Source: Indian Country Today Media Network, April 9, 2013
ESPN Sister Act: Jude, left, and Shoni Schimmel are ready for UConn.
The ball’s in your court, Lady Cardinals. Oh, it’s Sho-Time.
Last night the University of Louisville men’s team won the national championship, 82-76, over the Michigan Wolverines. Tonight, the Louisville ladies take their turn, meeting mighty UConn in New Orleans for the 2013 national title (8:30 p.m./ET, on ESPN). Only one other NCAA Division I school has won both the men’s and women’s national titles in the same year: UConn, in 2009. Coincidence? It’s cetainly added motivation.
The dynamite Cardinals, who are on an uprecedented run through the women’s tourney, came to the Big Dance as a middle-of-the-pack squad with explosive potential, but riddled with injuries. After taking care of business their first two games against Middle Tennessee State and Purdue, the Cards elminated the prohibitive favorite to win it all, Baylor, in a shocking Oh So Sweet Sixteen upset. Many are calling that victory the greatest upset in the history of the tournament. And that earned them an Elite Eight match-up with the Tennessee Volunteers, the all-time leader with eight national championships. Shoot. Score. Schimmel. Cards win, Cards win. Off to the Final Four, where a seed as low as the No. 5 Cards had been only once before–and their predecessor, Missouri State, lost, in 2001.
But these are the Louisville Cardinals: No longer party crashers, they’re most definitely the life of the party. And New Orleans, home to the Final Four, really knows how to throw a party.
Sunday, the U of L overcame a daunting 10-point halftime deficit with a stunning second-half surge to knock out the Cal Bears. And tonight they play for the national title. Boom goes the dynamite.
Oh what a night … Oh what a feeling! The Cards hope this is the scene–again-after another huge upset in the women’s tourney tonight. (The Associated Press/Alonzo Adams )
If you look at history and the “facts” on paper, UConn should win this game tonight.
The UConn Lady Huskies are a powerhouse, a perennial title contender and have been since coach Geno Auriemma arrived in Storrs, Connecticut, in 1985. Auriemma has never lost a national title game while helming the Huskies–and he’s brought them to seven finals. Win it all this year, and UConn matches Tennessee’s NCAA record of most championships: eight.
Big East rivals, UConn has dominated Louisville, winning their last 12 meetings. In their most recent game on January 15, the Cards were beaten 72-58. Further, the Huskies have proven they can beat the Cards in a title game: They did so in 2009, Louisville’s only other title game appearance. Only one time in history has one school won both the men’s and women’s titles in the same season: Yes, UConn, in 2009. And UConn has also won a title in New Orleans before: in 2004. This year they have four legitimate stars: Breanna Stewart, Stefanie Dolson, Bria Hartley and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis. Shutting down four dominant players is a lot different than shutting down one, like the Cards did versus Baylor–even if their best player, Brittney Griner, is All-Universe. Freshman phenom Stewart has scored 82 points in four 2013 tournament games. Mosqueda-Lewis is averaging 19.5 points per game. Formidable.
But this is Cardinals basketball, 2013 NCAA tournament version. And they have the Schimmel sisters.
“We’re not done with what we’ve come out here to do and that’s win a national championship,” Shoni Schimmel said. “Why not go out with a bang?”
Oh, what a Big Bang that will be. It’s Sho-Time.
The Louisville Cardinals take on the UConn Huskies for the national title tonight at 8:30 p.m./ET. ESPN will televise the game, with ESPN3.com livestreaming the action; go to Espn.com/watchespn for further details. Before the game, at 6 p.m./ET, Discovery Fit & Health will air Off the Rez, the acclaimed documentary about the Schimmels. For more info, click here.
Evergreen students carve wood, imprint culture in arts program The first class of students at The Evergreen State College’s new carving shed learned to make bentwood box drums from master carver David Boxley, center, over the weekend. Clifton Guthrie, left, puts a bend in his box drum after steaming the cedar board to soften the wood. Mark Harrison / The Seattle Times
OLYMPIA —
It’s the scent that hits you first: cedar. Pungent yet sweet, overpowering and cleansing.
The source was soon obvious: a stack of gigantic, old-growth cedar planks, awaiting the first students in the new carving shed just opened at The Evergreen State College. They started Saturday and will spend the next two weekends with David Boxley, a Tsimshian master carver based in Kingston, Kitsap County, learning how to make cedar bentwood box drums.
The class is the inaugural program in the shed, built with part of a $500,000, three-year grant from the Ford Foundation. The shed is envisioned as the first of very big things to come at Evergreen, with the launch of a new master’s of fine arts degree program in indigenous arts, the only one of its kind in the Lower 48, said Tina Kuckkahn-Miller, director of the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at Evergreen.
The carving shed is intended as the first building of more to come to house the program, she said.
Awe-struck by the big, beautiful planks, some of the students had to settle down before making their first cuts. It wasn’t just the wood — though a single slab of old-growth cedar more than 3 feet wide is an awesome material to work with. It was also the realization that carving in the tradition of their ancestors isn’t just any job.
“We are about to push our canoes out; don’t take this lightly,” Boxley said before beginning class.
“What you are about to do has been done for thousands of years. Wood is being bent for the right reasons. Not for commercial purpose, but for our ceremonies. To uplift our culture,” Boxley said.
“Try really hard. Don’t get frustrated. And at the end, hopefully there will be 10 box drums, ready to make some noise.”
In addition to hand tools, including heirloom handmade carving knives, carvers ripped into the big planks with circular saws to trim off rough edges.
Fred Fullmer, of Kirkland, a Tlingit artist, brought his granddaughter and another member of his dance group along to work on the box drum they hope to use in performing their songs and dances.
More commonly used by northern tribes to accompany ceremonial songs and dances, the box drum is a coveted novelty in Coast Salish country. Here, bentwood boxes are more familiar art pieces than box drums.
They are large, rectangular musical instruments made from a plank of cedar, steamed to bend it into a box shape.
Left open on one side, the box becomes a powerful drum, to be stood on one end, or, traditionally, hung from a rope of twined cedar bark. Struck with a hand or a padded beater, the box drum speaks with a deep resonant boom, louder and lower in tone than a skin drum.
Just carving the drum is fulfilling, Fullmer said, because it connects him with his ancestors.
“When I am carving I get to go through the same experiences they did,” he said. “To me, it is part of the fabric of our culture, it’s not just one thing, standing by itself. It’s all the pieces. The language, the songs, the dances, carving.”
Brandon Mayer, 17, of Shoreline, carefully unwound a canvas tool case to use his grandfather’s carving tools for the first time.
“What a thing to be part of. It’s a real honor to be preserving this art, bringing it back,” said Mayer, who is Haida and Tlingit.
Upper Skagit artist Peter Boome, of Tacoma, usually a print maker, said he was thrilled to have a chance to carve a bentwood box drum for the first time.
Every piece of art is a chance to inspire someone, Boome said. “Complacency isn’t an option.”
PIERRE — A South Dakota panel charged with scrubbing the state of offensive place names has recommended that two creeks, a dam and two other geographical features on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation be renamed to reflect the area’s traditional use for deer hunting.
The state Board on Geographic Names is proposing that the locations — all of which feature a variation of the phrase “Squaw Humper” — get new names in the Lakota language. For example, Squaw Humper Creek would instead be Tahc’a Okute Wakpa, which translates to Deer Hunting Ground Creek.
The names were suggested by Oglala Sioux tribal officials at a March 28 hearing on the reservation.
The state Board on Geographic Names will seek public comment on the proposed names before taking a final vote in June.
The names then would be submitted to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which has the final say on naming places.
The renaming of the five features in northwestern Shannon County is the second case in which the state board has used a new process aimed at increasing public involvement in changing offensive names for places, mostly features that use the terms “Negro” or “Squaw” but are so small they do not appear on most maps. The board recently recommended that Negro Creek in Meade County be renamed Howe’s Creek because it’s near the community of Howes.
The board’s chairman, state Secretary of Tribal Relations J.R. LaPlante, said the panel is grateful for the grassroots effort by historian Wilmer Mesteth and other officials of the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Historic Preservation Office to find culturally appropriate replacement names.
“Really, we were just ecstatic as a board to see the involvement. And of course, the names being recommended were in the original native tongue. It was just an exciting day for us,” LaPlante said.
Joyce Whiting, project review officer for the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, said she is happy the state board accepted the Lakota names proposed for the creeks and other features.
“Years ago, all the names — all the creeks, the buttes, everything — they were in Lakota,” Whiting said.
“It’s something for me to witness this and to be a part of it.”
The features being renamed apparently got their original names because a man lived in the area with two American Indian women, Whiting said.
The 2001 South Dakota Legislature passed a law to start eliminating offensive names, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has since changed the names of 20 places in the state.
Another state law passed in 2009 listed 15 names that hadn’t been changed and created the new state board to tackle the job.
However, the federal board has deferred action on some name changes, partly because it said the state had not sufficiently involved the public in renaming geographic features.
Next, the state board will seek new names for some places in Custer County, located in the southwestern corner of the state.
Whiting said tribal officials also would like to see something done about places with names that do not meet the official definition of offensive, but bother American Indians. Some places named for military officers sent to the area to subdue American Indians more than a century ago should also be known by their Lakota names, she said.
Chairman Mel Sheldon swears in Marie Zackuse and Theresa Sheldon to the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors Photo: Monica Brown
By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer
TULALIP, Wash.- Family and friends arrived early Saturday morning, April 6th, at the Tulalip Administration building to witness the swearing in of Marie M. Zackuse and Theresa Sheldon to the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors.
Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors, Chuck James, Theresa Sheldon, Glen Gobin, Melvin R. Sheldon Jr, Marlin Fryberg Jr, Marie M. Zackuse, Deborah Parker Photo: Monica Brown
Marie M. Zackuse thanks the board for welcoming her back as she takes her seat on the Services Committee of the Board Photo: Monica Brown
As Zackuse was welcomed to take her seat on the Services Committee along side Deborah Parker and Marlin Fryberg Jr, she responded, “I want to thank each and everyone that came today, my family and my elders.”
“I’m very grateful today that the Creator provided this opportunity once again for me and I will do the best that I can with what I know and what I have. I want to thank everybody who helped me”
New board member Theresa Sheldon thanks the board as they welcome her on the Business Committee of the board Photo: Monica Brown
“There are just so many inspirational elders and people in our community who helped encourage me to get to this point where I am today” said Sheldon as she took her seat along side Glen Gobin and Chuck James on the Business Committee.”It ‘s the beginning of a new journey and I am truly honored to be here and assist with this board of directors.”
“I’m very thankful for this and I’m excited to get work done”
Zackuse and Sheldon were elected March 16th 2013, at the Annual General Council meeting, they will both serve three year terms.
Source: USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
WASHINGTON, April 4, 2013 – The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) remains focused on carrying out its mission, despite a time of significant budget uncertainty. Today’s announcement is one part of the department’s efforts to strengthen the rural economy.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today the recipients of $5.3 million in Conservation Innovation Grants that will help develop approaches and technology that show producers how to adapt to extreme climate changes that cause drought.
Last year’s drought was the worst since the 1950s, having large impacts on producers across the country. With another possible drought this year, this grant program is one of the ways the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is working to help producers prepare.
“USDA is working diligently to help American farmers and ranchers rebound from last year’s drought and prepare for future times of climatic extremes,” Vilsack said. “Conservation Innovation Grants are an excellent way to invest in new technology and approaches that will help our farmers, ranchers and rural communities be more resilient in the future.”
The grants will address drought-related issues, such as grazing management, warm season forage systems, irrigation strategies and innovative cropping systems.
Recipients plan to evaluate innovative, field-based conservation technologies and approaches, leading to improvements like enhancing soil’s ability to hold water, evaluating irrigation water use and installing grazing systems that are more tolerant to drought.
Examples of projects include:
South Dakota State University: Received $713,000 to establish four grazing management demonstrations on South Dakota and Nebraska ranches. Producers can observe and demonstrate the impacts of innovative grazing management practices on their land’s ability to recover from the 2012 and future droughts through the use of rainout shelters.
Texas AgriLife Research: Received $233,000 to develop guidelines for managing irrigation under drought conditions and computer programs for linking weather stations with irrigation scheduling.
University of Florida Board of Trustees: Received $442,000 to address adaptation to drought by demonstrating and evaluating innovative approaches for improving irrigation water use efficiency of agricultural crops under drought conditions.
Colorado State University: Received $883, 000 to demonstrate synergistic soil, crop and water management practices that adapt irrigated cropping systems in the central Great Plains to drought and lead to efficient use of water. An existing model will be modified to allow farmers to calculate water savings from different conservation practices.
Intertribal Buffalo Council: Received $640,000 to evaluate how traditional/historical practices aided tribes in dealing with drought, developing a best practices database, and using that information for training and demonstration projects. This grant will support 57 tribes in 19 states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.)
NRCS has offered this grant program since 2004, investing in ways to demonstrate and transfer efficient and environmentally friendly farming and ranching practices. This specific announcement of program funding was in response to last year’s historic drought.
Conservation Innovation Grants projects are funded by the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and awarded through a competitive grants process. At least 50 percent of the total cost of projects must come from non-federal matching funds, including cash and in-kind contributions provided by the grant recipient.
USDA has made a concerted effort to deliver results for the American people, even as USDA implements sequestration – the across-the-board budget reductions mandated under terms of the Budget Control Act.
USDA has already undertaken historic efforts since 2009 to save more than $700 million in taxpayer funds through targeted, common-sense budget reductions. These reductions have put USDA in a better position to carry out its mission, while implementing sequester budget reductions in a fair manner that causes as little disruption as possible.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service helps America’s farmers and ranchers conserve the Nation’s soil, water, air and other natural resources. All programs are voluntary and offer science-based solutions that benefit both the landowner and the environment.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office of Adjudication, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (866) 632-9992 (Toll-free Customer Service), (800) 877-8339 (Local or Federal relay), (866) 377-8642 (Relay voice users).
This year’s TL’aneq’ benefit dinner includes a live fashion show by international designer Dorothy Grant
Ryan Key-Wynne, Public Information Officer, Northwest Indian College
International designer Dorothy Grant, who is Kaigani Haida from Alaska, will host a live fashion show at Northwest Indian College’s biggest fundraiser of the year. Grant’s unique style combines traditional Haida artwork with contemporary clothing for an effect that has gained her worldwide acclaim. Photo courtesy of Dorothy Grant
On April 12, Northwest Indian College (NWIC) will host its 5th Annual TL’aneq’: Gathering for a Celebration benefit dinner and Native cultural arts and experiences auction from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Swinomish Casino & Lodge. The event is the college’s biggest fundraising event of the year and – this year – will also celebrate NWIC’s 30th anniversary.
“I am truly looking forward to this year’s TL’aneq’ benefit dinner. This is a great opportunity to celebrate Coast Salish art and culture and share a meal and laughter, all while raising money to support our students,” NWIC President Justin Guillory said. “This has been a successful event, and we want to continue to build on that success by bringing friends and supporters of NWIC together in a good way for a good cause.”
The evening will begin with a silent auction, during which attendees will have a chance to bid on Coast Salish art – including paintings, carvings, jewelry and woven pieces – and they can speak directly with artists who have donated their work for the event. After that, a four-course dinner featuring fresh salmon, storytelling, a live fashion show and live auction will begin.
“You never know what will happen during the live auction,” said Ryan Key-Wynne, NWIC’s public information officer. “Last year, one of our supporters commandeered the mic and pleaded with others in the room to bid with her on a cultural experience. She said the experience would be a good opportunity to make new friends.”
Key-Wynne explained that bidding is usually competitive, with people bidding against each other, not with each other.
“Our auctioneer just stood there laughing, waiting for her to hand the mic back,” Key-Wynne said. “It was unprecedented, but very funny and the combined bid raised more than she would have contributed on her own.”
Coast Salish artists are the backbone of the TL’aneq’ fundraiser. Art, including this carving by Steven Charlie of the Squamish Nation, is donated by the artists each year and all of the profits help support a selected NWIC project or program. This year, all funds raised will go toward scholarships for NWIC students. Photo courtesy of NWIC
This year’s live auction will be preceded by a fashion show by international designer Dorothy Grant, who is Kaigani Haida from Alaska. Grant’s unique style combines traditional Haida artwork with contemporary clothing for an effect that has gained her worldwide acclaim.
“We are honored that Dorothy Grant will be joining our efforts at the college’s premier gala. Her fashion show willbe a lot of fun, especially with our student models,” said Greg Masten, director of NWIC’s Development Office, which organizes the event.
Last year, the event raised nearly $100,000, which helped NWIC match a $500,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the college’s new Coast Salish Institute Building.
Funds from this year’s event will go toward supporting NWIC student scholarships. NWIC, which is the only tribal college in Washington and Idaho, has a student body that represents more than 120 tribes from across the nation.
“It’s a misconception that Native students get their education paid for.Scholarships mean a lot to our students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college and who are working toward four and two year degrees so they can help their tribal communities,” Masten said.
Individual tickets are available for $250 or table sponsorships are available from $2,500 to $20,000.
NWIC would like to thank sponsors for the 5h Annual TL’aneq:
·Premier Sponsor: Lummi Indian Business Council
·Host Sponsor: Swinomish Tribe
·Exclusive Reception Sponsor: Tulalip Tribes
·Lengesot Patron Sponsors at the $5,000 level: the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, and the Snoqualmie Tribe
·Cedar Sponsors at the $2,500 level: The Boeing Company, Puget Sound Energy, Morgan Stanley, and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
NWIC would also like to acknowledge and thank Judy Mich for her continued generosity of a $15,000 sponsorship, and give a special thanks to the generosity of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians.
For more information, to donate to the event or to buy a ticket or sponsor a table, contact Development Office staff Mariah Dodd at (360) 392-4217 or mariahd@nwic.edu or Colleen Baker at (360) 392- 4305 or cbaker@nwic.edu.
(Courtesy Dakota Goodhouse/TheFirstScout.blogspot.com) Killdeer Mountain, home of the Singing Butte, looms on the edge of the North Dakota Badlands. (Courtesy Dakota Goodhouse/TheFirstScout.blogspot.com)
The Hess Corporation’s development of oil resources on Taĥċa Wakutėpi (Killdeer Mountain) on the edge of the North Dakota badlands threatens to destroy the integrity of a site sacred to tribes and important to historians, wildlife biologists, archaeologists and local landowners.
In a June 2010 report on the preservation of North Dakota battlefields, the National Park Service wrote, “Each of North Dakota’s battlefields remains a good candidate for comprehensive preservation, but Killdeer Mountain is most at-risk. While exploratory oil well drilling has had little effect on the battlefield’s condition so far, industrial scale extraction of the sub-surface resources at Killdeer Mountain could destroy the landscape and associated view-sheds in the near future.”
Killdeer Mountain was the site of an attack by U.S. Army Brigadier General Alfred Sully against a traditional summer gathering of American Indians for trading, socializing and ceremonies. On July 28 and 29, 1864, the general’s troops killed an estimated 150 Dakota and Lakota warriors and executed uncounted women and children. They destroyed as many as 1,800 lodges, 200 tons of buffalo meat and dried berries, clothes and household utensils, tipi poles, travois, and piles of tanned hides and slaughtered horses and perhaps 3,000 dogs. It was the final significant battle in the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, but its deliberate brutality led to other conflicts. Among the survivors of the Battle of Killdeer Mountain were Sitting Bull and his lieutenant, Gall, who would fight again at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.
The mountain was a sacred site long before the battle. Dakota Goodhouse, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says, “Killdeer Mountain is a place people still go to pray, [and there are] still people at Fort Berthold who visit the site for vision quests.”
Gerard Baker, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a former National Park Service superintendant, is 59. As a child, he learned the ceremonial importance of Taĥċa Wakutėpi from his father, who learned it from tribal elders. “He told us the stories of Singing Butte, where Earth-naming ceremonies once took place. Many of the ceremonies are lost because of time, but they are still extremely important. Medicine Hole is associated with lost ceremonies. Many were lost during the smallpox epidemic of 1837.” Baker explains that unless a ceremony’s owner sells or gives away the ceremony before he dies, it can no longer be performed. So many Indians died so quickly during the smallpox epidemic that they did not have time to ensure the survival of their ceremonies.
Sioux leader Sitting Bull, left, and Hunkpapa Chief Gall survived the Battle of Killdeer Mountain. (AP; Courtesy National Archives)
But the spirits still live on Singing Butte. “The spirits live in different areas throughout the Dakotas in various buttes from Canada to the South Dakota line. The Hidatsa consider that their ancestral territory,” says Baker. Other lifeways that once took place on Killdeer Mountain included burials, fasting, trapping to get eagle feathers, deer-hunting and dressing.
A fundamental problem—and one of the challenges in opposing oil drilling on the mountain—says Baker, is that “not enough people know about the ceremonies. Even though people know the site is sacred, not so many know about the ceremonies.” He has a very pragmatic approach to dealing with Hess’s current oil drilling proposals. “I wish we could say ‘No drilling,’ but that’s not going to happen. They’re going to get that oil one way or the other.… We could hold up protest signs, but I think education would work better,” says Goodhouse. “I feel the issue is people don’t care because they don’t know” about Killdeer Mountain’s cultural or historical significance. “In an ideal world, there would be no wells near that area, but I have to be a realist. My suggestion is to drill laterally” for four miles, instead of the two miles of lateral drilling Hess is planning.
Opponents have won two concessions. “They have agreed that if they come across artifacts they will cease operations. But I know from experience that road companies do not stop development to save what’s there. They call in salvage archaeologists to survey,” says Goodhouse.
Richard Rothaus, president of Trefoil Cultural and Environmental, an archaeological consulting firm, had been planning to look at the Killdeer battlefield in 2014 or 2015, but when he heard about the imminent oil drilling there, he got permission to do a quick surface survey. He found three sites, two of them major. “This is an area that could have good, important information about the battle. It would be a shame to see it torn up without some work.”
Rothaus says he would need one excavation season, roughly one summer, to do 80 percent of the archaeological work that needs to be done at the battlefield. He has applied for funding for the work to the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program and will know in July whether the money will come through.
According to Rothaus, “Oil development is growing so fast out there that no one can keep track of it. People didn’t know this was being leased,” so they couldn’t do the archaeological work earlier. “Hess says it avoided the battlefield, but is 2.5 miles away from the historical marker for the battlefield, not three miles away from the battlefield.” The marker, he says, occupies just a couple of square feet of the vast battlefield. The wells Hess proposes are within the battlefield area.
The current situation on Killdeer Mountain, says Rothaus, came about through “a series of fairly innocent mistakes. I’ve almost never encountered anyone who doesn’t care about this history, but the right people are not at the table.”
Anne Marguerite Coyle, assistant professor of biology at Jamestown College in Jamestown, North Dakota, who spent three years studying golden eagles on Killdeer Mountain, concurs with Rothaus. “People don’t know when a plot of land might come up for lease.” The North Dakota Industrial Commission, she says, has no obligation to call other state agencies when they are planning to sell oil and gas leases.
Hess has agreed to a second concession, says Goodhouse. “The community did not want wells to be drilled during the school year because of the increased traffic, so they agreed to drill them in July.” But this concession brings its own problems. “The time they are going to put in the wells conflicts
Sully led the 1864 assault on a summer gathering of tribes at Killdeer. (Joel Emmons Whitney)
with religious pilgrimages to area. If someone went to pray up there this summer, drilling would have an adverse effect, based on the impacts I saw of drilling at Bear Butte. There the development is five to 10 miles away from the sacred site. The dirt roads there were expanded to accommodate additional traffic. The traffic is heavy, loud and constant—not conducive to a vision quest.”
Goodhouse says a January meeting between the Mineral Resources Department and those with concerns about the drilling was “very civil, very cordial,” but whether education and goodwill can lead to other compromises is doubtful. Hess responded to a request to ICTMN’s request for an interview via e-mail: “Throughout the regulatory process, members of the community have had an opportunity to raise their concerns with the North Dakota Industrial Commission. We believe that the commission remains the best forum for concerns to be raised and addressed.”
Loren Jepson, a landowner on Killdeer Mountain, cattle rancher and former Hess employee, did raise the issue with the commission when he filed a petition in February asking the commission to suspend its order to allow the drilling and to rehear the case. The commission denied Jepson’s petition on February 20. One argument he made—in keeping with his intent to slow down the process in order to allow more time for study and compromise—was that the commission “failed to consider the best alternative of drilling the requested wells,” referring to the concept that the wells could be started further away from the battlefield. The commission found: “What Jepson has characterized as the failure to consider ‘the best alternative’ does not constitute grounds for rehearing or reconsideration.” In order to reopen the case, says Alison Ritter, spokeswoman for the commission’s Division of Mineral Resources, new information would have to be brought forward. “The commission carefully weighed the evidence,” she says, and the case has already been reopened once, last fall, which does not happen often.
Hess began preliminary work on the site one-quarter mile from Jepson’s house on February 21. He says an archaeologist is on site, but since the work moves so quickly and so much is destroyed in the process, it was unlikely anything would be found, an assessment Rothaus confirms. “Monitoring is just the last safeguard, not where you would want to start an archaeological investigation.”
Ritter explains that Jepson has run through his options at the executive level of the North Dakota state government and his next move would be to file an appeal in district court. Jepson says he does not know whether he will appeal. His attorney has told him that he would need $20,000 just to begin the process.
“I’m 60 years old,” Jepson says. “There are 30 [oil] wells here now and there will be 90 before the end of summer. I will never see the end of this. A way of life is gone, and it won’t come back.”
