Tribe members: ancient bison kill site desecrated by contractor

Tribe members: Ancient bison kill site desecrated by mining

SARPY CREEK, Montana (AP) — When a coal company contractor working under federal oversight used a backhoe to dig up one of the largest known Native American bison killing grounds and make way for mining, investigators concluded the damage on the Crow Indian Reservation broke federal law and would cost $10 million to repair, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Eight years later, Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal has not made the repairs and is still mining in the area, under an agreement with former Crow leaders that some tribal members said has caused more damage to a site considered hallowed ground.
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As in the past, we asked the native Americans to dig a gold mine. In the end we got the gold & they got the shaft.

JacksinPA said:

Tribe members: Ancient bison kill site desecrated by mining

SARPY CREEK, Montana (AP) — When a coal company contractor working under federal oversight used a backhoe to dig up one of the largest known Native American bison killing grounds and make way for mining, investigators concluded the damage on the Crow Indian Reservation broke federal law and would cost $10 million to repair, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Eight years later, Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal has not made the repairs and is still mining in the area, under an agreement with former Crow leaders that some tribal members said has caused more damage to a site considered hallowed ground.
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As in the past, we asked the native Americans to dig a gold mine. In the end we got the gold & they got the shaft.

Click to expand...

Screw the mining companies and screw the corrupt tribal leaders who let this happen. The Crow deserve better.

JacksinPA said:

Tribe members: Ancient bison kill site desecrated by mining

SARPY CREEK, Montana (AP) — When a coal company contractor working under federal oversight used a backhoe to dig up one of the largest known Native American bison killing grounds and make way for mining, investigators concluded the damage on the Crow Indian Reservation broke federal law and would cost $10 million to repair, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Eight years later, Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal has not made the repairs and is still mining in the area, under an agreement with former Crow leaders that some tribal members said has caused more damage to a site considered hallowed ground.
===========================================================
As in the past, we asked the native Americans to dig a gold mine. In the end we got the gold & they got the shaft.

Click to expand...

$15M per year in profit sharing which is almost the tribe's entire annual budget isn't exactly the shaft. Plus they agreed to allow it to happen to begin with. The Bureau of Indian Affairs signed off on it. The Department of Interior signed off on it. I don't see that anybody is getting screwed here other than the company that will be penalized for doing everything it was required to do before it even started.

From the link:

The large number of artifacts found suggest various tribes killed bison there for centuries before the Crow arrived

What gives the Crow the right to make claims for what other tribes did hundreds of years ago?

There is no genetic difference between the European bison and the American bison. However, Native American hunting had already set the American bison on a path toward extinction, as it had the once massive herds of wooly mammoths, well before Europeans arrived. Before Europeans brought guns to the Americas, the favored method for hunting buffalo was to panic and drive a herd to run off a cliff or into a river to drown. Then harvesting as much of the remains as was needed. A low risk method of hunting for the hunters.

Native Americans never worshipped the buffalo, not even the white buffalo to which some tribes attributed predictions of future buffalo harvests and other shamanistic qualities. A tribal shaman possessing a white buffalo robe supposedly imbued the tribe with greater war powers of their enemies. It's a stretch to claim hunting grounds were hallowed.

The Crow tribe controlled the lands and cut a deal with the mining company without force from anyone. That they failed to negotiate a better deal happens all the time in the business world. The contract calls for land restoration when mining is completed. Mining is still ongoing. While the contract may be unenforceable once it matures is separate matter and should have been contracted as an ongoing restoration in phases of mining being completed. Again a failure on the part of the Crow negotiators.

Superficially, in today's political climate, it is easy to judge as Native Americans being screwed by a white owned mining company, however, the majority shares of stock for the mining company are owned by an Oklahoma holding company composed of wealthy Cherokees who made their money generations ago during an Oklahoma oil boom.

Nothing in this life is what it seems to be.

The contractor will get siouxed