Wilderness Stories: Defending Native Land from Exploitation

Having spent 35 years working for the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), the National Park Service, and Salish Kootenai College, she has firsthand experience of how difficult resource management decisions can be when cultural and conservation values collide with economic interests. She recently retired from her position as information and education specialist for the CSKT’s Natural Resources Department, in which she developed innovative initiatives to promote public engagement and environmental education. White graciously sat down with Shining Mountains Chapter to share a story from western Montana’s Camas Prairie. She spoke about defending tribal land against serious spills from a Yellowstone Pipeline Company petroleum pipeline that crossed the Flathead Indian Reservation. Notably, a 10,000-gallon petroleum leak at Camas Creek in 1993 contaminated traditional crops and led the tribe to question whether authorities should renew YPL’s permit to transport gasoline through tribal land (the latest of several major spills since the pipeline started moving fuel in 1954).