U.S. Government Does Something Right For a Change, Decides to Cancel Oil Drilling on Sacred Tribal Land
Hey! We’ve got some not bad news here! Not bad news! Here!
The U.S. Department of the Interior will cancel an oil and gas drilling lease on land sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of the U.S. and Canada, according to a report from the Associated Press.
The 6,200-acre lease is in northwestern Montana’s Badger Two-Medicine area, which is the site of the creation story for the Blackfoot tribes of southern Canada and the Blackfeet Nation of Montana. It is just west of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
So, this seems like a no-brainer. Don’t drill for fossil fuels on the site of the creation story of multiple Native American and First Nation tribes. The government reportedly issued the lease in 1982 “without consulting the tribes,” and the lease is now held by Solenex LLC of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“Badger Two-Medicine is too sacred to develop,” Blackfeet Nation Chairman Harry Barnes said in a statement. He thanked the Obama administration for moving to permanently protect a site that he said “is like a church — a divine sanctuary — to our people.”
Solenex won a summary judgement in U.S. District Court in July of this year, forcing the government to act on the lease after more than three decades of stalling an exploratory natural gas well on the federal land, near Glacier Park. The government’s position is that the lease was “improperly sold,” and failed to consider “the effects of oil and gas development on cultural resources, including religious values and activities.”
The cancellation reportedly could go into effect as soon as December 11. Solenex, however, intends to challenge the government’s legal right to cancel the lease, and is arguing that they would be due compensation in the event that the cancellation goes through.
