12/5/13

Back when good land was fertile land for growing crops.


Tribes in the U.S. and First Nations in Canada are battling big energy interests:

Native American groups increasingly at the center of fights over oil and gas.

 Back when good land was fertile land for growing crops.

The Great Plains and interior West, a dry, dusty, freezing cold in winter and broiling hot in summer had little to offer.

 Now, however, the Europeans and their descendants lust for oil and gas to provide electricity, heat, and fuel for internal combustion engines.

Guess where a lot of it is to be found?

On tribal lands, or near them, requiring pipes, tracks, or roads to be laid through them.

In the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, European settlers stole a lot of land from Native Americans.

They killed them, they cheated them, and they robbed them of most of the continent.

But they made one mistake.

Back then good land was fertile land for growing crops they of course took it all.

The Great Plains and interior West, dry, dusty, freezing cold in winter and broiling hot in summer had little to offer.

Except for a great place for prisons (reservations) for all that was left of the first peoples of the land.

 Now, however, the Europeans and their descendants lust for oil and gas to provide electricity, heat, and fuel for internal combustion engines.

Guess where a lot of it is to be found?

On tribal lands, or near them, requiring pipes, tracks, or roads to be laid through them.

 Corporations and pliant local officials, today’s equivalent of conquistadors and European crowns are trying to gain control of what’s left of indigenous peoples’ land.


“There are more than 600 major resource projects worth $650-billion planned in Western Canada over the next decade.

But relations with First Nations may be a major hurdle for those developments,”

reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.


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