Daily Yonder teases out the challenges facing the Northern Cheyenne Indians.
Tribal member Terry Beartusk insists that the N. Cheyenne need a large source of reliable economic output, such as coal mining, that can fuel larger businesses and development.
“Our tribe is among the poorest in the nation," he says. "There are even questions about the economic sustainability of our administration.”
He points to the Southern Ute Tribe of Colorado as a model of economic development based on natural resources. Using their $3 billion from coal bed methane, the S. Ute tribe has established a separate and independent business entity, the Southern Ute Tribe Growth Fund. The Fund oversees the tribe’s substantial business and investment holdings including Southern Ute Alternative Energy. Southern Ute Alternative Energy has just invested in an experimental green energy enterprise, Solix Biofuels. Already the world’s largest algae to energy technology development company, Solix is located on the S. Ute reservation. Its goal is to mass produce oil derived from algae and convert it to biodiesel fuel.
Experts have described the coal deposits on the N. Cheyenne reservation as “world class,” enough to fuel the entire United States demand for one year. “We can develop this resource in a responsible manner,” says Beartusk.
Do they dig the black rock and risk spoiling their culture and their environment? Can they work succesfuly with EPA and miners to make it an environmentally-compatible enterprise? Or do they deny themselves a chance to exploit their own resources, and continue their dependence on local and federal subsistence.
If you were a Christian missionary to the Cheyenne people, what would you recommend?
I grew up near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, and worked for a summer on the adjacent Crow Reservation (Youth Conservation Corps -- a good job but certainly a government boondoggle: taking white city kids and busing and housing them on an Indian reservation while the unemployed locals watched).
There are no easy answers on this one. The Northern Cheyenne country is beautiful, with pine-covered bluffs and grasslands. The best reclamation efforts in the area never really restore the land to its previous condition. But the poverty is real, and there appear to be few solutions. A paced, limited, and well-supervised mining plan could bring considerable relief. The population on the reservation is small--just a few thousand people--so pacing the development over a longer period of time could be advantageous. Pre-mining development, such as building new rail lines, could make this option unlikely.