1930s-1950s
ResourcesOn the reservation, the tribe issued a few permits for small mines during the 1930s, but development stalled overall despite the tribe authorizing the Superintendent Robert Yellowtail to issue more permits, likely due to upheaval in federal policies.
The 1930s for the Crow reservation and the surrounding area were marked by abrupt and immense changes, including federal policy. As a result of the larger New Deal economic and social programs, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934. If tribes wanted access to federal funds for programs, the Act required Indigenous nations to adopt Euro-American democratic government systems but also appropriated funds for economic, cultural, and social programs on reservations. The Crow Nation, however, voted against adopting the IRA, due in part to concerns over federal oversight of tribal governments. Of note to coal extraction, the IRA ended federal allotment and allowed the federal government to purchase land to “restore lands” to Indigenous Nations. Between the IRA and other laws that addressed mineral leases on Indigenous reservations, governance and oversight of Indian mineral rights were in a general disarray.
The Secretary of Interior began offering suggestions for improvement in 1937 and a Supreme Court decision in April of 1938 served to further highlight the confusion, especially as the Court ruled that mineral rights belonged to tribes, not the Federal Government. One month later, Congress passed the Indian Mineral Leasing Act, which overall, sought to return oversight of mineral development on reservations to tribal leadership, albeit with some noteworthy exceptions. Congress initially excluded the Crow reservation from the 1938 Act, however, because the tribe refused to organize under the IRA.
Following WWII, Montana and Crow’s coal industry languished. By 1960, according to historian Michael Malone, less than “one hundred employees working at coal mining” in Montana. That would soon change by the end of the 1960s. But for the Crow tribe, the period between the end of WWII and late 1960s proved to be highly consequential in relation to politics and natural resource rights.
In 1948, the Crow tribe adopted a new constitution. The constitution repeated the Crow’s previous governing structure of direct democracy by requiring large tribal votes for major decisions, including for mineral rights. That quickly changed, however, as tribal members realized they needed faster response times to bids and other mineral-related concerns. In response to the increased attention to their coal, in 1952, the tribe formed a committee to handle much of the mineral leasing issues. Additionally, ten years later in 1959, the United States Congress officially returned mineral rights to the Crow tribe, including on the ceded strip.
The Crow tribe faced an additional fight during the 1940s and 1950s, this time in relation to building a dam on the Big Horn River. The Yellowtail Dam was completed in 1965 and its water eventually used for coal production that would increase in the next few decades. The debates within Crow communities over the Big Horn River dam shaped similar debates that would occur in the 1960s and 1970s over coal development. Some of the divides between pro (“River”) and anti (“Mountain”) were created, or at the very least, cemented, during the dam fight.
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- Detailed History Kerri Clement