Yesterday, the High Country News interns (Ariana Brocious, Cally Carswell and I) trekked to nearby Delta to speak to a journalism class at the local high school. After getting lost in the “big city” (Delta has about 6,500 residents to Paonia’s 1,500) we were greeted by five bright and eager young journalists. Well, sort of. […]
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A golden ruling
It’s not often that the world’s largest gold mining company doesn’t get what it wants, especially in the nation’s largest gold-producing state. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Barrick Gold’s proposal to dig a 2,000-foot deep open pit at the Cortez Hill mine on Mount Tenabo lacks sufficient environmental review. The […]
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Spectrum of sexuality
On the night of June 16, 2001, Fred Martinez, Jr. was walking home from a party when he was chased into a rocky canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colo. The 16-year-old Navajo was cornered in the chasm’s nightmarish shadows and bludgeoned to death. Police found his body five days later. The crime shocked the […]
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The case of the missing binders
Central Washington’s Kittitas County, hungry for economic uplift since the fall of the timber industry, has been in the limelight a lot lately for scuffles over development. The proliferation of subdivisions there has met sharp criticism from certain corners (see Cally Carswell’s recent article “Death by a thousand wells” on the area’s over-reliance on exempt […]
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Commitment issues
Today, for the first time in 15 years, leaders from the United States’ 564 federally recognized Indian tribes met with political leaders in DC to discuss the problems that blight their communities: lack of adequate health care, lack of adequate employment, lack of, well, a lot of things. The day-long summit began with opening remarks […]
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Poisoned plains
When Kaput-D enters a rodent’s bloodstream, it causes the animal to bleed through several orifices. In a matter of weeks, the rodent might bleed through its skin, becoming weaker and more susceptible to predators. Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity submitted official comments to the Environmental Protection Agency against the pending approval of the […]
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Can salmon save themselves?
The Northwest’s Columbia River Basin stocks of iconic salmon have been the subject of a heated and expensive court battle for the past decade. Thirteen out of 16 stocks are listed as threatened or endangered thanks to a combination of factors including mining, farming, urban development and most significantly, lots of hydropower dams along the […]
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Relocation is a loaded term
There has been little noise made about the EPA’s relocation of seven Navajo families living near the former Church Rock uranium mine in northwestern New Mexico. Scouring the Internet, I could only find one brief article in the Gallup Independent. The news was brought to my attention last week, when Cally Carswell and I met […]
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“Nuclear whack-a-mole”
Last week, attorneys for the state of Utah joined the fray against nuclear-waste disposal company EnergySolutions by filing an appeal against a ruling that would allow the company to import foreign nuclear waste to the state. EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake City-based company that disposes of low-level radioactive waste from other states, has been in talks to import up […]
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Funding to fight domestic violence
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has made safety on Indian reservations a major priority, doling out a slew of grants to tribes all over the West. “The Department of Justice is well aware that Indian Country is struggling with complex law enforcement issues involving violent crime, violence against women and crimes against children, and […]
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Fighting the fire
“A healthy, fit firefighter is a safe firefighter.” This is what Stan Palmer, a member of the Northwest Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team tells me when I ask about firefighter fatalities (See the related infographic on the top five causes of firefighter deaths since 1910). Over the years, firefighters in the West […]
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Friends of the Forest
What do sixty volunteers, the U.S. Forest Service, Trout Unlimited and MillerCoors have in common? They’re all participating, in one way or another, in the Clear Creek restoration project at the Arapaho National Forest this Saturday, as part of the National Forest Foundation’s third annual Friends of the Forest Day. Other partners include the National […]
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Clash along the Columbia
Ten simple words. For the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon, ten words introduced into an existing law would restore their relationship with the land upon which their ancestors lived. Other tribes, however, consider the move risky. Last month, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) introduced a bill in Congress that would add the Grand […]
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A culture of violence
On July 12, a gang member brutally attacked a female police officer on the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The officer was forced to shoot the suspect and is now in hiding with her family, said John Mousseau, chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, at a hearing in D.C. last month. […]
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“Impossible to remain silent”
When Laura Amos of Silt, Colo., was diagnosed in 2003 with a rare adrenal condition, she began to suspect that it had something to do with four natural gas wells less than 1000 feet from her home. After EnCana Corporation drilled the wells in 2001, the family’s tap water resembled fizzy, gray soda pop. Amos […]
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Honoring the forgotten
Today the remains of three African-American soldiers will be buried at Santa Fe National Cemetery, more than 130 years after their deaths. Army Pvts. David Ford, Levi Morris and Thomas Smith were among the famous “Buffalo Soldiers,” African-American men who served in the military during the Civil War and later guarded the farthest reaches of […]
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Twilight bites into Forks
Forks, Wash., just isn’t what it used to be. I have fond memories of the once-sleepy little town. When I was a child, my family would camp out on the Pacific Coast and then make a leisurely stop in Forks to eat and shower. Restaurants like Sully’s Drive-In and the Smokehouse have been around forever. […]
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Not out of the woods
History is rife with artists who were underappreciated in their time: Vincent van Gogh, Johann Sebastian Bach, Emily Dickinson, etc. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose elaborate outdoor art installations include “The Gates” in Central Park and “The Umbrellas” in California and Japan, are not those kind of artists. While their works are usually met with some kind […]
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Duwamish not dead
Next week, Cecile Hansen, a direct descendant of Seattle’s namesake Chief Sealth, will travel from one Washington to another. Hansen, the chairwoman of the Duwamish tribe, has been invited to testify in D.C. at an upcoming hearing on H.R. 2678, a bill introduced in the House that would grant the Western Washington tribe the federal […]