1930s-1950s
28
Detailed history from the 1800s to the 1920s
plain
1409905
2024-12-20T09:38:20-08:00
From the 1930s to the late 1960s, the Apsáalooke Tribe and surrounding area saw an overall increase in outside interest in developing mineral resources, especially coal.
On the reservation, the Tribe issued a few permits for small mines during the 1930s, but development stalled overall despite the tribe authorizing Superintendent Robert Yellowtail to issue more permits, likely due to upheaval in federal policies. To the Crow reservation and the surrounding area, the 1930s brought abrupt and immense changes, including in 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.
Just a few years after the passage of the Indian Mineral Leasing Act, the United States entered World War II, which significantly altered the coal market both nationally and in Montana. The Crow Nation sought to capitalize on the growing demand for coal. During council meetings in the early 1940s, Tribal members encouraged their leaders to utilize Crow coal to support the war effort and benefit their people. However, this enthusiasm did not lead to a substantial increase in coal extraction on the reservation during the 1940s, likely because of the war's relatively short duration.
Following WWII, Montana and Crow’s coal industry languished, in part because of the adoption of diesel engines for rail transportation. By 1960, less than “one hundred employees working at coal mining” in Montana, as described by one Montana history text. That would soon change by the end of the 1960s. But for the 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.