87-year-old Mary Johnson (Navajo)
promise with the U.S. government. “I like to think a little bit of him trickled down to me,” Cobell said. As a child she would always hear stories
about missing money from her parents and relatives. The story that impacted her the most was about her aunt who needed the lease money from her land to get medical care for her sick husband. “It was a harsh winter and they traveled 30 miles through snow in a horse and buggy to get to the agency office, but they wouldn’t let them in,” Cobell recalled. “They waited outside in freezing cold
weather all day. At the end of the day the agen- cy told them, ‘Come back tomorrow…’ The next day they waited again and at the end of the day the agency told them, ‘Go home.’ Their check finally came in the spring. My aunt died without ever seeing justice, and her husband died from lack of medical care.” For every one of the 300,000 members of
the class-action lawsuit there are hundreds of stories. James “Mad Dog” Kennerly, also
a Blackfeet Indian, lived in a modest home without running water, despite his 300 acres of oil producing land. Mad Dog made beaded necklaces to supplement his meager royalty payments. He shows me his oil and gas state- ment from the government. “Over $6,000 of oil taken from my land,”
he said, “and I get $89 bucks. Oh yeah, they’ll even tell you that they overpaid me. In the next check they take it out.” Like so many ben- eficiaries of the Indian Trust, Kennerly would go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office looking for answers to his questions, answers that never came. Kennerly died without ever seeing justice. On the Navajo Reservation lives Mary
Johnson, an 87-year-old woman with five oil wells pumping on her land. She speaks only Navajo so her story is translated to me through her son and daughter. The oil com- panies started drilling on Johnson’s land in the 1950s. You might imagine her living in a mansion after all these years, but she is too
poor to afford running water. Johnson could see the oil wells pumping and hear the sound of the oil rushing through the pipes on her land but she wasn’t getting the funds she so desperately needed. One day she decided to take matters into
her own hands. She marched out to one of her wells and shut it down. Minutes later, the BIA police and an oil company representative threatened to throw her in jail if she didn’t turn it back on. Others on the Navajo reserva- tion took harsher measures and set their oil wells on fire. It was for the Mary Johnsons and the Mad
Dog Kennerlys of Indian Country that Cobell fought so long and so hard. And it was by no small coincidence that the woman who was holding the U.S. government accountable, had a knack for numbers. After completing an accounting program
at a business school in Great Falls, Mont., Cobell became the treasurer of the Blackfeet Tribe and, years later, a banker and founder of SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 29
PHOTO COURTESY OF FIRE IN THE BELLY PRODUCTIONS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
