants, tech boom. he became a project coordinator for ETR is doing so well that Martinez plans to THE LATEST “Forty kids in San Francisco — noth- Associates, a Scotts Valley-based non- open a second branch in nearby Salinas in ing is going to change,” Martinez says. profit that provides educational resources January 2017. Backstory “But if I can get 40 kids in this community to schools. His project focused on encour- “Programs like this address the issue In 2009, Montana good paying jobs, you could see the eco- aging more Hispanic girls to study tech- of getting (youth) to work in Watsonville,” granted an 8,300-acre nomic benefit of that.” nology. ETR’s programs proved success- Brown says. “We can see that we need lease to Arch Coal ful, securing funding from the National more programs like what Martinez is for a proposed strip fter years of picking fruit, Magana’s Science Foundation. But Martinez, who offering young people.” mine along Otter father returned to college to get an eventually became project director, still Companies like Driscoll’s, meanwhile, Creek in the southeast A corner of the state. agronomy degree, and now he helps his saw a gaping hole in the system: Children are eager to work with tech leaders like The sprawling project daughter search for career possibilities lacked computers at home, and they Martinez. “Finding ways to increase the would have created in agriculture. “He’s proud of me for pur- worked with outdated machines at school. technical capacity and exposure in the the largest coal mine suing the thing he loves,” Magana says. “We weren’t fostering creativity,” he says. communities we work in will be important in the U.S., and built “Technology is still new to me, but now I “It was the complete opposite of the tech as we look to the future,” says Frances a swath of railroad have a place to go figure it out.” industry.” Dillard, Driscoll’s marketing director. “We through remote prairie Digital NEST’s goal isn’t to get So in 2013, he decided to build his have to be prepared to support these com- and ranch lands. But young people like Magana off the farms own hub for young people, something panies and have the workforce that can the 10-year lease and into the offices of Apple or Twitter. that would be modeled after modern tech keep it going.” prompted a strong Rather, it’s seeking to invest more money companies. When Martinez first opened Martinez likes to remind his students backlash, including a lawsuit from and resources into local economies like Digital NEST, the locals had doubts about that farmers were the original entrepre- environmentalists, Watsonville, and thereby lower dropout, his motives — perhaps it was merely a neurs — and that their families, who sell who invoked crime, and poverty rates. ploy to buy up precious cropland to build tamales out of truck beds or run landscap- the statement Martinez was drawn to Watsonville the next Amazon distribution center. He ing or housekeeping businesses, are trail- in Montana’s because he knows from experience the built trust by making himself accessible to blazers too. “I’d put them up against any Constitution that “a obstacles young Latinos face in pursuing the agriculture community. Every month, affluent community any day,” Martinez clean and healthful meaningful careers, particularly in sci- he met with farmers to better understand says. “They want to care for their com- environment” is an ence and technology. Born in Los Angeles, the issues they faced, and he launched a munity, want to support their family, they inalienable right Martinez spent part of his childhood in series of events to bring together agrono- have grit. They are true entrepreneurs: (“Clean and healthful environment,” HCN, Mexico City before his family moved to mists and technologists in the region. They don’t have a safety net to catch them 8/30/10). Dallas, where his father worked as an “Companies would love to have local, if their new endeavor fails.” Followup Although a Montana district court decision eventually struck down the environmental challenge, mine opponents can breathe a sigh of relief. Citing “further deterioration in coal markets,” Arch Coal — already in the throes of bankruptcy — announced on March 10 that it would suspend its Otter Creek application. The state had already highlighted multiple deficiencies in the application, including concerns over wildlife, hydrology and reclamation. BRYCE GRAY

Students use the free Wi-Fi in the lounge of Digital NEST in Watsonville, California, where many homes are without computers and Internet. GLEN MCDOWELL www.hcn.org High Country News 7 debunked now, but the stigma has spread far and wide,” says Steve Forrest, an ecolo- Herds around the West gist for Defenders of Wildlife. Assisted reproduction may help solve Can small herds of wild bison help trigger the problem. Jennifer Barfield of Colorado a large-scale recovery for the species? State University adapted techniques traditionally used for livestock, which BY JOSHUA ZAFFOS involve cleaning semen from bison from the Yellowstone bloodline in the lab, and NEAL HERBERT/NPS ast Nov. 1, about 400 spectators watched So while the reintroduction of 10 bison then using it to impregnate disease-free L in delight as 10 huge, shaggy bison in the Laramie Foothills may not sound females. She has also collected eggs from THE LATEST rumbled out of a holding corral onto 1,000 like that big a deal, genetically pure con- brucellosis-infected Yellowstone bison acres of windy shortgrass prairie, 30 miles servation herds like this one are a crucial destined for slaughter, cleaned them and Backstory north of Fort Collins, Colorado. The fenced step toward restoring wild bison to the fertilized them with clean sperm in the Back in 1993, grassland here is part of some 32,000 acres Western landscape. They could help calm lab. The embryos are then implanted in the Yellowstone of city and county natural areas stretching ranchers’ longstanding worries about dis- surrogate bison cows. Interagency Grizzly from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains ease, and over time new herds have the This is one way conservationists can Bear Study Team, to the Great Plains. Local managers plan potential to become self-sustaining popu- draw from the Yellowstone gene pool, a collaborative to gradually expand the herd’s range to lations that more closely resemble historic while ensuring that newborn calves don’t group charged with 2,500 acres as it grows through a combina- herds — if, that is, state and local manag- carry the disease, Barfield says. Already, overseeing the tion of natural reproduction and more rein- ers are willing to give them room to grow. biologists plan to use male calves from the threatened bear’s management, first troductions. The herd already has its own suggested taking Facebook page and, of course, a limited- it off the federal release commemorative microbrew, Prairie endangered species Thunder Imperial Brown Ale. list. The bear’s The release restores the bison to the numbers were on the merest sliver of the species’ vast historic rise, and Wyoming, range, and yet it represents a major con- Idaho and Montana servation success. These animals are were eager to take descended from the bison in Yellowstone over management. National Park, the only population to sur- But some biologists inside the group vive wholesale slaughter by settlers during questioned the bear’s the late 19th century, and the last major recovery, fueling reservoir of bison genes that have not been environmental polluted by cattle DNA from cross-breed- groups’ successful ing. Yet using them in restoration efforts push to keep federal outside the park has been difficult because protections (“Grizzly many Yellowstone bison carry brucellosis, war,” HCN, 11/9/98). a disease that can cause cattle to abort or prematurely give birth. The Laramie Followup Foothills herd, however, is brucellosis-free, Since then, the thanks to novel assisted-reproduction tech- U.S. Fish and nologies. That makes these bison an early Wildlife Service has repeatedly test case for efforts to expand the species’ but unsuccessfully gene pool outside Yellowstone. pushed to delist the Up to 60 million bison once wandered Greater Yellowstone the plains. The largest land mammal in Bison from the Laramie Foothills conservation herd on the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area population. In North America, the bison is now recog- are direct descendants of the Yellowstone National Park herd. A13, lef, was born as a result of February, the nized as a keystone species that helps artifcial insemination. BROOKE WARREN agency again maintain the ecology of grasslands. Their proposed delisting grazing habits influence the diversity of oday, Yellowstone is home to 4,900 bison. Laramie Foothills herd to build up other and transferring forbs and grasses, and their hooves help It’s the largest of four wild populations conservation populations, while minimiz- management to states. T Wyoming took the aerate the soil. Even their dirt wallows in North America, and contains 75 per- ing inbreeding in the local population. first step by releasing create seasonal habitat for birds and cent of the species’ genetic diversity. Every These steps are important because a draft plan in March affect how fire moves through grasslands. winter, state and federal officials round up it’s risky to have so much of the species’ that would maintain Today, there are an estimated 500,000 most bison that wander outside the park’s genetic material banked in one wild popu- roadless areas for scattered across the plains but nearly borders. Up to 900 are removed annually lation. An unexpected disease outbreak or habitat but generally all are managed as livestock, destined to through hunting or slaughter, largely to other catastrophic event in Yellowstone remove grizzlies from become buffalo burger. Fewer than 21,000 prevent the possible spread of brucellosis. could be a significant setback for the areas of potential are part of 62 “conservation herds” that They are either hazed back into the park, entire species. But for conservation herds human conflict; are managed for environmental purposes or quarantined and tested for brucellosis; to become viable populations on their own, eventually, it may with limited human intervention, and any infected animals are killed. scientists estimate they must grow to at also allow regulated hunting. Montana’s many of those have cattle genes. Even These heavy-handed tactics have come least 1,000 animals. And because a herd of plan was updated last fewer genetically pure animals are consid- under increasing attack in recent years. For that size probably needs at least 100,000 year; more specifics on ered truly free-roaming and “wild.” Many one thing, there have been no documented acres to roam, getting there will likely state management are scientists consider the species to be ecolog- cases of brucellosis transmission from bison entail letting them mingle with cattle and expected this year. ically extinct, meaning that its functional to cattle, and even though elk also have roam across jurisdictional boundaries. KATE SCHIMEL role in the landscape has been eliminated. been known to spread the disease, they For now, the only genetically pure aren’t as aggressively managed as bison. and brucellosis-free conservation herds Correspondent Joshua Zaffos writes from Fort “The (disease) myth has been pretty much Please see Bison, page 23 Collins, Colorado. @jzaffos

8 High Country News April 4, 2016 THE HCN COMMUNITY

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Since 1971, reader contributions to the Spencer Denison & Kara Horner | Edwards, CO Research Fund have made it possible for David & Sandra Doubleday | Fountain Hills, AZ HCN to investigate and report on important issues that are unique to the American Karl Flessa | Tucson, AZ West. Your tax-deductible gift directly funds Lewis & Patricia Fry | Carson City, NV thought-provoking, independent journalism. Jane & Norm Gagne | Albuquerque, NM Thank you for supporting our hardworking Thomas Gerstenberger | Denver, CO journalists. Gary Grief & Dorothy Wells | Taos, NM Bryan H. Hall | Englewood, CO Joan & Bruce Hamilton | Berkeley, CA Laura Holder-Mills, Holder Family Foundation | Elk, CA STEWARD Pamela & Gary Hopkins | Pagosa Springs, CO Blue Oak Foundation, Holly Myers & Kirk Neely Paul & Annie Hudnut | Loveland, CO Joel Hurd | West Linn, OR Maria’s Bookshop | Durango, CO Leon L. & Judith Jones | Ogden, UT Wayne R. & Jane A. Larsen | Loveland, CO SPONSOR Felix Magowan | Boulder, CO Anonymous (3) Jo Ann Moon | Grand Junction, CO In memory of Mollie Christensen Rue | Normandie Foundation |!Berkeley, CA Littleton, CO Devin Odell & Maria Fernandez-Gimenez | In memory of Arthur Smidinger | Fort Collins, CO Scarborough, NY Jamie & Florence Williams | Washington, DC Len Ackland | Boulder, CO A bicycle in Bliss, Idaho. JON HORVATH Dick & Gwen Adams | Grants Pass, OR GUARANTOR Steve & Ellen Adelson | Tulsa, OK GRASS/ROOTS, Photo exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, Anonymous (3) John & Margo Alden | Rancho Palos Verdes, CA Colorado. March 18 - April 28 Julene Bair | Santa Rosa, CA Robert G. Amundson | Portland, OR “Bliss”: The dictionary defines it as “perfect happiness; great joy.” But according to the atlas, Patti & Owen Baynham | Gilbert, AZ Karl Bernhard | Colorado Springs, CO it’s also a small town in the arid expanse of central Idaho’s Snake River Plain. John & Melissa Belkin | Crested Butte, CO Shayne Brady | Denver, CO It’s fitting, then, that Jon Horvath used that particular Bliss, an agricultural community John Buckley | Washington, DC Donna Buessing | Clayton, CA of 300 people, as the focal point of a photography project that aims to investigate “how Michael & Mary Campana | Corvallis, OR Charles & Shelley Calisher | Fort Collins, CO mythologies of the American West and mythologies of happiness intersect.” Jon Carroll | Oakland, CA Shelly Catterson | Black Hawk, CO Titled This is Bliss, photos from the resulting multimedia project will be featured as part Dave Catterson | Olympia, WA Stephanie Christensen | Missoula, MT of the Grass/Roots exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver from March 18 – April 28. Horvath’s images of Bliss will be presented alongside William Sutton’s Ira Dauber & Sylvia Brice | B.G. Colby | Tucson, AZ Greenwood Village, CO photographs of the vast plains of Wyoming. Collectively, the works explore distinctly West- Tom Colton & Ellen Simms | Berkeley, CA ern scenes and consider how the landscape has shaped the experience of its inhabitants. Lucy Del Giorgio | Tucson, AZ John E. Cook | Page, AZ The exhibition is free and open to the public. BRYCE GRAY Evan & Kim Ela | Littleton, CO Buz & Quincee Cotton | Boulder, CO David Foss | Boulder, CO Jason & Dana Dedrick | Eugene, OR Amy & Chris Gulick | Clinton, WA Sandy & Penny Dodge | Bozeman, MT Caroline W. Duell | Carbondale, CO Marion Lennberg | Salt Lake City, UT In memory of Mike Zerfoss | Denver, CO BENEFACTOR Rod Dykehouse | Victor, ID Deborah Lieberman | Boulder, CO Hal & JeNeal Miller | Provo, UT In honor of EPIC, Arcata, CA & ONDA | Bend, OR Ben Eastman | Denver, CO In honor of Eric Dissel | Wilsall, MT Richard Logan & Nancy Howard | Curlew, WA Richard Moos | Las Vegas, NV Hal H. Eby | Reno, NV Watershed Science & Design | Boulder, CO Cathy Mullan | Tucson, AZ In memory of Paul S. Buschhorn | James Evans & Leslie Brown | Vashon, WA Grand Junction, CO John & Lorrie McAllister | Evergreen, CO Cheryll Faust | Salida, CO In memory of Mrs. Nancy K. Putney | PATRON J. Andrew Neuman | Boulder, CO Fort Collins, CO Robert Follett | Highlands Ranch, CO In memory of Charlotte Hope Antiel | David & Gail Niebruegge | Vista, CA In memory of Jacob M. Riger | Albuquerque, NM Ralph Garboushian | Washington, DC Alamosa, CO Corey B. Niles | Olympia, WA In memory of Jessica Grace Wing | Brooklyn,NY Emily Greenwald | Missoula, MT In memory of Dr. Barney T. Burns | Tucson, AZ Hannah Nordhaus | Boulder, CO Margaret & Carter Bacon | Cambridge, MA Nicholas Griffin | Washington, DC In memory of Bill & Pat Fender | Mike Nowak | Manitou Springs, CO Carbondale, CO Janice Burnham & Ray Carney | Evanston, IL Chauncey & Emily Hall | Salt Lake City, UT Kent & Ruth Obee | Colorado Springs, CO In memory of Patrick Goldsworthy | Seattle, WA Charles Castellani | Lead, SD David & Melinda Harrison | Boulder, CO Jim Ogg | Los Angeles, CA Sterling & Sandra Clarren | Seattle, WA J.S. Heywood | Redding, CA In memory of Luke, Maddie & Molly | Minnetonka, MN Jesse Ortega | Cheyenne, WY Martha & Hobart Collins | Bozeman, MT Eloise Kendy & Tim Byron | Helena, MT In memory of Don Orr & Greg Orr | Bill & Claudia Page | La Madera, NM Dave & Suzanne Conine | Draper, UT Kenneth L. Kipp | Lakewood, CO Medford, OR & San Jose, CA Beverly Parsons | Hansville, WA Harold P. Coyle Jr. | Ayer, MA Ralph Becker & Kate Kopischke | In memory of Josephine Patricia Patry | Charlie & Shirley Paterson | Colorado Springs, CO Salt Lake City, UT Jeffrey S. Dean, Tree-Ring Lab - West Stadium | Redondo Beach, CA James & Mare Payne | Cerro Gordo, IL Tucson, AZ Brian Larsen & Renae Kofford | Boulder, CO In memory of Dr. Edward T. Ruppell | Carl Peiser | Pinetop, AZ Dorothy & Peter Decker | Denver, CO Clyde & Lois Laughlin | Seattle, WA Twin Bridges, MT

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

Scenes from Bliss, Idaho, that are in an art show at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center through April 28. JON HORVATH

10 High Country News April 4, 2016 DEAR FRIENDS

HCN founder Tom Bell to receive honorary degree We have no idea how it hap- won numerous awards over the pened, but March is already be- decades, including conservation- hind us. Our staff is still hoping ist of the year, and has been for a little more snowfall before named a distinguished citizen of we put the skis away and break Wyoming. out the camping and hiking During the nomination gear — though we’ve also begun process for the honorary degree, shaking the dust from our HCN staff — both new and old packs, smearing on sunscreen — submitted letters of support. and venturing onto the sun- Emilene Ostlind, an editorial soaked trails. Spring is always intern and fellow in 2010 and a time for new beginnings, and 2011, who currently works at after this issue, our staff is en- the University of Wyoming Haub joying a publication break. We’ll School of Environment and see you again in May, and until Natural Resources, wrote: “The then, at hcn.org. rest of us need people like (Tom) Tom Bell, our founder, who in our state. He is exactly the gave HCN its name and empow- citizen and change-maker we, ered the magazine to become as the state’s institute of higher one of the West’s strongest education, should celebrate.” voices on natural resource is- HCN would not have thrived sues, is receiving some special “without the vision — and yes, recognition in his home state: the stubbornness — of Tom The University of Wyoming is Bell,” Paul Larmer, our executive presenting him with an honor- director, wrote. “He saw a need, Carol Howe | Montrose, CO Rich & Carolyn Miller | Breckenridge, CO ary doctoral degree during the then had the courage of his con- S. Joanne Jacobson | Golden, CO Chris Moench & Jennifer Hahn | Bellingham, WA May commencement ceremony. victions to follow through and Richard Johnson | Veneta, OR Chris Moore & Cindy Leaverton | Denver, CO Back in 1970, Tom pur- do something about it, creating Blake Jones | Seattle, WA D.K. Moore | Deming, NM chased Camping News Weekly institutions that will outlive Melinda Kassen | Boulder, CO Richard M. Morehead | Santa Fe, NM and moved it to Lander, Wyo- him and deeply educate future Robert Kaufman | San Rafael, CA William Morgan | Kalispell, MT ming, under a new name: High generations.” Congratulations, Georgia Keeran | Sequim, WA Tish Morris | Albuquerque, NM Country News. During the early Tom, and thank you. Michael Kiessig | Littleton, CO William Mueller | Layton, UT years, Tom wrote most of the A couple of corrections: In Janet Kilby | Boulder, CO Kathryn Mutz | Boulder, CO articles, ran the business and “How not to forget the West’s slowly grew the then-tabloid Kimberly Kleinman | Boulder, CO Jim Nelson | Redding, CA past atrocities,” (HCN, 3/7/16), newspaper’s readership. The a classification error of sorts: Kenneth Klopfenstein | Fort Collins, CO Robert D. Nelson | Tucson, AZ fledging publication struggled at The Manhattan Project is a Michael Kobrin | Hotchkiss, CO Linda J. Newberry | Port Townsend, WA times, and Tom made it a non- national historical park, not a A.R. Kruckeberg | Shoreline, WA Madeline & Randy Nichols | Lakewood, CO profit in 1971. In 1974, he insti- historic park, as stated. And, in Laurel Lacher | Tucson, AZ Daren Nordhagen | Bozeman, MT tuted the Research Fund page the same issue, Juan Bautista Mark Landon | Douglas, MA Andy Norman & Sparky Colby | Jackson, WY to thank donors for saving HCN de Anza’s 1775 journey, which Peter Landres & Madeline Mazurski | Kevin Notheis | Boulder, CO Missoula, MT from nearly collapsing under led 30 families out of Mexico to Gary & Kathy O’Neal | Portland, OR the weight of an avalanche of Alta California, was not the first Kate Lapides | Carbondale, CO Eric Odendahl | Santee, CA crises, both personal and finan- Spanish expedition to cross into Richard V. Laursen | Carmichael, CA Jacqueline Osman | Denver, CO cial. Later that year, Tom passed the borderlands. We regret the Ken & Linda Lawson | Sierra Vista, AZ Matt Overeem | Glenview, IL the baton to young editors Joan errors. Gregory Ledges | Denver, CO Robert Pacheco | Durango, CO Nice and Bruce Hamilton, who —Paige Blankenbuehler Katie Lee | Jerome, AZ C. & J. Pardikes | Aurora, CO continued his legacy. Tom has for the staff Lloyd E. & Patricia Barry Levy | Wheat Ridge, CO Patti Parson | Denver, CO Karen Lewis | Tenino, WA Robert A. Pelak & Laura Walton | Melia Lewis | Santa Fe, NM Los Alamos, NM Ron & Ellen Loehman | Albuquerque, NM Carl Perry & Amanda Leib | Flagstaff, AZ Brian Loughman | Grand Junction, CO Randall & Roberta Perry | Carefree, AZ David Luck | Denver, CO Joanna Picchi | Dallas, OR Madonna E. Luers | Mead, WA Lisa Poppleton & Jim Stringfellow | Chuck MacFarland | Rainier, WA Salt Lake City, UT Robert Magill | Golden, CO Margaret Porter & James Knifong | Boulder, CO James H. Maguire | Boulder, CO Stephen Prendergast | Tucson, AZ Walter Major | Lawrenceburg, KY David J. Radabaugh | Seattle, WA Mr & Mrs Chuck Malloy | Carbondale, CO Joan Rasler | Colorado Springs, CO Paul A. Mason | Oakland, CA Norm Rasulis | Fort Collins, CO James Maxfield | Salt Lake City, UT Bill Rau & Susan Roche | Castle Valley, UT Daniel & Susan McCollum | Fort Collins, CO Bernard Ray | Bellevue, WA Greta M. Mcgregory Schwenker | Portland, OR David Reed | Clark, CO Eric & Donna Mendelson | Missoula, MT Gabriele Reil | Phoenix, AZ Bob & Pina Miller | Flagstaff, AZ Chris Reimer, Eco Planta Inc. | Cascade, CO Richard Ridgway | Cody, WY Tom Bell in his home in 2010. BRAD CHRISTENSEN/ WYOFILE

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 A LA ND D IVIDED Can a groundbreaking settlement fx a century of bad policy in Indian Country?

12 High Country News April 4, 2016 A LA ND D IVIDED FEATURE BY Can a groundbreaking settlement fx a century of bad policy in Indian Country? SIERRA CRANE-MURDOCH

owboy After Buffalo got his name in 1971. He was an infant, propped up in his mother’s lap in the backseat Cof a car, when a man who had been drinking approached to ask if he was a boy or a girl. “A boy,” his mother replied. “A cowboy,” the man said, and it stuck. The After Buffalos had a ranch west of Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where hayfields and aspen groves drape across the eastern front of Glacier National Park. On the 640 acres allotted to the family by the federal government in the early 1900s, and on surrounding allotments, they grazed 160 cow-calf pairs. Cowboy learned to break horses, round up cattle, brand them, castrate them and move them between pastures. The youngest of five siblings, he showed the greatest interest in the ranch. His parents, Barbara and Edward, hoped that someday he would take over its management. In the early 2000s, they put their hopes in writing. Edward had lost a foot to dia- betes and did not know how long he would live. One evening, at the hospital, he asked his children to write three wishes on a scrap of paper. Cowboy was struggling with addiction at the time; he had intermittent work that paid poorly and ran drugs to get by. Still, he wished for the ranch. Since the After Buffalos are members of the Blackfeet Tribe, with their land and mineral assets managed by the federal government, Ed- ward filed a will with the Bureau of Indian Affairs: Cowboy would receive the largest share of land; the rest would be split among Edward’s wife and other children. Cowboy got sober in his father’s final years, and Edward gift-deeded him a small parcel, where he could live in a trailer with his wife and kids. Though the family sold the herd to pay bills, Cowboy fixed fences and found other ranchers to sublease the land. He hoped eventually to buy his own cattle. “I wanted to live an honest life,” he said. But when Edward died in October 2012, and the family gathered before a probate judge, the judge found no will in Edward’s file. “I think everybody was just stunned,” Cowboy recalled. “My mom — I know it hit her hard.” Barbara asked the judge if he could honor her husband’s wishes, but he ex-

Cowboy Afer Bufalo stands with one of his horses on his family’s land on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. TERRAY SYLVESTER www.hcn.org High Country News 13 a 14-year battle between Indian landowners and the U.S. government. The dispute had arisen from the government’s mismanagement of Indian property and accounts, and its failure to pay owners billions of dollars of revenue. But its subtext was fractionation, and a century of policy that trapped Indians in a system of false ownership, unable to use the land that belonged to them. Cowboy hated to consider giving up his land, even to his own tribe, but the possibility lingered with him. “You just live day to day,” he said. “Then, there’s a point where you got to say, ‘Do I sell? What do I do with my land? What good is it doing me?’ ”

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL architect of today’s system of Indian land ownership was Massachusetts Sen. Henry Dawes, who once defined “civilized” men as those who “cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey (and) own property.” His 1887 General Allot- ment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, divided reservations into sections and assigned them to Indian families, who were then instructed to farm. Intended to foster individualism and integrate Native Americans into Anglo-American society, the Dawes Act had the opposite effect: Sitting in his mother’s kitchen in Browning, Montana, Cowboy Afer Bufalo studies papers related to his family’s land on Where the land was dry and infertile, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. TERRAY SYLVESTER particularly on the Great Plains, many families struggled to feed themselves of each of them, which was more than and came to rely heavily on government A simpliﬁed six-generation example of fractionation any of the other interest holders, but not rations. enough to make autonomous decisions. Fractionation began with the Dawes The allotment Edward had hoped to Act, but it accelerated after 1934, when will to Cowboy already had 131 interest Congress stopped assigning allotments holders. If fractionated again, it would be to Indian families. By then, there was even more difficult for Cowboy to access little left to allot. The Dawes Act had than it had been for Edward himself. allowed “surplus” reservation land to be Cowboy was silent. “I think every- auctioned, and 60 million acres had been body was waiting for my mom to say sold to white homesteaders. The 1906 something,” he recalled, “but she was so Burke Act, meanwhile, authorized federal far missing the old man, I don’t think Original Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth agents to declare certain landowners allottee* generation generation generation generation generation she could. And me being the youngest, it “competent,” thereby removing their 160 acres 1/3 share 1/9 1/27 1/81 1/243 wasn’t my place. The judge said, ‘Anyone $1,000** $333.33 $111.11 $37.04 $12.35 $4.12 INDIAN LANDSOURCE: TENURE FOUNDATION land from federal trust and allowing it to have anything to say?’ And nobody did.” *Presumes three heirs per person per generation. be taxed. Many landowners were never On reservations nationwide, the U.S. **Hypothetical amount an interest holder might earn from their share of the property. informed and accrued debt unwittingly; government manages 156,596 allotments others could not afford the taxes. As a like the After Buffalos’, leasing the land result, another 30 million acres were lost and resources on the owners’ behalf and plained that without a will, under federal to foreclosure. A common story in Indian returning the income to them via trust Indian law, Edward’s interest in the land Country tells of a family who sat down to accounts. In 2012, these allotments con- would pass to Barbara. This would be for dinner one night when a strange wagon tained 4.7 million fractionated interests. her lifetime only; she could not write a will pulled up to the house. The travelers had Relatively speaking, Cowboy lucked out: transferring the interest to Cowboy. In- come a long way, and the family invited It is not uncommon for hundreds — even stead, when she died, the property would them to eat. When the family asked why thousands — of individuals to co-own a be shared equally among her husband’s they had come, their guests looked sur- single allotment. Even so, he would have heirs, in a process called “fractionation.” prised and said, “We bought your land.” to maneuver through a tangled system The family dreaded fractionation. It Today, a great deal of reservation that was, by all appearances, rigged meant that Cowboy and his four siblings land — a third of some of the largest against him. would each be assigned a percent interest reservations — is owned by non-Indian Then, in 2013, a new option emerged: in the land, much like shareholders in a people. Furthermore, on many reser- Cowboy could sell his interest altogether. company. Before Cowboy could develop vations, the majority of Indian-owned Over the next decade, the U.S. Depart- the land in any way, he would need land is leased to non-Indian farmers ment of Interior planned to spend $1.9 approval from enough shareholders to and ranchers. This is a consequence of billion purchasing fractionated interests represent a 51 percent interest. Edward fractionation: Because it can be so hard from Indian landowners and consolidat- had held interest in two 320-acre allot- for Indian landowners to obtain approval ing them under tribal ownership. The ments — one that had belonged to his to move projects forward, the land is left Land Buy-Back Program, as it was grandfather, and another to his great fallow or, more often, grouped with other called, was the most significant piece uncle. He had owned roughly 39 percent parcels into a “range unit,” which the of a $3.4 billion settlement that closed

14 High Country News April 4, 2016 Bureau of Indian Affairs leases out on ing or stolen monies, each plaintiff was landowners’ behalf. When a lease is paid awarded $1,000 to $2,000 — a small ac- or royalties are earned on an allotment, knowledgement of their losses. It also set the BIA sends the proceeds to the U.S. up a scholarship fund for Native Ameri- Treasury Department, which issues each can college students that would be bank- interest holder a payment. When there rolled through the Buy-Back Program. are a lot of interest holders, the pay- But the land program itself received the ments can be for amounts less than a bulk of the settlement money — $1.9 bil- dollar. This system — of owning land but lion — to undo damages wrought by the having little control over it — is a major Dawes Act. The settlement was hailed as reason why Indian Country stays poor. It a historic victory, and Cobell, who would is, many say, why white people run more die of cancer two years later, its hero. A 1911 cows on Indian land than Indian ranch- President Barack Obama called it “an im- Department ers; why white people earn more money portant step towards a sincere reconcili- of the Interior from reservation land; why pastures are ation.” In an essay distributed widely by poster, lef, pounded dry by overuse; why houses High Country News and still often cited, advertising so- called surplus are hard to come by; why they fall into Chuck Sams of the Confederated Tribes reservation disrepair; why there are few businesses of the Umatilla Indian Reservation wrote, land for sale, or jobs. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation “Though it is true we were dealt a poor afer the Dawes in South Dakota, once dubbed “Poverty’s hand by history, we can make a new Act assigned Poster Child” by The New York Times, start. ... We will begin to make ourselves tracts to Indian is the second largest reservation in the whole again.” families. nation and, by some metrics, the most LIBRARY OF CONGRESS fractionated. In 2002, when agriculture there earned $30 million, Native Ameri- cans netted only a third. “Look at the abundance of the land,” an Oglala Lakota business owner told me. “If we were anywhere else, it would be wealth creation, but here it’s the opposite.” There have been various attempts to address fractionation since it began, most notably the 1983 Indian Land Consolida- tion Act, which enabled tribes to exchange and purchase interest from landowners at fair market value. But these efforts were poorly funded, and many tribes, chronically in debt, could not buy land in large enough quantities to make much difference. The Dawes Act became ever more difficult to undo. As the number of fractionated interests ballooned, so did the federal-Indian bureaucracy. The BIA had long been criticized for its shoddy management of Indian accounts, most famously in 1828, when federal agent Henry Schoolcraft wrote that it seemed the agency’s fiscal affairs “had been handled with a pitchfork.” Fractionation made more room for error. In the late 1980s, Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet rancher, tribal treasurer, and founder of the first tribally-owned bank, testified before Con- gress on flaws in the BIA’s accounting system. She had found many discrepancies in her work on the Blackfeet Reservation — leases never paid, documents lost — and suspected the problem was systemic. Indeed, in 1994, a banker appointed by then President Bill Clinton to investigate THE LAND BUY-BACK PROGRAM differs brief collapse in tribal government put Elouise Cobell the Indian trust system found that out of from past efforts to undo fractionation the program on hold. Instead, the first talks with the 238,000 accounts reviewed, half were in two fundamental ways: First, there buy-back offers went to landowners on Secretary of missing important documentation, and has never been an attempt to transfer so Pine Ridge, on Dec. 18, 2013. Interior Ken Salazar in nearly a quarter had no address; the ac- much land to tribes all at once; and, sec- I visited Pine Ridge Agency the December 2009, count holders’ money had been sitting in ond, there has never been so much money following August, as the Oglala Sioux during a Senate the Treasury. available to do so. In 2011, Interior De- Tribe was closing a third round of land Indian Afairs In 1996, Cobell sued the U.S. govern- partment officials met with tribal leaders purchases. The buy-back office was a Committee ment on behalf of 450,000 plaintiffs from and, the next year, released a plan: The doublewide trailer in the yard of the BIA hearing on the tribes across the country. She estimated BIA would give each participating tribe a building. A secretary motioned me into a settlement of the that more than $170 billion had been lost sum scaled to the size of its fractionation back room, where a wiry, jocular man in class-action lawsuit or stolen from Indian accounts. When the problem. The Blackfeet Indian Reserva- pleated pants and tennis shoes sat with Cobell vs. Salazar. MARK WILSON/GETTY case finally settled in 2009, it had gone tion — by some measures the third most- a stack of paperwork. Steve Her Many IMAGES, BELOW to trial seven times. Since the settlement fractionated in the country — was slated Horses was the fourth person appointed did not require a full accounting of miss- to be among the first beneficiaries, but a to direct the program in six months. He

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Gonzalez, an attorney and member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, later told me. Gonzalez is known for having advised the Sioux to refuse federal payment for the sacred Black Hills, taken from them in 1874. “I’m not selling my tracts, because they belonged to my great-grandmother,” he said. “They have value to me, just like an heirloom.” I had to understand that people were coming to their decision from a place of deep loss. Even though the land would return to the tribe, and even if the sale benefited the seller, the act of selling was weighted with painful memory. I was reminded of something an elder told me when I had asked why he refused to sell: “When you have land, you can always come home. Nobody can’t ever tell you, ‘You have to go. This don’t belong to you.’ ”

IN SEPTEMBER 2015, I arranged to meet Cowboy After Buffalo on a grassy ridge above his house. I drove a truck he had left for me at his corral, an old Ford with cracked mirrors and various CDs — Black Lodge Veteran Songs; The Rolling Stones — stuffed in its side compart- ments. He arrived after I did, on horseback, with his jeans tucked into his boots and a bandana tied around his forehead. Tall and heavy-set, he seemed always On the Pine Ridge held up a reservation map: Tracts in “Grace, did you sell your allotment?” to be grinning. He had been out looking Indian Reservation which the tribe owned a majority interest Grace averted her eyes. “Just checking. for a neighbor’s escaped calf and found in December 2012, prior to the buy-back program were col- Bud? No? You know who did?” it grazing amid a herd that belonged Teresa Voice of ored dark blue; tracts in which the tribe “Not me.” to a white rancher named Ron Jones. Crow Creek shows had newly acquired a majority interest At last, we came to a cluttered, swel- the $1,000 check Near the end of his father’s life, Cowboy she received as were light blue. The latter represented tering room, where a lean man named had begun subleasing the After Buffalo part of the Cobell 200,000 acres, roughly a tenth of the Carl Eagle Elk was studying a map. “I pasture to Jones, who lived south of the settlement’s $1.5 reservation’s fractionated land, lever- had no intention of selling,” he said. “My reservation. Cowboy could not afford billion in direct aged with $76 million of the tribe’s $105 dad, my grandfather — they all told me, the $2,400 yearly payment, let alone his payments. Another million allocation. “Our main goal is to growing up, ‘Don’t sell your land.’ ” When own cows, and, anyway, he liked Jones. $1.9 billion was see this full map blue,” he said. “Then our the offer came in the mail, he left it in Subleasing to him allowed Cowboy some slated for the Land- tribe will have control of our land.” the backseat of his Chevy Impala. But as control: He could still do the work of a Buy Back program. The benefits were numerous, Her winter wore on, Eagle Elk, who lived with rancher while he gathered the resources BENJAMIN BRAYFIELD, RAPID CITY JOURNAL Many Horses told me. The tribe would his brother, ran low on propane. “I slipped that would allow him, eventually, to earn more lease income and could use it into debt,” he said. “You have your car, acquire cattle. to purchase reservation land from non- your insurance, your utilities. My son was Around reservations like Blackfeet, Indians. On land where it had acquired a in school, so you have school clothes. Then where ranching is the dominant indus- majority interest, it could also build hous- you drive a ways to get groceries.” (Most try, this sort of mutualism is common ing for tribal members. More importantly, reservation residents shop in Rapid City, between Indian and non-Indian commu- the purchase had ensured that land 90 miles away.) On July 21, 2014, just nities. Many Indian landowners who hold returned to the tribe would never again before his offer expired, Eagle Elk went leases for their fractionated allotments be sold to non-Indians. to the buy-back office and sold half his sublease them to other ranchers because He spoke in terse, excited phrases, interest — the equivalent of 20 acres, for they don’t have enough livestock to fill like a salesman still honing his pitch. $14,000. When the check came, he would range units themselves. (Edward After And so when I asked, finally, if he would pay off his debts and buy a trailer. Buffalo owned 45 of the 160 cows he ran sell his own land to the tribe, I was sur- I eventually met others like Eagle on two units.) Many reservations have prised by his reply. Elk who had sold their land, though good pasture, which is expensive and “Oh, no,” he said. reluctantly. There are good reasons to hard to come by elsewhere. “It’s kind of “No?” sell: Many landowners no longer live on known that you can always find it there,” “Well, it’d be something to think the reservations where their interest is, a white rancher, who subleases Blackfeet about.” or they have inherited interest in places pasture, told me. “If you’re in a pickle, I heard the same answer dozens of where they lack tribal affiliation. Or their that’s where you call.” times in the weeks I spent on Pine Ridge. interest is so small that they’ll never These arrangements are controver- It was difficult to find anyone who had have access to the land. A house or trailer sial, and some tribes have passed resolu- sold their own land or, at least, who may indeed be a better investment, as tions discouraging Indian landowners would admit to having done so. When I may a car, since reservation services are from “fronting” for outside ranchers. On mentioned this a few mornings later to often few and far between. But I also the Blackfeet Reservation, anyone who Denise Mesteth, the director of the tribe’s sensed that people were ashamed of the leases a range unit must own a certain land department, she took me on a tour of transactions. “It comes from the fact that percentage of the livestock that graze it. her office: our people died for that land, so it’s not Cowboy had 12 horses, enough to meet “Hey, Burton, did you get an offer?” a commodity that you can just sell and the requirement, but without cows, his “No, I don’t have land. Try Grace.” get money and be on your way,” Mario claim felt precarious; he worried that the

16 High Country News April 4, 2016 Cowboy Afer Bufalo, center, stands with Ron Jones, right, and members of their families while gathering Jones’ cattle from the Afer Bufalos’ land last fall. Jones lives south of the reservation in Dupuyer, Montana, and like many non- Indian ranchers in the area, he grazes cattle on reservation land he subleases during the summer. TERRAY SYLVESTER

tribe’s allocation committee, which largely he could pull the 320-acre allotment in IN JUNE 2011, the U.S. District Court for “When controls grazing assignments, might give which he held interest out of the range the District of Columbia held a fairness his to a bigger Indian rancher. So in 2013, unit. That way, he would reduce his risk hearing on the Cobell settlement, the you have he applied to the Farm Service Agency for of losing the land to another rancher and last opportunity for plaintiffs to object. a $35,000 loan to buy his own small herd. have more time to buy cattle. His mother Landowners from tribes across the coun- land, you While he waited, he decided to install agreed, and Cowboy began knocking on try spoke, and opinions varied, but most a hydrant by the corral for watering doors. In three days, he had acquired sig- agreed that they would not sell their can always livestock. He needed approval from others natures from 53 percent of interest hold- land. “You don’t have enough money to come home. who shared in his allotment, but when he ers. It was a small victory, and it softened buy my piece of sovereignty,” a Choctaw asked at the BIA office for a list of the 131 the news when his loan officer told him man challenged. “These lands are pre- Nobody can’t landowners, he was turned away. “As soon that he did not have enough cash flow to cious. They hold the bones of my people,” as I’d ask for maps, details, names, they’d qualify for the loan. “He told me, ‘Keep said a woman from the Cheyenne River ever tell you, question me like I was bringing a bomb trying,’ ” Cowboy recalled, “and I said, ‘I Sioux Tribe. In the end, just 92 plaintiffs ‘You have to in,” he recalled. When he finally obtained will keep trying.’ ” filed formal objections, and 1,800 opted the document, he wrote the largest shares I asked Cowboy if all these difficulties out of the $1,000 payment. But the hear- go. This don’t in neat rows and added them up. With made selling his land interest through the ing foreshadowed a wider discontent: As his father’s gift, he owned a 2 percent Land Buy-Back Program seem more ap- of November 2015, fewer than half of the belong to interest. If he could get approval from pealing. “No,” he said, though the program landowners who received buy-back offers his mother, who had 39 percent, as well might work in his favor in other ways. If had accepted them. On some reserva- you.’ ” as from several cousins, he would need the tribal government gains interest in tions, such as Pine Ridge, the number is —Tribal elder, less than 1 percent more. But most of the his allotment, he explained, he might be even lower. Pine Ridge Indian remaining landowners held less than a able to acquire more for himself by trad- At the end of 2016, the program will Reservation tenth of 1 percent interest. Some lived ing the tribe smaller interests he holds finally reach the Blackfeet Reserva- far away, in Florida or Oregon; others, elsewhere on the reservation. I followed tion, making the tribe one of the last to he noticed, were in prison. He contacted Cowboy down the ridge to his house, participate. It is fitting, perhaps, that the a woman who owned 1.357 percent. She where his wife, Angie, was fixing ham- place where the Cobell case began could lived in Harrah, Washington, but planned burger and mashed potatoes for dinner. be the place where it ends, but it is also to return to the reservation in summer- On the table sat a stack of folders and a reminder of the lawsuit’s disappoint- time. She could meet him then, she said. ledger books containing lease documents ments — of the distance between the But just before her trip, she died. Cowboy dating back to the ’60s. Among them were injustices brought to light by the case gave up, and the project fell through. records from the 1990s, when another and the justice now being delivered. The He began to worry that his loan would rancher outbid Cowboy’s father for the buy-back program does little to close this be denied because the land was so frac- range unit containing the ranch. The gap. Despite an investment of $715 mil- tionated, and his access to it was limited. After Buffalos had to go to court to regain lion and the transfer of an equivalent of So on the day a loan officer arrived to access. The records seemed remarkable 1.5 million acres from individual to tribal inspect the property and fences, Cowboy not only for how well they had been ownership, the number of fractionated assembled his brother, sisters and mother preserved, but also for what they implied: interests on participating reservations in his living room. “I wanted to show the The odds against Native Americans keep- has declined by just 20 percent. Since officer that I was serious,” he said — and ing their land have been high for a long Indian land will continue to fractionate that his family supported his plans. The time. It is no wonder that so many still at an exponential rate, it is easy to see meeting later paid off. Cowboy learned believe it is worth their struggle to hold the buy-back program as little more than that if a majority of landowners agreed, onto it. a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Phillip Many Hides finishes his lunch in a cafe in Browning, Montana. Many Hides intends to sell his interest in some parcels when the Buy-Back Program comes to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. He plans to use the money to buy a house. TERRAY SYLVESTER

“The The low participation rate also has sell land when his buy-back offer finally that the case had ended, and she ap- a darker implication — that many of came. He looked disappointed; he had proved of the college scholarship fund. settlement is those who did sell had little other choice. assumed the offer would come sooner. “A But behind closed doors, she opposed the Federal officials often emphasize that lot of us are counting on that buy-back, buy-back program. She feared it would not perfect. the program is “voluntary,” but since so we can get our own homes,” he said. thicken the bureaucracy that already I do not many tribal members depend on their Some of his land he would never sell — mired Indian land ownership. She wor- governments for financial help with even it had spiritual significance — but he ried, too, that landowners in dire straits think it day-to-day expenses, the concept seems also owned interest in a hayfield north would sell their only financial leverage, slippery. “Offering poor people something of Browning. “I hate to let it go,” he said, since many depend on lease income and compensates that is more than they have ever had but “but that’s the situation I’m in.” Already, even take out loans on it to buy every- is not really what the case is worth is an the year before, he had sold some inter- day necessities like groceries and school for all of old ploy of lawyers and the government,” est he inherited on the Coeur d’Alene clothes. Most of all, she opposed the the losses Joe McKay, a Blackfeet tribal councilman Indian Reservation in Idaho. He spent program because it seemed to assume and vocal critic of the Cobell settlement, the $1,600 he received on Christmas that what is best for tribal governments sustained, told me. On Pine Ridge, I had observed gifts for his children. “They were upset at is best for individual Indians — that tribal members ask their councilmen for first, but then my daughter said, ‘At least their interests, after more than a century but I do think help with hospital and propane bills, and it was for Christmas.’ ” The buy-back of federal policy intended to break apart it is fair … I once saw a councilman pay someone from program was a blessing, Many Hides told tribal communities, were still one and the his own pocket. The Blackfeet Tribe was me, and he thanked Elouise Cobell: “I same. Many tribal members, in fact, have am convinced in a similar circumstance. When I visited remember when she first started to fight come to distrust their tribal governments. its offices in September, signs reading “No this fight. I thought, could she do it? And “We would have argued that it’s bet- that it is Hardship” were tacked throughout the I remember the day she won. We were all ter to help owners acquire bigger inter- corridors. And yet, every day, I watched giving each other hugs.” ests, not do a program that converted the best men, women and children wander in, Cobell did not attend the 2011 fair- those interests from individual to tribal settlement looking for councilmen to hear their ness hearing. Bedridden with cancer, she ownership,” Cris Stainbrook, president pleas. called from Montana to make her final of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation possible.” One afternoon, as I waited under a statement. “Few, if any, legal cases in and a descendent of the Oglala Lakota, nearby pavilion, a man named Phillip modern times have embodied the pain of told me. Stainbrook worked closely with —Elouise Cobell, bedridden with cancer, Many Hides sat down beside me. He wore so many people in Indian Country, and Cobell throughout the case. “The lawsuit calling in her final coke-bottle glasses, taped at the corners, also embodied the hopes of those people,” was nothing about tribes,” he said. “It was statement during a and jeans, clean but frayed. He was she said. “What has been accomplished about individuals. And the way the buy- 2011 fairness hearing looking for McKay, whom he hoped could here is historical. … It brings a measure back program was structured, the tribes on the settlement help him apply for tribal assistance — a of justice to some of the most vulnerable came away with a gift.” monthly $250 payment. Many Hides had people in this country. The settlement is The program, Stainbrook added, was long worked as a wildland firefighter not perfect. I do not think it compensates the government’s piece of the deal. “They and dispatcher, but his wife died in 2011, for all of the losses sustained, but I do say they did this to ‘make the community and he started drinking. When I met think it is fair. … I am convinced that whole again,’ but that’s secondary. They him, he had been sober 15 days. Still, he it is the best settlement possible.” Four wanted it because they spend millions was homeless, sleeping by the powwow months later, she died. of dollars a year sending lease checks grounds. A spider bite on his ring finger Cobell’s friends and colleagues have for amounts smaller than the cost of a had swollen to the size of a quarter. since told me that even she had been stamp. Reduce fractionation, and they I asked Many Hides if he planned to deeply ambivalent. Cobell was grateful reduce the administrative burden.”

18 High Country News April 4, 2016 The case did achieve some substantial feet would be among the program’s last buyer; Jones would take the steer calves to victories. In 2009, for example, then-Inte- recipients: “We get to see everyone else’s auction. The next week, he would return rior Secretary Ken Salazar appointed five mistakes. We want to make sure we’re for the cows and bring them to his own tribal leaders to a Committee on Indian doing it right.” property to overwinter. Then, the pastures Trust Administration and Reform, and in Trust reforms are as uncertain as would be mostly empty until spring. 2014, the committee released an analysis any in the past, though, and most people In the meantime, Cowboy had en- of the trust relationship. The report does see Cobell’s legacy as something more rolled in a course to receive a commercial not go so far as to suggest transferring intangible. “She used to tell me, ‘Winning driver’s license. Roads were being redone the management of trust accounts to a money wasn’t the thing,’ ” said Angie throughout the reservation, and he hoped third party, such as a bank, as Cobell Main, Cobell’s friend and colleague, when to find work hauling gravel. This would would have wanted, but it does call for I visited her in Browning. “Indians win- increase his cash flow; he could reapply for a seismic restructuring of the trust sys- ning a case against the federal govern- a loan. Cowboy was good-natured about tem. Among its recommendations is the ment — that’s the point.” Later, Elouise’s his ordeal. He wasn’t angry with the BIA establishment of an Indian Trust Ad- sister-in-law, Eva Cobell, showed me a for losing his father’s will. “We can’t look ministration Commission, which would box of papers she had saved to make a at yesterday, because we’ll go backwards, consolidate the Department of Interior’s scrapbook for Elouise’s son. It mostly and I’m trying to go forward,” he said. He trust functions under a single entity and contained condolence notes sent upon faulted himself for not trying sooner; if he make it easier for tribes and individuals Elouise’s death, but at the bottom I found hadn’t been drinking or running drugs, he to navigate the bureaucracy. letters addressed to Elouise from stu- might have had his own herd by now. He Even the buy-back program has had dents at the local high school: shook his head: “To think of all the money positive effects, in that it has encouraged My name is L. My mom is J. I don’t I took, of all the victims I made.” Indian landowners to learn more about know who my dad is and really don’t care. The wind blew so hard that aspen Sierra Crane-Murdoch their fractionated interests. Stainbrook, What you’re doing means a lot to me and leaves cut wildly in the air. I followed is a freelance through the Indian Land Tenure Founda- a lot of other people. What you’re doing Cowboy’s son, Andrew, to a creek that journalist based in tion, has worked with federal officials, means to me that there is hope. People crosses the property. He showed me the California. She is at tribes and other organizations to dis- from the reservation can be something. bank where the family erects a tipi in work on her ﬁrst book. tribute educational materials about the summertime and the pools where they fish Reporting for this program, estate planning, and the alter- ON A COLD MORNING IN OCTOBER, I and swim. Above us was the ridge where story was supported natives to selling land, so that landown- dropped by the After Buffalo ranch once I had met Cowboy weeks before. There, in by a UC Berkeley- ers can make informed choices. On the more. Cowboy was in the corral with his a grove of pines, I had found a cemetery. 11th Hour Food and Blackfeet Reservation, the people I spoke sons and Ron Jones, who had come to The graves were sunken into the earth Farming Journalism to seemed more prepared than those I gather the calves. The cows lowed mourn- like deer had come to sleep. Some were Fellowship. met on Pine Ridge: With the benefit of fully as Cowboy flapped his arms like marked by fenceposts lashed into crosses This coverage is time, perhaps, more of them knew where wings, driving the calves up a ramp and with wire, and others were not marked at also supported by their land was and how much income into a trailer. Jones seemed pleased, and all. This was fractionation in visual form: contributors to the they earned from it. Mark Magee, the once the calves were loaded, he did not A gathering of generations; the faint out- High Country News director of the land office and a relative of linger. The two men laughed and shook lines where bodies once lay; a claim to the Enterprise Journalism Cobell’s, told me he was glad the Black- hands. The heifer calves already had a land, grounded in something spiritual. Fund.

Cowboy After Buffalo’s daughter, Bethany, visits the grave of her grandfather on a hill overlooking their family’s land on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. TERRAY SYLVESTER

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22 High Country News April 4, 2016 Bison continued from page 8 and private lands adjacent to the refuge up to 12,000 acres in the next four years. and plans to acquire a total of 500,000 acres. That herd has also proven that bison are a allowed to roam freely on federal public The reserve’s lands now support 620 bison, tourist attraction: 330,000 wildlife watch- lands in the U.S. are in South Dakota’s with spring calves on the way, and spokes- ers flocked to the arsenal in 2015. Wind Cave National Park and Utah’s woman Hilary Parker says the group hopes To further boost support for the spe- Henry Mountains. Both herds are to eventually run 10,000 animals. cies, some scientists and conservation descended from Yellowstone bison, but But the state of Montana has been groups are pushing for hunting seasons in managers have limited the populations to reluctant to openly support the reintro- states with growing conservation herds, 400 or fewer animals. duction or expansion of bison herds, either even as managers are trying to increase “Every little herd is important in its in the refuge or around Yellowstone. The their numbers. Ranglack believes that own way,” says Montana State University idea of a new, publicly managed wild herd could encourage rural communities and wildlife ecologist Dustin Ranglack, who is being floated in the state’s draft bison wary state managers to regard free-rang- has studied the Henry Mountains herd. conservation plan, released last year. But ing bison as an asset instead of a threat. Ranglack has found that, due to eating the draft failed to identify any possible “It’s been so long since we managed and grazing habits, the bison rarely com- sites, or explicitly endorse a large and these species as wildlife,” says Steve pete with cattle for forage, another com- free-ranging bison population. To sup- Woodruff, a senior policy manager for the mon misperception. “But for an ecological port just “another small ‘display’ herd of National Wildlife Federation. “We’re never future for bison, we need relatively large bison on a confined pasture,” Defenders of going to see millions of bison again across herds on large landscapes,” he says. Wildlife’s Forrest says, “will be a colossal the West, but there are still some places failure of planning.” where we can have wild bison along with he most promising space for large-scale In the Laramie Foothills, the small a healthy cattle industry. There’s plenty of T bison recovery is in eastern Montana. herd is currently fenced in to avoid close land to do both.” Along the Missouri River, the Charles encounters with hikers, mountain bik- M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge ers and wildlife watchers. That won’t encompasses 915,000 acres. The refuge change even when managers expand the is slightly smaller than Delaware, and range in a few years. Still, a long-term, even today, Lewis and Clark would prob- regional conservation plan for the foothills ably recognize its windswept grasslands. encompasses the natural areas, as well The National Wildlife Federation has as surrounding federal and state lands, already bought out grazing allotments on conservation properties and additional 54,000 acres of the refuge, with the idea open space. It could eventually follow the that bison will replace cattle when — and American Prairie Reserve’s example and if — state managers who have jurisdiction open a much greater section of public and over native wildlife approve. The neigh- private lands to a much larger bison herd. boring Fort Belknap and Fort Peck Indian Other Western conservation herds are reservations are also using Yellowstone also growing and gaining attention. Sixty bison to build their own herds and help miles south of Fort Collins, federal man- recover the species. agers at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, an Perhaps most significantly, the Army weapons complex turned wildlife American Prairie Reserve has already refuge outside of Denver, plan to double leased or purchased 307,000 acres of public its herd size to 180 or more animals on

Incubated bison embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen, above. Students from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University watch bison from the Laramie Foothills conservation herd eat supplemental feed that is given to them in inclement weather. BROOKE WARREN

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 WRITERS ON THE RANGE

How to develop clean energy on tribal land

Across North America, fossil-fuel extrac- renewable energy industry and indig- hand. As an indigenous person, it was tion and production have long robbed enous communities, where there are vast disconcerting to see so many non-Native tribal communities of clean water, clean opportunities for wind, solar and other people telling other non-Native people air and a secure future. The Navajo of clean energy projects. how to relate to indigenous communities. the Southwest, the Houma along the It was both encouraging and Second, developers need to spend time Gulf of Mexico, and the Dene of Alberta, cautionary. learning the history of a tribe and its cur- Canada, are some of the tribes sacrificing Not surprisingly, the majority of the rent political and social-justice climate. ancestral homes to oil and gas fracking conference focused on the business aspects Each tribe has experienced centuries of projects, coal production, tar sands devel- of energy development, such as obtaining colonial oppression that have resulted opment and oil refineries. financing and understanding the legal in the mistrust of non-Native businesses Along with poisoning our land and considerations for developers. For indig- and organizations. In addition, every OPINION BY water, these industries poison our people enous folks, however, the most important tribe faces a unique situation and has a JADE BEGAY with a high incidence of pollution-related topic was building relationships. Tribal unique set of solutions that aligns with its diseases. The industrial culture also communities have learned through experi- cultural values. It is strategic and honor- harms women, who experience an in- ence that they need to create partnerships able — especially if you are the dominant crease in sexual violence as “man camps” that don’t continue the cycle of exploita- culture (white, educated, well-funded) — move into tribal communities for extrac- tion of Native lands and Native people. to step back, listen, and engage in deeper tion projects. None of this is news; it is The conference seemed a good start, conversations about a tribe’s history. just the bitter truth. but pitfalls remain for energy developers. Third, it would be smart for clean This is why I so deeply support tribes Here are some of my suggestions for how energy developers to engage with young developing renewable energy such as wind they might build trusting and respectful indigenous leaders and community orga- and solar. It is an approach that can help relationships: nizers. These are the people who may end to ensure our survival. But the question is: First, take a look at who is at the up trying to kill your project if it is not in How do we do it right? Seeking answers, I table. For instance, although this confer- the best interest of tribal sovereignty and attended a conference in February called ence was about tribal lands and working self-determination. Across North Ameri- Renewable Energy Development on Tribal with tribal governments and communi- ca, young indigenous leaders are leading WEB EXTRA To see all the current Lands, which was held in Anaheim, Cali- ties, a majority of the tribal representa- decolonization movements to reclaim our Writers on the Range fornia. The aim of the event, sponsored by tives were non-Native, and among the 50 identity and our ancestral homes. We’ve columns, and archives, Electric Utility Consultants, was to better or so conference attendees you could count been in a relationship with the lands we visit hcn.org understand the dynamics between the actual tribal community members on one call home since time immemorial. The

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24 High Country News April 4, 2016 How to develop clean energy on tribal land

land is the foundation of our identity. Unfortunately, what many young indigenous people see is that our elected tribal leaders fail us by allowing the fossil-fuel industry to continue to exploit our land and people. These leaders have sold out — sacriﬁced our culture for dollars that are usually far below the value of what is being given away. Because our leaders are in some cases suspect, it would be prudent of renewable energy developers to look beyond the walls of tribal government to the people. The more con- nections to our communities, the better. There is a lot of hope and optimism when it comes to clean energy development. This is especially true for places like the Navajo Nation, where, inex- plicably, some 15,000 homes still have no electricity, despite three massive, coal-burning power plants located on or directly next to tribal land. Native American students learn about small-scale wind energy at a workshop at the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Now we have an opportunity to divest Center on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, hosted by Trees, Water & People and Lakota Solar Enterprises. DAN BIHN PHOTO COURTESY TREES, WATER & PEOPLE from oil and coal, develop new energy projects, and most importantly, to build healthier relationships between non- Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of Native and Native peoples. Oppressive Jade Begay is Diné and Tesuque Pueblo, High Country News, providing three opinion col- patterns can be broken if we encourage and is participating in a year-long umns each week to more than 200 media outlets and ﬁght for business models that favor Sustainability and Justice Fellowship at around the West. For more information, contact fairness and justice. Resource Media in Boulder, Colorado. Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS Riding the range of human frailty

Uplifting endings are as popular in West- saddle was a romantic way to go, she The finest story, “Little Faith,” exposes ern literature as umbrellas in the desert. thought.” a cultural gap in the West that Everett Sad stories sell. Desperados that inhabit A single parent in “Exposure,’’ wor- describes deftly. notable works of renowned writers like ried about losing ties with a teenaged When a white rancher with a preg- Annie Proulx and Sherman Alexie tend daughter, tries to show his love for her nant mare in dire straits confesses to toward drunken violence and tragic on an outing to Burnt Lake. Spot-on dia- his African-American veterinarian, “You denouements. logue between clumsy dad and rebellious know, you’re okay,” the doctor responds, Percival Everett, an African-American child foreshadows doom when a cougar “How’s that?” The rancher confesses, author of nearly 30 books, takes a dif- enters the scene. “You know, being a black vet out here, I ferent tack in his new collection of nine A 14-year-old boy in “Stonefly,” whose had my doubts.” short stories, Half an Inch of Water. No sister drowned years ago in a river, goes Not all nine stories are winners. matter what crisis Everett unloads on his fishing to ease the burden he feels from “Finding Billy Whitefeather” has a mysti- Half an Inch of characters, hope lingers like the scent of distraught parents. Everett paints this cal quality that stumbles over a weak Water: Stories sagebrush in the wind. scene with understated detail, and some of plot. “Liquid Glass” gets Stephen King- Percival Everett They tend to get lost, physically and the most elegant writing of this collection. ish: it’s about a box containing a severed 163 pages, emotionally, as they search the wilder- In a scene reminiscent of Ernest Heming- head and not much else. softcover: $16. ness for meaning. Sometimes they find way’s Nick Adams’ stories, Everett writes: Nobody escapes unscathed in Ever- Graywolf Press, 2015. themselves by connecting with others “He cast the fly out and it disturbed ett’s fiction. His world operates according whose hardscrabble lives appear ground- the water awfully. But as soon as it to Darwin’s rules, but however bleak it ed in reality. In Everett’s world, people landed, the big fish was on it. The trout appears, it teems with convincing charac- need each other to survive. bit the fly and pulled it deep. Daniel suf- ters, persistent folks who figure out how In “A High Lake,” a lonely widow loses fered from trigger lock. He was frozen, to survive. her way on horseback in the mountains shocked. He finally gave a yank to set the with fearless abandon. “Dying in the hook. The trout took off downstream.” BY ERIC SANDSTROM

The rescuer and the rescued

“My god that you could walk through such a landscape. My god that such a landscape existed anywhere but in your dreams. And yet here it was.” California- based novelist Christian Kiefer creates a gorgeous, desolate tableau in which his characters are bewitched by natural beauty even as they’re betrayed by human actions, especially their own. Wildlife rescuer Bill Reed and his unofficial Idaho sanctuary are in peril as The Animals begins, when the district

The Animals: A Novel game warden threatens to close the place PHOTOS JOSE AZEL / AURORA Christian Kiefer down, citing federal environmental rules 320 pages, and regulations. Meanwhile, Bill’s night- marish past catches up with him, when softcover: $15.95. ISTOCK Liveright, 2016. Rick, who was once his closest friend, is released from a long stretch in prison. The two were inseparable during their cages or enclosures, yet still pulsing with precarious world is increasingly endan- bleak childhoods in Battle Mountain, life. Bill has fled his gambling addiction gered, and as the novel unfolds, our fears Nevada, enduring family tragedies and and subsequent debt, seeking redemption are realized in unpredictable ways and alcoholic parents. Together, they later in a solitary life in the woods. “A geog- with unforeseen consequences. escaped to Reno, only to get lost in dead- raphy of snowed-over silence. Elk would Lovers of wilderness and of words will end jobs, drugs and trouble with the law. come down through the trees on their find both pleasure and sorrow in the rich, Now, Rick has returned in search of the way to the meadows in the south, their lyrical sentences of The Animals. “Were money they netted in a long-ago bur- calls echoing up from those blank white a fox to step out from behind the trees glary. Or perhaps it’s really vengeance he plains.” and speak in human words, or a raven wants; the threat of violence hovers over Kiefer’s narrative voice recalls that to descend wearing a suit coat and a top the novel like a pall. of Faulkner, complete with a blind bear hat, you would not have been surprised. What solace there is comes by way of named “Majer.” The bear’s presence Worlds overlapping.” Bill’s animals, all of them once wild, most haunts the reader; from the beginning, now recovering from various traumas in we fear for Majer’s life. Bill’s harsh and BY ANNIE DAWID

26 High Country News April 4, 2016 ESSAY | BY JULIE GILLUM LLUEUE Risk, goats and kids in the mountains Goat Flat. The flat part sounded good, but the goat part made Most accident victims survived, at times thanks to honest-to- me nervous. Though mountain goats and I share an apprecia- God heroics on the part of the rangers and other rescuers. But tion for Montana’s high country, they favor scary-steep areas some didn’t. By mid-July, I had memorized the coroner’s phone where they can escape most predators not carrying a firearm. number. And one day I heard a thump outside the dispatch of- You may find them scaling impossible cliffs or scampering fice door. A delivery, my coworker told me. The park was running across ledges too narrow to support a sandwich. Even their low on body bags. kids — plush-toy versions of their parents — could star in an In all these tragedies, my role was small. But the memories acrophobic’s nightmare. How could a trail to a place named after linger. I wasn’t alive when President Kennedy was shot, but them be suitable for human kids? I will always remember where I was when the search for one At any rate, we needed a break after that last stretch of young girl turned into a body recovery. Cause of death: falling. switchbacks, which had zigzagged nearly all the way up to Sometimes I remember things when I shouldn’t, as I did that timberline. My husband, Tony, and I dropped our packs at Storm day standing on a pass in Montana, listening for nonexistent Lake Pass and took stock. Our 6-year-old, who had tackled the thunder, shying away from a trail that didn’t look all that bad, hill under protest, swatted irritably at the gray blizzard of mos- as long as no one was horsing around and everyone was paying quitoes swirling around his face. But our oldest son, who would attention. turn 10 that day, fixed his eyes on the route ahead. The mosquitoes were unfazed by my natural repellent, so I studied the trail through my zoom lens. It looked like a I rummaged for the last-ditch, weapons-grade stuff that had pale thread stitched across the steep, rocky flanks of Mount Tiny melted the ingredient list off its own bottle. But West Nile virus — a reasonable route, as far as I could tell. Still, other hikers is scary, and raising children is all about weighing risks and had warned us about a risky bit where the path was blocked by benefits. a snowfield. And those dingy clouds hinted at a thunderstorm. While we rubbed repellent on the kids’ clothes, my husband I’m a cautious parent; on the scale of helicopter moms, I’m a and I reached a compromise. I would take the little guy back to Chinook. I wanted to turn around. the trailhead (yes, even though it’s usually best to stick to- Tony wanted to keep going. I was not surprised. After all, he gether). And Tony and our newly minted 10-year-old would keep had tried to reassure me about another trail by saying matter- walking towards Goat Flat. If Tony thought the snowfield was of-factly, “Don’t worry, I brought climbing rope.” safe, we would leave the final decision to our son, a steady kid Impasse. As we spritzed ourselves with herbal insect repel- with good judgment. lent, I examined my fears. How much of my worry was justified “You get veto power,” I told my son as I handed over my cam- by our circumstances at that moment, and how much stemmed era. “If it looks too scary, you and Daddy can turn around.” from all those years I spent working in the national parks, Two hours later, I got my camera back. Its tiny screen watching people fall victim to their vacations? showed a boy leaning on a sign in a meadow of alpine wildflow- Though “watching” probably isn’t the right word. The ers, surrounded by the bulky gray peaks of the Anaconda-Pintler memories that still jam my decision-making circuits are from a Wilderness. I asked about the snowfield. summer during which I didn’t see much of anything. But I heard “No big deal,” my son said. A former employee of plenty. “Not dangerous at all,” my husband said. several federal land I worked as a dispatcher that year in Rocky Mountain Nation- We didn’t see any mountain goats that day. They may have management agen- al Park. Millions of people have visited the park without requir- taken refuge in steeper — and, for them, safer — terrain. But cies, Julie Gillum Lue ing so much as a Band-Aid. Yet mountains inevitably yield their somewhere in those mountains, no doubt, a black-nosed, butter- writes about family share of disasters, and that summer was especially rough. We milk-colored kid was learning how to navigate the cliffs, while a and the outdoors from never knew when that next phone or radio call would announce a pointy-horned mother stood between her baby and the abyss. her home in western lost child, a lightning strike, a fractured femur, a car over a cliff. Good parenting, I’d say. Montana. JOSE AZEL / AURORA PHOTOS JOSE AZEL / AURORA

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

MONTANA WASHINGTON Oops: Totally wrong creature on that billboard When you live in Seattle in a house the size of a outside Lolo, Montana. An all-volunteer dumpster, it can be tough on your dating life, tourism improvement board had hoped to says Grist magazine’s Katie Herzog. “Finding pique interest with a billboard showing a bait love is a lot harder to do when you bring some- fisherman hooking a largemouth bass, under one home for the first time and they see that the headline: “Welcome to Bitterroot Valley, your apartment has the dimensions of a jail Montana: Small Town, Big Adventures.” But as cell.” Herzog’s clock radio is her 300-square- any fly-fisher can tell you, the state is a mecca foot home’s entertainment system, her bed for anglers seeking elusive trout, reports the requires a ladder to a loft, and the kitchen Ravalli Republic. Fishing outfitter Eddie accommodates only one person at a time. The Olwell went to his favorite brewery and found 32-year-old writer says she was lucky to find that people had already become “kind of wild” an adaptable partner before having to resort to about the error. Though it’s heresy in Montana a new reality show, Tiny House Dating, which to admit it, none of the tourism board mem- puts together two strangers. They’re invited bers fished, and to them, one fish seemed much to live in a tiny house and, if they’re tolerant like another. Now, the group has ordered a new and kind, “come out of it in love.” Though the billboard starring a fly-fisher hooking a trout. experiment might sound like fun, chances are Board member Robbie Springs looked on the it would be terrible, Herzog guessed. Would bright side, observing that “even driving by at she watch the show? “Maybe, but I can’t fit a TV in my apartment, so I suppose I’ll never 65 miles per hour, people were able to identify ARIZONA Priorities. JIM WEST that the fish was the wrong kind.” have the chance.”

CALIFORNIA IDAHO The lonely mountain lion that roams Los Angeles’ A tiny house sounds lavish compared to a ship- Griffith Park is probably responsible for leap- area. This is their home, so we’ll learn to adapt ping container. Yet in Treasure Valley, Idaho, ing the zoo’s 9-foot-high fence and bagging a to P-22 just like he’s learned to adapt to us.” entrepreneur David Herman lived in one for a 14-year-old koala bear named Killarney. The couple of years and considered it an upgrade bear enjoyed wandering through the grounds at UTAH from a mobile home he called “a tuna can night, reports the Associated Press, and her fans “When most of us see a ranger,” said an editorial with windows.” Now, Herman is developing a were shocked when her mangled body was found in the Salt Lake Tribune, “we tip our hats.” Bea- 17-home subdivision of metal container homes outside the zoo. Evidence against the 130-pound ver County Commissioner Mark Whitney, how- on 1.2 acres near the Boise River, and seeking big cat, dubbed P-22, remains circumstantial, ever, who presides over a far flung county of only “eco-conscious” homebuyers willing to spend though the animal is known to have crossed 6,100 residents, regards a federal land manager $152,000 for a “well-insulated and durable” two freeways to scale the park fence a few years as a threat — somebody who puts a virtual house. Each is composed of four 8-by-40-foot ago. The recent attack sparked a debate be- bull’s-eye on a local’s front, and maybe on his containers 9-and-a-half-foot-tall, and features tween the Los Angeles Council and zoo director back as well. The idea that federal law enforce- some solar, wooden floors, and an acoustic John Lewis, with Councilman Mitch O’Farrell ment is a “Utah menace” is, “in a word, bull,” the ceramic ceiling, says the Idaho Statesman. The wanting to relocate the puma to a larger area paper said bluntly, and yet the state has agreed container houses seem a bargain: The median where it might find other lions. P-22, whose wild to pay $250,000 to the Rural Utah Alliance. sale price for new homes in the county in 2015 relatives are accustomed to 200 square miles for This is the group that might pick up some of the was $313,900. hunting and breeding, might be feeling thwart- legal fees San Juan County Commissioner Phil ed. Last year he left the 8-square-mile park and Lyman racked up after spearheading an illegal “lolled under a crawlspace of a home, attract- ATV ride through Recapture Canyon two years WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see ing a media frenzy until he finally wandered ago. The paper’s editorial writers, who have be- hcn.org. home.” But Lewis wants to keep P-22 around, come increasingly exasperated, asked: Why does Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and even though the cat’s chances of mating remain 15 percent of the state — the rural contingent — often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag remote: “There’s a lot of native wildlife in this always “wag the other 85 percent?” photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High To right the wrongs of the past century and to ensure that the Country 1,896-mile-long Rio Grande does not end up bone-dry, News “it is time to place a moratorium on water use and development For people who care about the West. in the Rio Grande Basin. High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a —“Te Rio Grande needs our help now,” by Jen Pelz, magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, from Writers” on the Range, hcn.org/wotr hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News April 4, 2016