James Robert Allison
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300206692
- eISBN:
- 9780300216219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300206692.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This final chapter in the first section returns to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation to demonstrate the tribe’s continued pursuit of large and lucrative coal deals throughout the 1960s. It reveals ...
More
This final chapter in the first section returns to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation to demonstrate the tribe’s continued pursuit of large and lucrative coal deals throughout the 1960s. It reveals that tribal leaders were not simply passive witnesses to the construction of energy deals but increasingly sophisticated and active participants. Yet, although Cheyenne leaders may have increased their expertise to secure better deals – culminating with Consolidation Coal’s massive proposal described in the Prologue – their focus remained on maximizing financial return. This blinded leaders to their constituents’ concerns that large-scale mining could harm the reservation’s environment and disrupt customs and norms sustaining their indigenous community.Less
This final chapter in the first section returns to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation to demonstrate the tribe’s continued pursuit of large and lucrative coal deals throughout the 1960s. It reveals that tribal leaders were not simply passive witnesses to the construction of energy deals but increasingly sophisticated and active participants. Yet, although Cheyenne leaders may have increased their expertise to secure better deals – culminating with Consolidation Coal’s massive proposal described in the Prologue – their focus remained on maximizing financial return. This blinded leaders to their constituents’ concerns that large-scale mining could harm the reservation’s environment and disrupt customs and norms sustaining their indigenous community.
James Robert Allison
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300206692
- eISBN:
- 9780300216219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300206692.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
If the Prologue presents the specific action that altered the state of reservation resource development, this first chapter explains how we got there. Opening with the federal government’s warm ...
More
If the Prologue presents the specific action that altered the state of reservation resource development, this first chapter explains how we got there. Opening with the federal government’s warm embrace of the first energy proposals to the Northern Cheyenne tribe in the 1960s, the chapter describes the legal regime that placed federal, not tribal, officials in charge of reservation development. Tracking the ideological underpinnings of these laws back to the 1930s, it shows that while John Collier’s Indian New Deal ended the worst of federal Indian policies – such as allotment and forced assimilation – paternalistic assumptions of Indian inferiority remained in federal law. Further, the chapter demonstrates how laws governing reservation development were patterned off a dysfunctional legal regime used for leasing public minerals, which allowed energy companies to acquire vast amounts of resources on the cheap. Little of this, of course, was known to Cheyenne leaders in the 1960s, who collaborated with federal officials to secure the largest and most lucrative energy contracts possible.Less
If the Prologue presents the specific action that altered the state of reservation resource development, this first chapter explains how we got there. Opening with the federal government’s warm embrace of the first energy proposals to the Northern Cheyenne tribe in the 1960s, the chapter describes the legal regime that placed federal, not tribal, officials in charge of reservation development. Tracking the ideological underpinnings of these laws back to the 1930s, it shows that while John Collier’s Indian New Deal ended the worst of federal Indian policies – such as allotment and forced assimilation – paternalistic assumptions of Indian inferiority remained in federal law. Further, the chapter demonstrates how laws governing reservation development were patterned off a dysfunctional legal regime used for leasing public minerals, which allowed energy companies to acquire vast amounts of resources on the cheap. Little of this, of course, was known to Cheyenne leaders in the 1960s, who collaborated with federal officials to secure the largest and most lucrative energy contracts possible.
