-On the banner of our paper it says, “The newspaper of the Navajo people.” We’re here first and foremost for them. Not for the government; not for the politicians; not for one single person or viewpoint.” * Tom Arviso Jr., editor of the Navajo Times, in From the Front Lines; Free Press Struggles in Native […]
Tribes struggle for a free press
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
From croaks to chirps
I used to spend a lot of time chasing frogs. It would be easier to say that I quit doing this at age 12, like the other kids, but the truth is a little harder to explain. I would show up at work – I got paid for this – with a long-handled net and […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Air Force drops a sweetheart deal onto ranch land
In an unorthodox move, the U.S. Air Force plans to offer an Idaho rancher around $1 million to turn his grazing allotment into a bombing range. The deal, which was added to the defense appropriations bill by Idaho Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, would pull Bert Brackett’s cattle off 12,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Only Grand Teton knows
Who was first to reach the top of 13,770-foot Grand Teton in Wyoming? Was it Yellowstone National Park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, who said he did it in 1872? Or a group of climbers who documented their ascent later, in 1898? No one will ever know for sure, but the Park Service did not take […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
National parks pull the plug on jet skis
The National Park Service will ban personal watercraft by mid-September on all of its waterways except 11 national recreation areas and two national seashores. The prohibition follows bans by individual parks, including the Everglades in Florida, Canyonlands in Utah, and most recently Olympic National Park in Washington, where Lake Crescent will see its last jet […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
The Wayward West
Climbers are off the hook and back on their bolts (HCN, 8/17/98). Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons halted a U.S. Forest Service ban on fixed anchors in wilderness – for now. USDA official Stephanie Hague says public groups will begin “negotiations’ about a new rule in the next few months. Climbers and wilderness advocates want […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
There goes the neighborhood
-We’re basically Middle America, except we’re off the grid,” says Diane Mitsch-Bush, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her neighborhood, only a few miles from the center of town, has powered itself with solar and propane energy since the early 1980s. But Mitsch-Bush and other residents say their low-key and environmentally conscious lifestyle is […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Could I see your permit to pray?
Anxious about protecting its $200 million telescope complex, the University of Arizona recently required a “prayer permit” for Native Americans who want to visit the summit of Mount Graham. San Carlos Apaches and other native peoples who hold sacred the high peaks of the Pinaleno Mountains, 120 miles southeast of Phoenix, say the permits attack […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
How the Canyon Became Grand
Stephen Pyne, who is best known as an historian of fire, has written an audacious book which shows how, for a few wonderful decades in the 19th century, the Grand Canyon stood near the center of the intellectual development of the Western world. During those years, the Canyon was, all in one, the Hubble Telescope, […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Heard around the West
When Ed Abbey aficionados get together in Death Valley, Calif., Nov. 6-8, hospital-lab worker Gail Hoskisson is sure to be the cynosure of all eyes. Well, maybe not her, but the vintage vehicle she’s driving. It doesn’t look like much, this blue, 1973 Ford F100 pickup that has logged 197,000 miles through the deserts of […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Writing on native ground in New Mexico
ZUNI PUEBLO, N.M. – From far out in the high desert of western New Mexico, green-leaved Chinese elms create a sharp burst of color, an island in the sagebrush and juniper and high red mesas that make up the Zuni landscape. This is home to 6,400 Zunis, one of 19 Indian pueblos that spread across […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
These legislative riders sit low in the saddle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Pale Rider, a 1985 third-rate version of the movie Shane, Clint Eastwood plays the slow-talking, straight-shooting gunman (and clergyman to boot, credibility not being this flick’s strong suit) who saves settlers from a big mining company. The riders being discussed hereabouts are pale enough, but not one of them would discomfit […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Timber mills close in the Northwest
BOISE, Idaho – When an angry mob of Boise Cascade Corp. sawmill workers gathered in front of the Idaho Conservation League office in late July, staffer John McCarthy thought twice about going outside. At a similar rally earlier this year, a timber worker grabbed McCarthy by the neck and said, “If I was younger, I’d […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
New Mexico Greens here to stay
When New Mexico held a special election to replace the late Republican Rep. Steve Schiff this June, people compared the race to a mud-wrestling match, only less dignified. The Republican was Rhodes Scholar Heather Wilson; the Democrat, millionaire Phil Maloof. He mailed videotapes in black boxes questioning Wilson’s ethics, and she countered with a flier […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Dear Friends
A subscription of his own After several years on HCN’s circulation desk, staffer Kathy Martinez is hard to surprise. But even she was taken aback when a Kansas mail carrier called to subscribe because the people who used to take High Country News moved off his route. “I didn’t get a chance to finish that […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Tribes strike back at mining
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. COLVILLE INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash. – When the Battle Mountain Gold company came to this 1.4 million-acre reservation in 1994, tribal elder Georgia Iukes says, “Boy, that got my dander up.” At the meeting, she spoke forcefully against the exploration contract the company wanted the […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
A run at sustainable development
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Former Highlands Alliance President Michael “Buffalo” Mazzetti is promoting sustainable development by bottling water from Buckhorn Mountain. Mazzetti debuted the company at the Northwest Natural Foods Show in Seattle last April and secured distribution deals for the first 17,000 bottles. The bottling company has […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Excavating Ecotopia
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story under these headlines: “A run at sustainable development” and “Tribes strike back at mining.” OROVILLE, Wash. – The first gold in the state was discovered over that ridge,” says 84-year-old Web Hallauer, pointing across shimmering Lake Osoyoos and this small lakeside town and its orchards, to the […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
It still rhymes with scourge
Dear HCN, In your 8/3/98 issue, Robert Nold takes me to task over my 6/22/98 essay, “It Rhymes With Scourge.” Robert admits that donkeytail spurge has “escaped from Boulder-area gardens and established itself in some areas,” but is not a “fast-moving, aggressive invader.” Boulder Mountain Parks would disagree; it lists donkeytail spurge as an invasive […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Wyoming reporter was biased
Dear HCN, Paul Krza’s July 6 article on Wyoming errs in many ways – including his failure to ever talk to any Wyoming Heritage Society representative regarding our lasting commitment to Wyoming’s economy. For the record, the Wyoming Heritage Society: * Supports economic diversification. (Mr. Krza alleges we have not supported economic changes or causal […]