Crossing The Divide

By Walter Kirn Reported By Pat Dawson/Weatherman Draw

How you value the place depends on what you call it, and what you call it depends on who you are. To the Bureau of Land Management, its landlord, the sandstone canyon southwest of Billings, Mont., is known as Weatherman Draw. The BLM leases the mineral rights to the site for $1 per acre per year, or $160--about the price of an average downtown parking spot. To the Anschutz Exploration Corp. of Denver, which holds a permit to drill for oil there, the canyon is designated as Federal Lease MTM-74615. Should the company's wells pan out, the canyon could be worth millions. Finally, to the numerous Native American tribes that revere the canyons' ancient rock drawings of warriors, shields and animals, the place is known as the Valley of the Chiefs. To the tribes, the spot is holy and has no price.

In their quarrels over public resources, how can Westerners find common ground when the ground itself has so many different names? This remote Montana canyon may hold some answers. Last spring, when the Interior Department ruled that Anschutz had a right to drill here, it touched off a negotiating process as complicated as a Native dance. Tribes from the Comanche to the Crow, who had long used the canyon as place of worship and regard it (as do anthropologists) as a living link to their collective pasts, petitioned Washington to reverse its policy. The BLM stood pat, so the tribes went to Anschutz--which is run by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire with an eye for hidden value--and to the press. Perhaps mindful of the scrutiny, the company agreed to meet the protesters.

Howard Boggess, 64, a Crow historian, attended one of these parlays. Boggess, who is legally blind but can read and write with high-tech assistance, describes hearing a clash of many tongues. An Arapahoe elder offered a short prayer and invoked the valley's "sacredness." The Anschutz executives, as Boggess recalls, invoked their legal rights and complained about media coverage. The Indians too were worried about coverage because they feared revealing too much about their cherished valley. But when their letters to Denver and Washington went unanswered, they went public.

Delegates from the Blackfeet proposed a deal that would let Anschutz develop oil reserves on their impoverished Montana reservation in return for leaving the canyon untouched. The meeting ended with a polite exchange of business cards and some slight hope for a future compromise, but no conclusive agreement.

Let Boggess tell it: "The meeting danced back and forth all afternoon. I never heard the drum. When the drummer gets near the end of a song, there is always a hard drumbeat that is the signal that the song is about to end. We never got that drumbeat today."

But at least people talked. Sadly, that's not the case in Klamath Falls, Ore. In Klamath, another fight has broken out over land and water and economics, but also over language. To the Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Klamath Lake is habitat that supports endangered fish, and when the water level began to drop from drought this year, its federal keepers cut off irrigation water to 240,000 acres of cropland. To the Klamath's farmers, however, the valley has a simpler name: home. Its federally subsidized waters support their very way of life, and have for decades.

Last week the conversation between the sides was drowned out by the sound of rushing water, after some residents forced open one of the reservoir's headgates. Local officials declined to stop the outlaws, possibly because they call them neighbors. "It just appears to me that they are trying to save their lives," said Klamath County sheriff Tim Evinger. Though the fish had no statement, of course, their appointed spokesman, the Bureau of Reclamation's Jeff McCracken, did claim to understand the farmers "frustration." One senses an understatement here. Try rage.

Oil field or temple? Habitat or home? The West these days could use a few more translators and a few less bureaucrats and lawyers. On a recent trip to the Valley of the Chiefs (a.k.a. Federal Lease MTM-74615), Howard Boggess witnessed proof that demonstrated how people of different backgrounds can come together for a greater good. "As I walked, I wondered, How long had it been since a Blackfeet, a Crow and a Comanche had walked this valley together and prayed together and had food?" Too long, no doubt--peace always takes too long. The question is, When will Boggess and other Westerners warring over ever scarcer resources finally hear the drum?

--Reported by Pat Dawson/Weatherman Draw