Recently, in a photo essay entitled, “Here’s what life is like on the notorious Wind River Indian Reservation,” the online Business Insider gave a tour of the sprawling central Wyoming home of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The essay delivered what it promised: a portrait of a place riddled with violence and addiction. A […]
Lisa Jones
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Three Tribes, a Dam and a Diabetes Epidemic
Herbert Wilson came to North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in 1954, to a tiny town called Elbowoods, tucked above the Missouri River in a bucolic patchwork of riverside willows, cottonwoods and fields. A Vermont-bred 33-year-old, fresh from Harvard and a tour as a WWII bombardier, Wilson was the new, sole doctor for the reservation’s […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Coyotes move into Colorado’s Front Range
Residents and coyotes clash in the suburbs.
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
March Madness in Indian Country
Wyoming Indian High School dominates the basketball court
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Got warriors?
A quadriplegic horse gentler helps reservation boys through their dangerous teens
Posted inJune 11, 2007: Brave New Hay
Native hum
As honeybees vanish, farmers turn to the wild pollinators in their back yards
Posted inWotr
Watching cowboy movies with Indians
If you want to become fully aware of just how biting Hollywood’s stereotypes can be, I suggest you watch a western in a roomful of Native Americans. I did this. I was visiting my friend Stanford Addison, a Northern Arapaho horse trainer who lives on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. One evening, he […]
Posted inWotr
Wanted: queer eye for the rural guy
When the aspens reached their peak color last fall, my friend Diane and I drove from our tiny, western Colorado town into the nearby mountains. We sat at the side of the road to enjoy the snow-dusted peaks, tumbling scree fields and golden-and-peach aspen forests. Soon enough, a truck pulling a camper with Washington state […]
Posted inWotr
The flu comes to visit
Why do people come over, fling themselves on my couch and croak and quack about how sick they are? Really. There is a bad cold here making its rounds through the houses carried by messengers like these I hand them cans of chicken soup with rice and urge them to GO AND TAKE CARE OF […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
My Sensitive Man meets culture shock on the range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]
Posted inWotr
Culture shock on the Range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Dear Friends
Louisiana’s Big Oil slayer There may be any number of environmental activists who run thriving Cadillac dealerships, but we only know of one: Harold Schoeffler of Lafayette, La. The grizzled 63-year-old recently camped overnight on Lamborn Mesa outside Paonia with the Boy Scout troop he founded 20-some years ago. They were taking an eight-day tour […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Ed Marston to the West: Grow up!
A profile of the outgoing publisher of High Country News
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
On the phone, on the Rez
NEW MEXICO On weekends, thousands of Navajos leave their homes on the reservation and go shopping. Many of them end up at Wal-Mart in Gallup. They buy detergent and paper towels, and increasingly, cellular phones. Wireless phones are selling like hotcakes among residents of the Navajo Nation, which sprawls over parts of Arizona, New Mexico […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
He’s worried about weeds
UNCOMMON WESTERNERS Steve Monsen is a stocky, modest, self-contained man. Sixty-three years old, the son and grandson of Utah sheep ranchers, he works as a botanist for an organization that could not sound more unassuming if it tried – the USDA Shrub Lab in Provo, Utah. There, he wears short-sleeved shirts and jeans and cuts […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
The last Celtic warlord lives in New Mexico
LA JOYA, N.M. – Jim Catron, lawyer and history enthusiast, is sitting in his living room discussing the noble and inconvenienced Celt. He isn’t talking about modern-day Scotland or Ireland, however, which to his mind have degenerated into Socialist republics populated by barfly poets. He’s talking about real, live Celts. He’s talking about cowboys. Catron […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Searching for pasture
Note: this feature article is accompanied by this issue’s Uncommon Westerner profile: “Not your average beauty queen.” At the college of agriculture at Utah State University, a controversy has erupted over a flock of sheep. It doesn’t look like much at first; it concerns the politics of academic funding and the logistics of breeding livestock. […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Not your average beauty queen
Note: This article appeared as a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rachel Benally, recent runner-up in the Southwest Regional Miss Navajo Pageant, Internet surfer, and unflinching slaughterer of her grandmother’s goats, lies in a reclining chair in her Aunt Sharon’s living room. She is recovering from last night’s TV-watching marathon. Wrapped in a comforter, […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
All you can eat at Pueblito del Paiz
Ted Medina slams down a pan of, oh God, what is it? A pig’s head. Snout, eyes and yellowish toasted ears bubbling like Picasso’s own dinner. “You name it, it’s all good!” says Ted, stocky, aproned and grinning from under a cap emblazoned Denver Fire Department. “Here, you nibble on this bit here. It’s good!” […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Peggy Godfrey’s long, strange trip
MOFFAT, Colo. – Peggy Godfrey is driving her 1988 Oldsmobile across the San Luis Valley. She is staring straight ahead. I am sitting in the passenger seat, watching the speedometer needle sweep past 60, past 70 and hover just shy of 75. On a dirt road. At night. It’s good this valley is as flat […]