Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 14:18:18 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Energy Tribes


One of the crowning ironies of the history of this racist, capitalist
country is that Indian reservations today hold enormous quantities of coal,
oil, gas and uranium. If the 19th century architects of genocide had been
able to predict this startling outcome, they probably would have simply
killed every last Indian in order to put a lock on future profits. The
struggle for Indian control of these resources has turned out to be one of
the sharpest struggles of the past 25 years.

What is the magnitude of these reserves? "Breaking the Iron Bonds," by
Marjane Ambler (U. of Kansas, 1990), lays out the numbers for the year 1974:

"The Interior Department said thirty-three reservations had as much as 200
billion tons of coal, which represented as much as 30 percent of all the
coal west of the Mississippi. Federal estimates of uranium holdings ranged
from 16 percent to 37 percent of the nation's total. The department said
forty Indian reservations held reserves of 4.2 billion barrels of oil and
17.5 trillion cubic feet of gas--3 percent of the nation's known reserves.
Most of these minerals still lay underground; so even if the tribes had
been politically able to operate as a cartel, they could not have
influenced energy fuel prices. Nevertheless, they represented the largest
mineral owners in the country outside the federal government and the
railroads."

These reserves became the subject of intense interest in the early 1970s
during the so-called energy crisis. Almost overnight, tribes who eked out a
living as ranchers or farmers were receiving bids from some of the biggest
and most avaricious companies in America. Two American Indians emerged as
champions of tribal rights against the marauders. They sought to accurately
measure the amount of energy reserves. They also had to figure out how to
defend the development needs of the tribes against the interests of
corporations who were merely out to make a quick profit. In other words,
all corporations.

One of these was the Comanche LaDonna Harris, who was instrumental in the
formation of Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) in 1975, a coalition
to protect Indian interests. Not coincidentally, she was Barry Commoner's
vice-presidential running mate on the Citizens Party ticket in 1980. Such
was the racism of the radical movement that when her name used to come up
that year, they referred to her as "Just some Indian woman." That was
enough to satisfy the curiosity of a brain-dead leftist movement that could
not appreciate the importance of ecologists and American Indians
coalescing. There is evidence that it still doesn't.

Harris had founded Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) in order to
promote tribal self-government. Concerned about disadvantageous contracts
with energy companies, she hired 3 interns from Dartmouth University to
review federal records. The results were earthshaking. Nobody had ever
realized the magnitude of the potential wealth. She presented Federal
Energy Administration (FEA) chief Frank Zerb with the evidence in the
summer of 1975 and read him the riot act. "You can't have an energy policy
without Indians; collectively, they're the biggest private owners of energy
in the country."

Another key figure was Chuck Thomas, a Cherokee who worked as an oil-field
inspector for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). If Harris was instrumental
in putting a spotlight on the existence of huge energy reserves, Thomas was
critical in raising tribal awareness about the need to tightly control
them. He figured out something was amiss on June 13, 1980 when he caught an
oil truck leaving the Wind River Reservation without a permit. This led to
a full-scale investigation and upgrade of the inspection and accounting
system on the energy-rich reservations. Thomas was the right person to help
put new training procedures into place. Before going to work for the USGS,
he had worked in the oil fields for fifteen years as a roustabout and
roughneck. He was plain-spoken about his qualifications. "I'm not a man of
long words and big politics...I have a worm's eye view of it (oil thefts)
because I was the man in the field." He had blunt advice for Indian youth
who were interning with him: "Be suspicious and trust nothing or nobody."

CERT played an important role in defending tribal interests during the
energy boom years. The revenues that came from royalty payments from big
corporations, while not eliminating Indian poverty, did play a role in
tribal development. One of the most tangible results was the creation of
the Blackfeet Tribal bank, the beneficiary of Jim Craven's consultation
services. The Blackfeet tribe derived 90 percent of its total income in
1985 from oil and gas royalties and taxes.

The emergence of a cartel-like formation like CERT scared the tribes'
enemies out of its wits. During the mid-1970s OPEC was the bogeyman of many
Americans, rich and not-so-rich. The notion that Americans would have to
pay top dollar for petroleum was shocking. It was one thing for Americans
to have a monopoly on computer software, automobiles, weapons, medicine,
etc., but it was another thing for the rest of the world to assert itself
in this manner. All nations were equal, but some nations were more equal
than others.

The Denver Post fretted over the emergence of CERT in a 1979 editorial:

"Supposedly we are to pony up cheerfully so the noose of escalating energy
prices can be tightened around our necks... The people who manipulate
Indian policies are indulging in much nonsense...Admittedly, justice has
not always been dispensed equitably. But is the sufferance of our national
government--dedicated to tribal advancement [??!!]--that gives the tribes
leeway to act with more independence than other Americans.

"But limits there are. Imagine what would happen if some adviser persuaded
a tribal group to sign a treaty with Libya which Colonel Quaddafy was to
ship Russian missiles to the reservation to guarantee the tribe's integrity."

These fears, which were largely a psychological projection of rapacious
American capitalists on their victims, were heightened when CERT hired
Ahmed Kooros as its chief economist. Kooros had served as Iran's deputy
minister of economics and oil under both the Shah and Khomeini.

The parallel with OPEC nations was of course overdrawn. The true
relationship between the U.S. and the energy tribes was not unlike that
which exists between it and oil-producing countries like Nigeria and Angola
that have non-industrialized, financially weak economies. The possibility
for exploitation is much greater. The producers do get royalties, but it
comes at a price. The big corporations leave the underdeveloped countries
in a state of ecological ruin while draining the life-blood of the nation.
The relationship is like Dracula's to his victims. Dracula might treat
somebody to a good meal but afterwards the guest became a blood-pudding
dessert.

The most dramatic instance of the social and environmental costs of energy
development was the break in a tailing dam at the United Nuclear
Corporation's Church Rock, New Mexico uranium mill on July 16, 1979.
(Tailings are the residue of uranium mining.) One hundred million tons of
radioactive water spilled into the Rio Puerco River on the Navajo
reservation and it took on a sickly yellow hue, like battery acid. Animals
that stepped into the river developed sores on their legs and died almost
immediately. For the next year Navajos could neither eat nor sell mutton,
an economic mainstay of the tribe. For the next decade the Indians and
other people living near the river could not use local water supplies for
drinking or stock watering. Despite all the publicity surrounding 3-Mile
Island, this was the worst nuclear plant accident in American history.

Another noteworthy example of the destructiveness of unregulated energy
development is what happened at the Upper Missouri River Basin in the
1980s. The tribes of the Northern Plains felt the need to defend their
long-term interests against some powerful energy corporations that were
planning a huge coal gasification plant in Wyoming. The companies needed
water from nearby states where Indians had ownership of the potential
supply. The plant and ancillary energy development operations would require
huge amounts of water. The only source was the nearby Yellowstone River, as
important to the Northern Plains tribes as the Rio Puerco was to the Navajos.

The federal government was all for the diversion of water to the Wyoming
mega-project. A formal request had come from the following companies:
Peabody Coal, Gulf Oil, AMAX, Shell Oil, Exxon, Kerr-McGee, Western Energy
Corporation, Consolidated Coal, ARCO, Conoco, Mobil and WESCO. How could
the US turn down a request from such companies? After all, they bribe both
parties to carry out their wishes.

Arrayed against the government and energy companies was a coalition of
ranchers, environmentalists and Indians. Potential royalty payment to the
tribes was not enough to placate them. Their relationship to the land and
water, which had pastoral and spiritual dimensions, could not easily be
priced. This in essence is the source of the conflict between the tribes
and capitalist America, just as it is in other parts of the world. Last
week 10,000 villagers occupied the construction site of a dam on the
Narmada river in India. It would destroy their livelihood as well as strip
the river of the sacred quality it held in their lives. The main
beneficiaries of the dam would be wealthy farmers.

A final example will illustrate not only the conflicts between the
corporations and the tribes, but within different tribes themselves. The
power of the dollar is enormous. A big corporation will not be above
pitting one group of Indians against another when it is seeking to advance
its bottom line. Capitalists have been dividing and conquering for
centuries. Since they are such a tiny percentage of the population, they
are always seeking ways to weaken their potential victims.

I am referring here to the conflict between the Hopi and Navajo tribes over
development in the Black Mesa region of New Mexico. This is an extremely
complex problem that pits the development needs of the Hopi tribe against
Navajo sheepherders. There are enormous profits at stake as the Peabody
Coal Company has targeted this area for extensive development of coal and
other energy resources. I will not even begin to try to arbitrate the rival
claims of the two tribes, but refer to the Black Mesa Web Page for
testimony from both sides in the dispute.

In a 1993 complaint to Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, the Navajos
complained about the slurry line that transports approximately 5 million
tons of coal each year from Black Mesa to Laughlin, Nevada. It was "the
only instance in American history where coal has been transported with
groundwater that represents the only source of drinking water for an Indian
Tribe." Since the Peabody Coal Company uses over a billion gallons of
pristine drinking water from the Navajo-Aquifer, it is no surprise that a
drought afflicted both the Hopi and Navajo reservations in 1996.
Development comes at a cost.

As long as tribes insist on putting their own interests above other tribes,
the capitalist will come out ahead. The capitalist has trained himself to
do this. Cecil Rhodes perfected this art in Africa and was able to
safeguard the interests of the mining companies while trampling on the
rights of the tribal peoples. A recent PBS biography of the
arch-imperialist showed how he did it You promise one tribe one thing as
long as it will make war against the other. When the tribe is victorious
and hands the spoils of war over to the British colonists, they simply find
another tribe to enlist in their sordid fight.

There is absolutely no question that a higher level of American Indian
unity is necessary to protect the economic and ecological rights of one and
all. This is easier said than done because the tribes have histories that
go back for hundreds of years. Some experts analyze the conflicts between
Hopi and Navajo as having existed long before the appearance of Peabody.
Their resolution would seem to be one of the most urgent tasks facing
Indian peoples.

Economic necessity is driving Indian nationalism, a progressive force. The
emergence of CERT shows that Indians can coalesce nationally when their
interests as a people coincide. Despite a downturn in the energy sector of
the economy through the 1980s and 90s, there is little question that it
will reemerge with a vengeance. There are several factors that lie behind
this.

First of all, energy companies have a double standard when it comes to
pollution. They view Indian reservations and Third World countries as less
deserving of the sort of protections that white American neighborhoods
enjoy. The term for this is "environmental racism." This is in part a
reflection of the tendency of mainstream environmental organizations to
fight harder for their own constituencies, which are largely white and
middle-class. An oil spill in the ocean near Santa Monica aroused the
affluent swimmers and surfers to action. A uranium spill in New Mexico
hardly registers on mass consciousness, even when it is greater than what
occurred at 3-Mile Island.

Energy companies have less latitude in white, middle-class or even
working-class neighborhoods, so they go overseas to make the kind of
profits they need to satisfy Wall Street. Chevron Oil had to clean up its
act in the waters off Santa Monica, but throws caution to the wind in
Nigeria. Nigeria, like large sections of New Mexico, is an environmental
disaster. When poor people object to pollution, their "benefactors" argue
that they have to make a choice between clean air and water, and jobs. The
term for this is "greenmail." Opposed to greenmail is the demand that all
development take place under the strictest environmental guidelines. People
must come before profits.

Another important consideration has to do with the potential importance of
uranium mining in the near future. Concerns over global warming have
spurred new interest in alternatives to oil and gas, greenhouse emission
producing fuels. The more sensible approach would be to explore solar and
wind energy, but nuclear power companies have been pressing their case.
Their lobbyists were very active at the recent Kyoto Global Warming
conference. East Asia is a potential market for their poisons. The Chinese
and other Asian governments are planning to build 70 nuclear power plants
in the next 25 years. A large portion of the fuel will certainly come from
the Indian reservations, where more than 1/3 of potential reserves exists.
The capitalist would love to mine uranium without caution in such places
and sell it to Asian governments whose willingness to poison for profits
equals their own.

The choice is not between poverty and pollution, although this is what the
big corporations would have us believe. Development can take place without
destroying rivers and soil in the process. Mining and oil-drilling can take
place in a relatively safe manner, as long as certain guidelines are in
place. The decision to mine or to drill for oil must first of all be made
by the tribal peoples who will suffer the consequences both good and bad.
Once they make this democratic decision, the oil, coal or uranium companies
must respect the surrounding ecology.

How can the numerically small and impoverished Indian tribes force huge
corporations like Peabody Coal or Exxon Oil to respect their economic and
ecological demands? The answer is that they first must find ways to merge
their tribal interests into a larger Indian collective. The American Indian
nation would not abolish the local traditions of the tribe; it would simply
present a united fist to those who would exploit it.

Closely related to this task is the need to internationalize the struggle.
The American Indians on their own are a tiny percentage of the United
States. However, they are part of an immense struggle that is going on
world-wide against the same exact corporations who are attempting to foul
their air, soil and water in the pursuit of profits. The Indians of the
Amazon rainforest, the aborigines of Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand,
the Odongi people in Nigeria are all in similar fights. There are signs
that this type of internationalism is already beginning to take shape.
North American Indians have offered solidarity to the peoples of Chiapas,
who are defending themselves against a capitalist system that has more and
more of a global character.

NAFTA and similar agreements accelerate the economic onslaught that has
taking place within the borders of the United States, but displaces them
into regions where protection of human rights are weaker. When a
corporation faces a determined coalition of ranchers, environmentalists,
trade unions and tribes within our borders, it has no recourse except to go
places where the cops or army can openly repress such a coalition. This is
what happens in Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil where the popular movement
must deal with death squads and lesser forms of intimidation.

There is no other way to defend oneself from a marauding, profit-hungry,
globe-trotting capitalist system except through international solidarity.
The collapse of the East Asian economies makes the promise of prosperity
through low wages and polluting industry even more hollow than it ever was.
The only beneficiaries of low wages and pollution are the shareholders of
the corporations who expect maximum profits. To satisfy these shareholders
is to risk death from the poisons that the corporations spew in their name,
since cutthroat competition will simply allow the investor to shift his
money to a more profitable and anti-human corporation.

In my next post I will discuss American Indian beliefs about ecology, which
are essential to understanding a way out of the madness of a capitalist
system run amok.

Louis Proyect

(sources for this post include Marjane Ambler's book and the Black Mesa Web
Site at http://indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/maps/az/navhopi.html)





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