A Sovereign Manifesto

Energy resources have figured strongly in Indian/government relations for nearly half a century. Indian tribes control about 53 million acres of land in the lower 48 states, containing huge amounts of undeveloped coal, uranium, oil and natural gas. The Grant mineral belt, the United States' center of uranium production, is situated in the Navajo Nation.

During the energy rush of the early 1970s, multinational corporations invaded Indian reservations-often at the behest of the Indian leadership-seeking to exploit the abundant energy resources of Indian lands. The recent world market collapse of oil prices has eased some of the pressure on Indian Country, but fundamental inequities have yet to be resolved.

The history of multinational development of Indian lands has generally been devastating. When the interest of development and the interest of the Indian are at odds, the interest of the Indian rarely prevail. Under pressure from energy corporations like Gulf Oil Co. and Peabody Coal Co., as well as the federal government, Indians have often sold or leased the right to develop energy resources at prices which were blatantly unfair. In some instances development has actually lowered per capita income for Indians in the impact area.

Less than 20 years ago, the Navajo Nation entered into an agreement with Peabody Coal Co. that left Peabody in possession of the tribe's coal for about 18 cents a ton when the going market price was rising above $85 per ton.

Gulf Oil stole millions of dollars in royalties from the northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana by underreporting the amount of oil that they took from the land.

When Indian people sit down at the negotiating table with a multinational corporation, they arrive with a set of goals and objectives almost completely opposite from the goals and objectives of the company. Corporations are organizations which represent the interests of investors. Their job is to protect those investors and to maximize profits by getting the product into the marketplace at the lowest possible price.

The Indians generally arrive at the table on behalf of a rural population which has a low-often below poverty level-income per household. The number of children per household on most reservations is often higher than the national average. Unemployment on the reservations is high, in some places hovering above 85 percent.

Indian people enter into negotiations with multinationals acutely aware that the recent past has been desperate, the present seems hopeless, and the future looks bleak. Like the rest of rural America, Indian people feel disadvantaged in the job market, unable to cope with the needs of the marketplace, and increasingly isolated. They are, in short, ripe for the kinds of promises and high-stakes talk that developers are prepared to offer.

The multinational corporations offer jobs to people who are unemployed-and who have come to believe they are unemployable. Multinational corporations offer the possibility of economic development. They talk about payments to the tribe. They promise restoration of land, well-drilling, the development of roads-they promise the moon. These promises find fertile ground in the minds of men and women who have given up all hope of controlling their own futures. But the promise of jobs is often unfulfilled or underfulfilled.

Energy development rarely pays off. Uranium mining tends to produce costly, long-term ecological damage. Coal development, which requires vast amounts of water, could prove disastrous in the arid southwest, where water is a precious resource to the Indians.

To achieve real development we need to offer a vision of rural America in which people are in control of their own futures. To do this, we need to borrow some pages from the handbooks of the people whom we have traditionally considered our opponents.

Problem-solving skills should not be the sole property of the business class. Structured problem solving can be taught to people of any background. Negotiating skills should not be the sole province of labor representatives, lawyers and international diplomats. These skills can be taught to all people to represent their own interests in a more vigorous fashion.

Rural communities already know what they need to know in order to solve their own problems. They know, for example, what assets exist in their community and what their social and cultural needs are. They know what can be done in the marketing environment in which they live. What rural people generally don't know how to do is to organize their thinking and their efforts in ways which create institutions to meet their already welldefined needs.

In the next decade, indigenous people must create and refine the institutions that will allow them to band together and collectively launch new initiatives to solve old problems. 0

John Mohawk, an editor with Indigenous Press Network (IPN), is a former editor of Akwesasne Notes, the official newspaper of the Mohawk Akwesasne tribe.