No Fracking on Our Reservation with Carol Davis

So after our meeting that day and Bob Simek started to help us he’d come from White Earth and Amy’s in his vehicle little old vehicle and he wasn’t working at the time but we were passing the Hat to pay gas for him and get him a place to stay and we put together a video of what fracking was we didn’t know exactly what they were going to do with it yet but one thing we did know was that we were going to educate the Tribal Council and make them aware so we went after we met with the tribal chairman and we invited the Tribal Council but Merle was the only one that showed up after we met with Merle he invited us to a meeting with the Tribal Council and we took our PowerPoint presentation down there and cedar Gillette too was pretty tech savvy and is no environmental lawyer theater managed the video the PowerPoint for us and krysta Minette myself Debbie Gore know there was JT was there that was just the room was full there was probably I’d say maybe 40 45 people plus the people who were standing out in the hallway heard that there was something going on with the water and that there was some and it might be in danger of contamination and the people who are waiting to see the Tribal Council asked for permission and they came in so we had a whole room full of people and the tribal council invited us then to present the resolution at the open public meeting and they wanted to pass in a resolution immediately and the chairman said we’ve got a constitutional amendment that says you have to publish three days before the meeting and so the they published that day and invited us to the meeting the following Tuesday Monday morning in the newspaper the Bureau of Indian Affairs advertised 45 parcels of land for oil development on the Turtle Mountain reservation right here and so when we went into the tribal council meeting on Tuesday morning we switched our resolution we told them that we needed to take the resolution that we gave them at the meeting on that Friday and we wanted to substitute a new resolution and in the new what basically what the resolution did was ban fracking on the Turtle Mountain Reservation I’m not sure if you’ve seen that document but it’s on our website that cedar and a cedar gelatin crystal and it develops called no fracking way Turtle Mountain tribe that was our battle cry anyway we substituted the resolution then that stated we were the tribe would ban fracking in perpetuity forever on the Turtle Mountain Reservation and then we amended to demand that the Bureau of Indian Affairs withdraw the advertisements for bids for the oil development and it passed uimously by the tribe we had people from every word and a meeting it was just so I mean it was so wonderful to see you know the people who were aware of what was going on and what the potential was that you know there was there wasn’t a dissenting voice among us there were few in the community who had land that thought they wanted to develop it and get rich but with the overwhelming majority of people and a lot of people on a reservation don’t own land we have a small land base we have only one main water source which is the shale Valley aquifer and if we contaminated our own part of the message was if we contaminate our shale Valley aquifer where do we move because we can’t stay here where are you gonna go where are your children gonna go who’s going to come in to care of cemetery where your ancestors are laying and so all of that became the battle cry so to speak for the water protectors so after the resolution passed then it was a matter of getting it signed and getting the bureau to withdraw there the well bids it took about oh maybe two weeks to get them called back and the date was getting closer to win it when they were going to open bids and we were on this with the superintendent and he was tribal member one I would say one of our supporters but you know the government would never let him admit that and but just the way he you know dealt with us I felt that you know he wanted this as bad as we did so when I shortly before it became final I visited with him and he said Carol we want to do this right if I just jot down anything in the letter I could mess it up so he said the solicitor is writing the letter for me and so I would say maybe a week before the bids were to be opened I get a phone call and you know I knew the girl that called me to this day I cannot remember who she was she knows probably but all she said was Carol she said you didn’t get this call from me but she said I just want you to know that the superintendent dropped about a hundred letters into the mail today withdrawing the bids on me oil development under reservations so that’s how close we came yeah and we rewrote the water code someone had been in there was a whole section on fracking and it told how to frack safely and how to have a water pit how it should be lined in order to keep it safe and it was gonna last forever and benzene was never going to get into the water watershed which would eventually leak into our aquifer but we took that whole section out we published in the newspaper and the water code became an ordice for our tribe yeah it’s not a code anymore it’s an act because they try one of our tribal attorneys Richard Monette said code sounds like it can be changed he said but it’s a law he said what you do what the tribe did was created in law and so if you go on the tribal nations research group webpage the water code the new water code was published there and there is a Water Commission I was never on it because I felt that because of my age I’m 73 I wanted the younger people to take charge but I attendance Oh as many meetings as I can I used to attend all of them but I know I go to as many as I can and still I believe the sentiment is still there on our tribe that you know we will we will not allow fracking on this reservation