Tribes want Badger-Two Medicine oil leases canceled

Representatives from three tribes in Canada and one in Montana that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy are calling on the U.S. government to cancel oil and gas leases on land near Glacier National Park that they consider sacred.

The request is timely, as a lawsuit filed by an energy company with leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area works its way through federal courts.

The Blackfoot leaders sent a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Oct. 24 urging them to cancel 18 leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area. They are backed by a resolution of support from the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, which represents Native American tribes in those states.

The four Blackfoot tribes regard the Badger-Two Medicine area as the home for their creation story. The land, which is habitat for grizzly bears, elk, mountain goats and other wildlife, is located in the Lewis and Clark National Forest, not the Blackfeet Reservation.

Forty-seven oil and gas leases were issued in the Badger-Two Medicine area in 1982, but they were indefinitely suspended in the 1990s. Over the years, most of the leases were retired or surrendered. Only 18 remain, covering more than 40,000 acres.

One leaseholder, Sidney Longwell, has held leases on 6,200 acres in the area since 1982. He filed a federal lawsuit last year to lift the suspension so his company, Solonex LLC, can begin exploration on the leased areas. The lawsuit says the suspension was never meant to last forever and has caused an unreasonable and illegal delay in development.

Parties to the lawsuit asked a U.S. District judge in Washington, D.C. in August to decide the case without going to trial.

In their letter to Jewell and Vilsack, Blackfeet tribal business councilmen Harry Barnes and Tyson Running Wolf said the leases were granted without consultation with the tribes, without review of the land’s cultural value, and without a proper analysis of the environmental effects. They say the government has the legal authority and the moral obligation to cancel the leases before any development begins by Solonex.

“Should this company prevail, any short-term private-industry profit from energy development will irrevocably change the Blackfeet’s ancient right to the natural capacity, power and ability of the land, including its plants, animals and the region’s pristine and isolated nature,” their letter states.