Last week I wrote about how this economic crisis will impact Indian Country through the loss of government-funded jobs. Indeed, readers reacted to my commentary with two basic responses. One group said it’s time for Native Americans to get off the dole; another asked why tribes aren’t solving this problem on their own? But Indian […]
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Where’s the conservation?
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River,” a conference held at the University of Colorado Law School last week, was filled with folks who have spent decades studying the river, interpreting the Law of the River (as the Compact of 1922 and many subsequent agreements are called) and […]
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Rare accord marks opening of Colorado River conference
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing HouseDespite its reputation as the “most legislated, most debated, and most litigated river in the entire world” – as Marc Reiser put it in Cadillac Desert – there was a cooperative air at the start of “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River,” a conference being held at the […]
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A toothless watchdog
Since the elections last November, I (like a lot of people, I suspect) started to ruminate about the nature of our government – both state and federal – and corporatism. Governor Susana Martinez’s election in New Mexico and the tsunami of other corporate-sponsored candidates elected to Congress made me fear that corporate interests would gain […]
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Where are the jobs in Indian country?
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics started a frenzy when it released its latest job report, showing that only 54,000 jobs were added to the economy in May. That’s true. And, I think the White House ought to get more credit for keeping the economy from falling off the cliff. But at the same […]
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Gold dredging conflict heats up
Back in April, HCN managing editor Jodi Peterson wrote about efforts by the State of California to come up with regulations governing suction dredge mining. The regulation rewrite is required by court order. The Karuk Tribe, Klamath Riverkeeper and others won the order by challenging whether the environmental impacts of vacuuming streambeds for gold had […]
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The past and future of Western dams
The turbines have stilled on the Elwha. Upstream from Port Angeles on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, we are finally seeing the material effects of a very long campaign to tear down the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams. These aging structures, which are part of a broader infrastructural crisis around the West, have blocked storied salmon […]
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The kids are not all right (with climate change)
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A few weeks ago, a band of juvenile activists made headlines around the country when they, with the help of some eager adults, filed lawsuits demanding our nation’s leaders do their part to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Two 11-year-olds in Boulder signed onto the Colorado suit, […]
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The diabetes industry
High Country News recently reported on an epidemic of diabetes among Native Americans who have, over the years, switched from traditional diets to mainstream processed food. And I can personally attest that this chronic disease can strike someone of Scotch-Irish-German ancestry — like me. In the fall of 2009, my vision was getting blurry, so […]
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Why Salazar backed down from Wild Lands
By Matthew H. Davis After strong opposition from several Western states and a pending lawsuit, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is backing down from his controversial “Wild Lands” policy. “I am confirming today that the Bureau of Land Management will not designate land as ‘Wild Lands,’” Salazar said in a memo to Bob […]
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Water scarcity makes some types of energy less appealing
By Jeff Thomas Water and energy have been inexorably linked in human history at least back to ancient Babylonia, where windmills helped power irrigation as early as 1700 BC. Since then, that relationship has become one of the great axioms of the industrial age – that is, it takes great volumes of water to extract […]
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Utah goes for the gold
If you live in Utah, you can now pay your local bills or taxes with gold or silver coins, thanks to a law passed by the state legislature this year. The new Utah law directs the state treasurer to set the exchange rate (so many dollars for a given weight of gold or silver) and […]
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Kevin Costner, Western rivers, and climate change
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Reading the recently-released Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) report—on the impacts of climate change on Western water resources— is like watching Waterworld, that futuristic flop in which Kevin Costner sails around a post-apocalyptic globe that’s been completely inundated by melted polar ice caps, in search of dry land. Waterworld […]
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Same Old Song and Dance Over CA Parks
By Laura HugginsOnce again California is threatening to close state parks. Seventy (out of 270) parks are on the chopping block this time around (see an interactive map of the planned closures). The plan is to place the parks in “caretaker status,” which means gates would be closed and people would not be allowed to enter. What a dismal idea […]
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To shoot, or not to shoot, at Rocky Mountain NP
By Larry Keller, 05-17-2011 The elk of Rocky Mountain National Park are wildlife’s couch potatoes. Rather than roam widely throughout the 415-square-mile park and the land outside it, they are content to laze around in meadows, eating, sleeping and mating. With no predators, they can afford to be slackers. Many of them saunter into the […]
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Rants from the Hill: A visit from the Mary Kay lady
I find it unfortunate that we English speakers have so few words for “mud,” a substance that varies so greatly by location and conditions that it would be handier to have a hundred terms for it, as the indigenous Nordic Sami people do for “snow.” If a useless neologism like “ginormous” can make the Oxford […]
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What’s in a code name?
Although we’ve seen ample news coverage of the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, one question persists. Did the code name “Geronimo” refer to the overall operation or just to bin Laden? Discussing the exact meaning of a military code name might seem like an arcane pursuit, but the use of “Geronimo” […]
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Tribes need foreign policies
Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is trying to change the national debate about the deficit, the role of government and the impact of those policies on the day-to-day economy. “There are principled ways of cutting the deficit … putting Americans back to work,” the Columbia University professor recently said in a speech, as quoted in […]
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A future of jellyfish?
Consumers and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish. It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and scope of change. We are utterly reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our […]
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Water truce in Colorado
About 80 percent of Colorado’s population lives on the east side of the Great Divide, and about 80 percent of the state’s precipitation falls on the west side. Moving the water to the people has been an expensive and contentious process for the past century or so. As the saying goes, “Whiskey is for drinkin’, […]