Gail Small, KNFP-13, Director, Native Action, Lame Deer, Montana.
This article was originally published in the July 2005 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.
Gail Small, known as Ve-honnaut (Head Chief Woman) among the Cheyenne, has spent her entire adult life fighting to preserve the water, air, land, and culture of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana. Now, the 500,000 acres of tribal lands are surrounded by Montana’s largest power plant, five massive strip mines, and the largest coal-fired generating complex in the country. Having dealt with this for more than 30 years, the next pressing threat to the 8,000 tribal members who call the Reservation home, is a plan to drill 75,000 coal bed methane gas wells surrounding the Reservation. Currently, 200 methane wells are discharging thousands of gallons of saline wastewater into the Tongue River, a river that is the lifeblood of the Cheyenne people.
Through the nonprofit organization, Native Action, Gail addresses these ominous threats to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, as well as environmental justice issues across the Northern Great Plains region. Through community grassroots organizing, educational outreach, policy research, and litigation, this small organization has been able to hold the line against the energy giants and an administration bent on opening tribal lands to massive energy development.
”We recently won some major cases,” says Gail, recounting how in early June, Native Action, the Tribal government, and the Northern Plains Resource Council’s request for an emergency injunction was granted. ”The decision is being appealed by the federal government and the energy companies, but we have a window of time over the summer to prepare for the next assault to our homeland.”
Gail’s tribal homeland contains some of the largest deposits of coal and natural gas in the world, estimated to be worth more than $200 billion. ”We could all be millionaires, but the Cheyenne people have said ”No” for more than 30 years to the energy companies, there is no analogy in the world to this. But where else will the Cheyenne people go if we destroy our last homeland?” she asks.
Despite the recent federal court victories, Gail is braced for the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court. Moreover, Gail is worried that the energy companies will get legislation passed in Congress to preempt the federal court. ”When they can’t win,” she says, ”the companies will change the rules of the game and right now they have the power to do it.”
But Gail is accustomed to tough, drawn-out challenges. When she started high school, her Tribal Council, listening to the advice of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and believing it was only allowing exploration, signed contracts for coal strip mining on half the Reservation lands for a mere 17 cents per ton.
”The Coal Wars” continued as Gail earned a degree in Sociology from the University of Montana. When she returned home, she served on the tribal negotiating committee to get the coal leases canceled and, at age 21, was the youngest member of the committee and the only one with a college degree. After 15 years of tribal persistence, Congress canceled the coal leases based on 36 violations of federal law.
The experience motivated Gail to earn a law degree from the University of Oregon. She then returned home to establish Native Action. Faced with relentless threats to turn her home into a wasteland, Gail is sustained in her struggle by the land itself. ”Growing up here on the reservation nurtured a love for the land and the people,” she says. ”Yesterday, we dug up wild turnips with my dad. Being able to gather food and to live like I grew up is what it’s all about.” In the end, success for Gail will be: ”To see my grandkids able to live their life on the Cheyenne homeland with clean air, water, land, their horses, and a culture that is still alive.”
[Editor's note: Gail will be featured in a documentary: "Homeland, Four Portraits of Native Action," this November on PBS.]