Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” Gambling has long been a part of most Native American cultures. Traditional handgames, involving song and trickery, are still played in community halls away from the casinos. But modern Indian gaming owes its roots to bingo played in […]
Life is a game, but bingo is serious
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
FORT McDOWELL, Ariz. – It started as a traditional cowboy and Indian battle – one the Indians were supposed to lose. At 6:00 on a May morning in 1992, a team of FBI agents accompanied by eight Mayflower moving vans invaded the Fort McDowell Reservation. Armed agents broke into the tribal bingo hall and began […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
The Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology and the West
Missoula Mayor Daniel Kemmis, author Terry Tempest Williams and other Westerners will speak at the Wallace Stegner Center Symposium, called The Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology and the West. The symposium, scheduled for April 12-13 at the University Park Hotel in Salt Lake City, will explore themes of cooperation and ecosystem management in the […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Small Farming in Oregon
The Oregon State University Extension Service will host a conference for owners of small farms March 29-30 at Linfield College in McMinnville. Small Farming in Oregon will offer more than 40 workshops on subjects ranging from water rights to mushroom and ginseng production. Registration is $25 for one day and $40 for both days. Contact […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Environmental heroes
Not surprisingly, “environmental zeroes’ eclipsed “environmental heroes’ in the first session of the 104th Congress, according to the scorecard released last month by the League of Conservation Voters. The group’s 26th annual report rates lawmakers on key environmental votes, such as legislation to close national parks and to sell public lands. Contact the League of […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Arid art
Arid Art An Englishman from Cornwall in the west of England, Tony Foster is fascinated by the American West’s wilderness of eroded rocks and deserts, including Death Valley in California and the slickrock onion domes of Utah’s canyonlands. An exhibit of his latest work, Arid Lands, Watercolor Diaries of Journeys across Deserts, can be seen […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Naked and marvelous
NAKED AND MARVELOUS The Colorado Plateau and its Drainage, a topographic map by Kenneth Perry, is the closest most of us will ever come to seeing the West from heaven. Perry combines USGS data with sophisticated Macintosh graphics to create maps that are both useful and colorful. While Raven Graphics maps are handsome and accurate, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Just a little advice
JUST A LITTLE ADVICE A county commissioner in Colorado thinks he can help newcomers adjust to the rural parts of Larimer County. John Clarke has written a seven-page primer, The Code of the West, which includes some useful tips. About utilities: even cellular phones won’t work in all areas; Mother Nature: expansive soils can buckle […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
They did it themselves
They did it themselves Some 200 federal employees and outside experts have developed a sweeping management plan for public lands in the six states of the Columbia River Basin. And it didn’t cost taxpayers a dime. It was done under the auspices of the nonprofit AFSEEE, the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Tailings pile makes waves
Tailings pile makes waves Uranium mine tailings piled on the banks of the Colorado River near Moab, Utah, will stay put if the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Atlas Minerals Co. get their way. In a draft environmental impact statement released in January, the federal agency says reclaiming the tailings mountain on site – as the […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Desert rendezvous
DESERT RENDEZVOUS Restoring riparian zones and passing a ballot initiative are two topics participants will talk about at the 18th annual High Desert Conference April 25-28. Sponsors of A Desert Wildlands Revival: Water, Wildlife and Wilderness in The High Desert include the Oregon Natural Desert Association, Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club and Committee for […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Brand new name, same old story
A new group has entered the fray over the Pacific Northwest’s salmon, but don’t be fooled by its name. The first, invitation-only meeting of Northwesterners for More Fish brought representatives from big electric companies, banks, timber companies, ports and aluminum plants to an exclusive club in Spokane last month, reports the Portland Oregonian. There, the […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
EPA tells Colorado to get tough on mine
The EPA told Colorado to tighten its regulations for an open-pit gold mine near Victor or risk having the EPA take over the process. Three years ago, the state turned to the federal agency to clean up the disastrous Summitville mining site in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains when the owners declared bankruptcy and left behind […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Score one for local control
For awhile it seemed as if one of the most potent weapons available to local counties and towns in Colorado would be ripped out of their hands. Conservative legislators and water developers wanted to gut state law 1041, which allows local communities to develop stringent land-use regulations to control everything from water projects to airport […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Grizzlies forego their snooze
Braving sub-zero temperatures to go winter camping in Montana’s Glacier National Park used to have one big perk – no need to watch out for grizzly bears. The bears usually hibernate from late-November to April. But now, say biologists, two or three young grizzlies are on the prowl year-round in the park, pilfering the kills […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Enough already, ranchers
Dear HCN: Just a few thoughts on reintroduction of the Mexican wolf. Al Schneberger of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association is correct when he says, “This isn’t about wolves. It’s about control.” However, I see it as ranchers doing the controlling. They control not only the public lands but every aspect of anything that […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
From the front lines of Idaho
Dear HCN: Mindy Wiebush claims to have heard negative things about activists protecting Cove/Mallard forests and Idaho and denigrates those people (HCN, 2/19/96). Yet she labels actions from corporate vigilantes as merely “hotheaded.” While I don’t know anything about what she is rumored to have heard, this is what I know for sure: All activists […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
The edge explained
Dear HCN: Michael Cain’s question about forest “edges’ is a good one (HCN, 3/4/96). Too much edge can be a very bad thing. When edges are created by large-scale forest fragmentation – for instance, as a result of extensive clear-cuts – then the remaining forest stands can effectively become islands isolated from the rest of […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
How I learned to love logging
For a long time I was a critic of the Thunderbolt timber sale on the Payette and Boise national forests in Idaho. Its real name was the “Thunderbolt Watershed Restoration Project” because its intent, the public was told, was to help salmon. But it seemed like a timber sale since it called for 3,300 acres […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Greenbacks shape campaigns
Dollars continue to plague and divide candidates. For Idaho Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth, misuse of money has become a potential Achilles’ heel. According to the state’s Democratic Party, Chenoweth’s campaign illegally hired a company she owns. Now, Chenoweth won’t say why her campaign paid $35,000 for rent and office space to her Consulting Associates although […]