Badger-Two Medicine area, Glacier National Park, Montana
© Rich Addicks / New York Times / ReduxAn Anschutz Exploration Corp. drilling site on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Browning, Montana, July 20, 2012. Certain parts of the reservation have been opened to drilling.
For more than 10,000 years, the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park in Montana has provided strength, subsistence and cultural identity for members of the Blackfeet Nation. The Blackfeet believe that their people were created among the mountains and springs that rise from where Badger Creek and the Two Medicine River trace their headwaters.

But the Blackfeet aren't the only ones who value the region. The oil and gas industry also have their eyes on the area—and for more than 30 years, they've been fighting to drill the hell out of it.

 Kendall Edmo
Edmo, who was previously the Bison Project Coordinator for the tribe, watches over bison at the Blackfeet Nation's Reservation in Browning, Montana
Kendall Edmo, a Blackfeet tribal member, became involved in the fight to protect the Badger-Two Medicine area after learning about the region's cultural significance to her people—and the threat of oil and gas drilling.

During her childhood, Edmo wasn't immersed in the Blackfeet language or traditional ways. That changed after she graduated from college and returned to the reservation.

As a tribal liaison for the National Parks Conservation Association, Edmo met with tribal elders who took her under their wing and mentored her in Blackfeet history and spirituality. They explained the significance of the Badger-Two Medicine area. "Our cultural connection to this land is deeper than us just occupying it," Edmo says. "It's a vital connection to our identity.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration issued 47 oil and gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area to oilmen for $1 per acre. The leases were granted without tribal consultation, review of significant cultural values or proper evaluation of environmental impact—all required by federal law—and therefore violate both the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act.

By 1997, a more conservation-minded Forest Service placed a moratorium on any new oil and gas leases along the Rocky Mountain Front, including the Badger-Two Medicine area. Since then, many companies and leaseholders have voluntarily relinquished their leases. A handful of leases remain, though, sitting in legal limbo over the past three decades due to a series of suspensions by the federal government.

One of those leaseholders is the Solenex company in Louisiana. In June 2013, Solenex sued the federal government, alleging that it had unreasonably delayed the company's right to develop its lease. The fight to protect the Badger-Two Medicine area had just taken on a new urgency.

Blackfeet Reservation
© SOURCES: TRAIL TRIBES; SAMEK, HANA. THE BLACKFOOT CONFEDERACY 1880-1920. UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS, 1987; MONTANA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION; LOETUS CREATIVE.
The present day Blackfeet Nation inhabits a fraction of the millions of acres of their original tribal land . The final land cession of the 19th century occurred in 1895. The "ceded strip" is now part of Glacier National Park.
The fight over the Badger-Two Medicine area is just one in a long-running series of tribal lands grabs initiated by the U.S. government.

Beginning in the mid-1800s, a series of treaties reduced the Blackfeet's aboriginal homeland by millions of acres. Then in 1895 the Blackfeet lost even more land after a controversial agreement reduced the reservation by another 800,000 acres. This land is located in the "Backbone of the World," also known as the Rocky Mountain Front, which the Blackfeet consider to be spiritually sacred lands. Part of this ceded strip of former reservation land is the Badger-Two Medicine area, one of the Blackfeet's most sacred places.

Under the 1895 treaty, the tribe sold some mineral rights within the Badger-Two Medicine area to the federal government, but they retained the rights to cut wood, hunt and fish on the land. Some tribal members maintain that they never gave the federal government the right to oil and gas underlying the area. Even if they did, oil and gas drilling threatens the Blackfeet's long-standing cultural and spiritual interest in this sacred landscape.

Chief Earl Old Person
© REBECCA DROBIS FOR EARTHJUSTICE
Chief Earl Old Person, in his office in downtown Browning, Montana. Elected to the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council in 1954, Chief Old Person has been an impassioned ambassador for the Blackfeet Tribe for more than six decades
Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person has led the Blackfeet people in blocking the Badger-Two Medicine leases and drilling proposals from moving forward for more than 30 years.

In a letter to President Obama, he asked that the administration cancel the remaining leases, explaining that "these ancient lands are among the most revered landscapes in North America and should not be sacrificed, for any price."

Says Chief Old Person, "These lands, they're not our lands. But we're the keepers."

Update March 17:
The Interior Dept. cancelled the illegal Solenex oil and gas lease."Although this announcement lessens the threat to the Badger-Two Medicine region, it does not eliminate it. More attempts to exploit this sacred area remain," said Earthjustice attorney Aurora Janke. "The battle to defend the Badger-Two Medicine region is far from over."

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