Making Peace Between Tribes and Energy Lords

(LANDER, WY) — After several months of negotiation, Tesoro Petroleum reluctantly agreed to most of the Blackfeet Tribe’s demands for financial return and tribal control over oil development. While Tesoro officials knew they risked the wrath of other companies for setting such a precedent, they wanted Blackfeet oil and also hoped to establish a reputation that would open other Indian resources to them.

The Wall

(BELFAST) - Cupar Street is a no man’s land. An administrator in the Department of the Environment recently referred to it as "the frontier," as if it were a stretch of wilderness between two nations across which there were daring escapes. Other bureaucrats call it an "interface". In fact it is just a street. The neighborhood to the south of it is a densely packed, working class Catholic district full of two-story brick houses built in the last century for linen mill workers. The neighborhood north of the street is not so dense and is populated by Protestants. Between the communities is a wall, commonly known as the peace line.

Frontier Justice

(EDMONTON, ALBERTA) - From his sixteenth-floor office, Randall Ivany can look out over the rolling sweep of the Alberta prairie, punctuated by the silhouettes of wooden grain elevators and the stainless-steel gleam of oil refineries - the old and new sources of the province’s wealth. The commanding view inspires a sense of unbounded power, but, paradoxically, Randall Ivany’s job is to combat precisely that attitude among the officials who govern this prosperous western domain. He is there to ensure that they do not forget humility, fairness and what he likes to call "natural justice."

Christ Figures

(SANTA FE, N.M.) - In the spring the rain ran in scarlet streams down from the hill where the pool was, rutting our ball courts and the rose gardens, staining the cinder-block foundation of our old wooden dormitory. We skipped crazily from building to building in those March and April monsoons. Sometimes it almost seemed as though we had moved outdoors. But we knew then home and summer weren’t far off.

I know it’s difficult to extrapolate backwards from one’s dinner plate, where you might have had a pork chop looking up at you, or from a supermarket where you might be visiting the meat counter to decide which steak to buy. To extrapolate back to where all this comes from is what I’ve been trying to do this year, to this incredibly vast world which is like a supply unit that keeps an army in the field and which lies behind the meat that we all eat. It’s a world, as some of you may know, some of you may not, of feedlots that cover hundreds of acres just rolled out with animals shoulder to shoulder, of confinement barns for hogs which are as large as Grand Central Station, no windows, food is brought in mechanically, manure is taken out mechanically. This is an incredible world of technology, and, I might add, a world dependent on drugs and chemicals in order to raise this meat. The meat is relatively inexpensive, actually in many respects, it’s relatively healthy. There are some other respects which do, I think, give one reason for pause.