Gambling at Arizona’s Fort McDowell has taken the Yavapai Indians from poverty to wealth in just three years.
Symposium on Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience
Environmental activists and students will gather on the Whitman College campus in Walla Walla, Wash., for the Symposium on Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience Earth Day weekend, April 19-21. Hosted by the Columbia River Bioregion Campaign and the college, the symposium is based on the teachings and lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Johann Galtung,…
Yellowtail throws in his hat
Yellowtail throws in his hat Environmentalists in Montana have a congressional candidate they can enthusiastically support to fill the seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Pat Williams. He is Bill Yellowtail, 48, who quit his job March 18 as regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver. Three other Democrats, Mignon Waterman, Leo Hudatz and…
Greens want to draft Nader
Greens want to draft Nader Third parties have had a miserable political history. Their candidates either get forgotten in the media hoopla or face charges of spoiling the race. But beginning with the “96 presidential campaign, the Green Party hopes to establish third parties as an election choice of the future. Its goal is to…
Rebels without a case
Rebels without a case Nineteen months after Nye County, Nev., County Commissioner Dick Carver challenged federal authority by bulldozing a road into the Toiyabe National Forest, the government has pushed back. On March 14, a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas struck down a controversial Nye County ordinance claiming ownership and management authority over Forest…
Top dog loses patience
Top dog loses patience Biologists at Yellowstone National Park expected the wolf to knock the coyote out of the top dog position in the ecosystem, but not this quickly. Biologist Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecological Studies has counted 12 coyotes killed by wolves this winter, and says the actual number could be three times higher.…
Tribe fights salvage logging
Tribe fights salvage logging An Indian tribe has jumped into the legal fray surrounding the salvage-logging rider signed by President Clinton last summer. The Klamath Tribes of southern Oregon filed a lawsuit March 13 against the Forest Service, charging that the federal government has shirked its responsibility to preserve traditional hunting and fishing grounds. When…
Wild Wyoming under siege
Sporting and conservation organizations will gather in Rock Springs, Wyo., April 26-28, to discuss the increasing conflict between oil and gas development and Wyoming’s clean air and wildlife. Many residents are alarmed by industry predictions that natural gas production will boom in the next 20 years, says the nonprofit Wyoming Outdoor Council, organizers of Red…
Clearing the air on the Colorado Plateau
CLEARING THE AIR ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU It’s decision time for the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, the group charged with restoring clean air to the five-state Colorado Plateau. Congress established the commission, which includes five Western governors and industry and environmental representatives, in 1991, allowing it five years to develop a plan to reduce…
Managing Natural Resources
Utah State University holds an annual Natural Resources Week symposium, and this year’s get-together April 17-19 focuses on Managing Natural Resources at the Urban Interface: The Challenge of a Changing West. Speakers include Richard Knight of Colorado State University, Luther Propst of the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, and sustainable-business advocate Paul Hawken. Contact Conference and…
High Country Snooze
HCS publisher heaves fowl Joey Winterbottom, an intern who arrived last week, successfully administered the Heimlich maneuver to HCS publisher Ed Motown during a brown-bag staff meeting yesterday. Motown had noticed the meeting had gone two minutes over the designated hour and was trying to sigh conclusively to indicate it was over – a technique…
Dear friends
They have our thanks Boise, Idaho, resident Kay Hummel sent us a note one night because she was too excited to sleep. She said she and close to 200 people had just attended a tribute to three of Idaho’s environmental heroes, and the feelings generated at the event Feb. 24 were still warm. Those honored…
Zookeeper helps a battered range
No one did backflips when a federal judge ruled in January that the Forest Service’s environmental analysis of a grazing allotment on Arizona’s Tonto National Forest was inadequate. After all, it was a procedural victory and might not protect even one blade of grass. But for Michael Seidman, the decision was a hard-earned victory. It…
Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
FORT McDOWELL, Ariz. – It started as a traditional cowboy and Indian battle – one the Indians were supposed to lose. At 6:00 on a May morning in 1992, a team of FBI agents accompanied by eight Mayflower moving vans invaded the Fort McDowell Reservation. Armed agents broke into the tribal bingo hall and began…
Life is a game, but bingo is serious
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” Gambling has long been a part of most Native American cultures. Traditional handgames, involving song and trickery, are still played in community halls away from the casinos. But modern Indian gaming owes its roots to bingo played in…
Yellowstone: Geysers, grizzlies and the country’s worst smog
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Wendy Ross traveled the globe before settling into a job at Yellowstone National Park. Now she suffers from what she calls “the worst air I’ve ever breathed.” She and her co-workers at the park’s west entrance depend on air pumped into their glass booths from a port about 75 feet…
The nuts and bolts of Western gambling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” Americans spend more money on games of chance than movies, concerts and theaters combined. In 1994, Americans lost $40 billion of the $482 billion they wagered. Since state-sponsored lotteries and video gambling started the current gambling craze in…
80,000 tons of nuclear waste may head for Nevada
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thousands of casks of highly radioactive nuclear waste would begin crossing the West by rail and truck as early as 1998 under a proposal that recently gained preliminary approval. The proposal hasn’t yet hit the floor of the House or Senate. But the Senate Energy Committee, in a 12-6 vote, approved creating…
I made $52,000 in 1994 and never bought a pair of shoes that whole year
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” “Tiffany” – she asked us not to use her real name – is a 48-year-old real estate agent from Phoenix. She gambled uncontrollably for two and half years and nearly ruined her marriage before controlling her compulsion. Now,…
Navajos say no – then maybe – to casinos
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” WINDOW ROCK, N.M. “Two Novembers ago, the Navajo Nation held its first referendum to decide if the tribal government could legalize casinos on Navajo lands. It appeared on the ballot either as cards or a second set of…
Deadwood pays dearly for gambling riches
Note: This article accompanies another feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” DEADWOOD, S. D. – Before state residents legalized gambling here in 1989, most people in this town of 1,800 or so lived life in the slow lane. They’d see each other for coffee at Marie’s Cafe or later in the day at…
Goodbye, Deadwood
When I arrived in 1976, Deadwood, S.D., was 100 years old and still a living gold camp. I was 22, married and fresh out of suburban Minneapolis. Deadwood felt like home from the moment I set foot here. It wasn’t an easy place to live. You weren’t considered a local until you made it through…
Heard around the West
Being a senator is a rough job. It takes a good deal of toughing it out, sucking it up, upper-lip stiffening and other-cheek turning. Take Mark Hatfield, the Republican senator from Oregon who recently lobbied to extend the “logging-without-laws” salvage rider: “Seeing the photos (of fallen ancient forest trees) chills my blood,” he said on…