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After successfully defending the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reservations from non-Indian mining, American Indians launched a national campaign to prepare similarly situated energy tribes for the coming onslaught in energy demand. This chapter details those efforts that began with Northern Cheyenne and Crow leaders helping to organize a regional coalition of tribes to fight federally planned development on the Northern Plains. From this defensive alliance, energy tribes then turned to exploring options to mine their own minerals. They worked with federal agencies charged with expanding domestic energy production in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and consulted energy experts familiar with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Ultimately, tribes nationwide formed the Council of Energy Resource Tribes to provide a unified Indian voice to federal energy policymakers, lobby for federal aid in developing tribal resources, and share information about energy development. After much confusion as to CERT’s primary purpose – including whether it was a cartel-like “Native American OPEC” – the organization evolved into a professional consulting firm that both worked with individual tribes to pursue specific mining projects and lobbied the federal government for beneficial grants and policies.

This chapter describes the grassroots movement that erupted on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation to resist non-Indian mining and change forever the trajectory of Indian energy development. As news of Consolidation Coal’s massive proposal spread, tribal members connected this project to regional plans being made for the Northern Plains and began to see coal mining as a final attack on the homeland. Opponents thus launched a passionate resistance movement, fueled partly by concerns over the physical destruction of sacred landscapes, but mostly driven by fears that mining would bring outsiders to disrupt existing customs and values. Becoming minorities in their own land, the Northern Cheyenne believed the tribe would cease to exist as a unique indigenous community.But to mobilize an effective fight for survival, tribal members needed help. This chapter thus describes the confluence of interests among Indians, ranchers, and environmentalists, who cooperated to foment resistance to coal mining in Southeast Montana. This odd partnership helped galvanize Northern Cheyenne against their leaders’ development plans, but importantly, most tribal members did not oppose all mining. The majority favored development as long as their tribal government could regulate its pace and scale so that customs and norms remained undisturbed.

Following the Northern Cheyenne revolt, this chapter moves to the adjacent Crow Reservation to detail similar efforts to resist non-Indian mining there. The bulk of the chapter, however, is dedicated to understanding the contentious intra-tribal debates that ensued over what type of mining this community would allow. One faction of young, educated Crows, living mostly off the reservation, pushed for the creation of a semi-autonomous, expert-laden mineral committee empowered to pursue mining only for minerals the tribe owned adjacent to the reservation. According to this group, developing off-reservation resources would preserve the reservation’s non-Indian character and its physical integrity, both of which were key to preserving the tribe. Another group of older, on-reservation Indians, however, feared the community could not survive without revenue from on-reservation mining. This faction argued that the tribal chairman should retain authority over mineral development, and that changing their traditional governing structure would render the tribe something other than Crow. When the tribe narrowly determined to prohibit on-reservation mining, to place power over its resources in a new governing body, and to impeach its chairman, the Crow not only set tribal energy policy, but also made cultural choices about what it meant to be Crow.