American Indians who claim the federal government owes them billions of dollars are crying foul over a recently released report. In 1996, Indians across the country filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars in royalties from oil and gas production, timber-harvesting and grazing on Indian land (HCN, 2/4/02: Indian trust […]
Missing Interior money: Piles or pennies?
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Backcountry road deal runs over wilderness
A nearly three-decade-long fight over who controls backcountry roads crossing federal land in Utah may soon come to an end — and the resolution casts a huge cloud over the future of wilderness protection. In 2000, the state threatened to sue the federal government, claiming ownership of the roads under a Civil War-era law known […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
The Latest Bounce
Work on “the last great federal dam” is under way: The Bureau of Reclamation has begun building the pumping plant for the Animas-La Plata Project outside of Durango, Colo. (HCN, 8/27/01: A-LP gets federal A-OK). The station will pump Animas River water 510 feet uphill and two miles west to a reservoir site in Ridges […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
In search of the desert manna
TAOS, N.M. — Winter was coming, and like so many others, I was broke. I had a freezer full of elk meat, but it wasn’t enough to survive the cold months in the high country. There’s no fat in elk meat; explorers Lewis and Clark lost weight on it, my friends say. With little money […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Heard Around the West
A typist at the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah, misread a letter to the editor, and the result was a howler, particularly since the letter dealt with public misconceptions about wolves. The word “wolves” was transmogrified into “wives,” and somehow got through copyediting without a hitch. Here’s how the sentence appeared in the paper: “Wives […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
On Black Mesa, the natives make a comeback
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Planting time.” BLACK MESA, Navajo Nation — On a sterling, sunny spring day, a 14-story-tall machine chews gaping holes in the Navajo Nation tribal homeland. The Marion 8750 dragline weighs 9.8 million pounds, supports a 300-foot boom and operates a bucket that removes 200 […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression and war in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Nation’s largest tribe keeps casinos out
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Tiny tribe bets its community on casino.” The Navajo Nation may have found a way to get gambling profits without gambling’s pitfalls. Last November, Arizona voters narrowly approved Proposition 202, and opened a new way for tribes—including […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Tiny tribe bets its community on casino
Stillaguamish say gambling offers an escape from poverty
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
New forest plan leaves owls in a lurch
Sierra Nevada plan gets logger-friendly
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
To restore the West, go big and go native
It’s always disconcerting to have a myth blown apart — like when you discover that your favorite sports star, whom you always thought to be a nice, upstanding person, cheats on his wife or abuses his kids. The world wobbles; food doesn’t taste as good; you just want to fall asleep and wake up when […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Dear Friends
Two weeks to launch time It’s true: This is the last issue of HCN in its current format. Your next issue will look a little different. We won’t give away the details of the new design, but thanks go out to all those who wrote in with ideas and critiques of the covers we printed […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Planting time
The native-seed business is blooming, but can a restoration economy take root in the West?
Posted inWotr
Why Greens need blue blazers
One of my childhood friends, Karl Warkomski, is the first and only elected Green Party member in ultra-right-wing Orange County, Calif. Orange Country — home to the mega-hawk and former congressman “B2 Bob” Dornan — is a place where people get misty-eyed remembering the Reagan presidency. So how in the world did Karl get elected? […]
Posted inWotr
Green Republicans: It’s not an oxymoron
In the seven years since I co-founded Republicans for Environmental Protection, officially known as REP America, I have answered two questions more often than any others: “Isn’t Republicans for Environmental Protection an oxymoron?” And, “If you care so much about conservation and environmental protection, why don’t you become a Democrat?” The first one is easy […]
Posted inWotr
Why I fight: The coming gas explosion in the West
Here’s what I once believed: that if the President knew about the damage done to our land by the energy industry, the damage would cease. I once believed that if you could show that industry can extract gas without damaging land right near us — as it does on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, and […]
Posted inWotr
With its back to the wall, California turns to the sea
It’s going to be a hot, feverish summer, even more so because water supplies are pinched unusually tight. Nowhere is that as true as in California. On New Year’s day, Interior Secretary Gale Norton rudely weaned the state off its long-running overuse of Colorado River water, slashing access to the river by 15 percent. Now, […]
Posted inWotr
No way to run Wyoming
Imagine, for a moment, that some kooky politicians in Washington, D.C.. decided they wanted to invade Iraq with feather dusters . Now, imagine a colonel in the Army warned them that this was a bad idea, and they need would need real tools of war, helicopters and tanks and such, to execute such a plan. […]
Posted inWotr
A Hopi woman warrior is honored in Arizona
America treats today’s soldiers with the kind of respect that Vietnam veterans could only dream about. Such nearly universal support — even from those who opposed the war against Iraq — shows how much the nation has learned from its mistakes. Efforts to honor one fallen soldier from Arizona show a refreshing desire to right […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Nevada development was inevitable
Dear HCN, There is evidently some lingering confusion regarding the Clark County, Nev., public-lands bill which was signed into law at the end of the last Congress. Given the huge, explosive population growth in Las Vegas and Henderson, and the development which is a consequence of this growth, the non-wilderness provisions of the bill – […]