June 2017, Vol. 244, No. 6

Features

Native Americans and Energy Projects – High Stakes in the Ground

While the average oil or natural gas industry worker today has little direct knowledge of the politically turbulent American period in the late 1960s and early ’70s, reminders of that period of social unrest have returned with a focus on pipelines and the environment. In the process of rekindling the feel of a “national movement” aimed at fossil fuels rather than an unpopular war, U.S. Native American tribes have been in the forefront of civil disobedience, which has caught some energy companies off guard. This trend appears to be reversing decades of collaboration and cooperation between the indigenous American tribes and the oil and gas industry. For hardcore environmental activists oppo