In dispute over coal mine project, two ways of life hang in the balance

[mfcorey1]

CROW AGENCY, Mont. — Neither tribe created the modern energy economy. They did not build the railroads or the power plants or the giant freighters that cross the ocean.
But the Crow Tribe, on a vast and remote reservation here in the grasslands of the northern Plains, and the Lummi Nation, nearly a thousand miles to the west on a sliver of shoreline along the Salish Sea in Washington state, have both become unlikely pieces of the machinery that serves the global demand for electricity — and that connection has put them in bitter conflict.

The Crow, whose 2.2 million-acre reservation is one of the largest in the country, have signed an agreement to mine 1.4 billion tons of coal on their land — enough to provide more than a year's worth of the nation's coal consumption.

The Lummi, on a 13,000-acre peninsula north of Seattle, are leading dozens of other tribes in a campaign that could block the project. They say it threatens not only the earth's future climate, but also native lands, sacred sites and a fragile fishery the Lummi and others have depended on for thousands of years.

For the Crow, the project is a matter of survival. Traffic at the Crow's remote and modest casino provides no meaningful revenue, there are no reservation hotels, and unemployment here is well into the double digits. Tribal leaders say the new mine could provide up to $5,000 annually in dividend payments for each of the more than 13,000 members of the tribe and high-paying jobs for decades to come.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-dispute-over-coal-mine-project-two-ways-of-life-hang-in-the-balance/ar-AAdpitY?ocid=mailsignout