Christabelle Christenson and Anna Doney prepare to test their new pump and check water levels. Photo by Terri Long Fox

FORT BELKNAP, Mont. — Most communities enjoy turning on their faucets and filling their glasses with clear drinking water, water that doesn’t stink or endanger their lives. The people in the community of Hays on the Fort Belknap Reservation in north-central Montana don’t have that luxury. Their water normally has the rotten egg smell of sulfur, and recently it has turned brown and begun to smell like raw sewage. One summer about 10 years ago, there was no water at all after lightning storms damaged the pump houses and consequently for three weeks, no one could take showers, flush toilets, or wash laundry. The Indian Health Service installed porta-potties in the community. The people who could not afford to drive 37 miles to buy bottled water started drinking out of the creeks.

Cynicism runs deep on the reservation. Residents believe that the gold mines just upstream from the reservation have contaminated and depleted their water supplies. Since most of the mine’s impact is on the reservation, they believe it does not get the same scrutiny from state mine regulators that it would elsewhere. Some believe the Indian Health Service won’t test the wells that supply all the domestic water in Hays, because the agency cannot afford to provide treatment facilities.

Anna Doney and Christabelle Christenson share their fellow tribal members’ concerns about water quality on the reservation. Doney’s husband nearly died from a problem that doctors eventually determined was caused by a water-borne parasite. Christenson’s son nearly died from parasites, too.

Instead of just grumbling about the problems, Doney and Christenson have chosen to devote their lives to water quality. They enrolled in the tribal college, graduated, and went to work for the college water lab. Now they are providing their expertise to a comprehensive study, which will help determine the impact of the mine and other development on all aquatic resources in the area.

“I was always curious about science and math, but I didn’t know the difference between groundwater and surface water,” said Christenson. Their science instructors at Fort Belknap College had a hands-on approach. “We went out and sampled water and put it in a petri dish,” Doney said. Their test results startled and intrigued the students. “When I used a sample of my tap water, the daphnia (water flea) died within an hour and a half,” Doney said. In fact, they documented a 25% mortality rate with commercial bottled water. “That got me really interested,” she said.

Because of the lab and the science instructors, Fort Belknap College produces an extraordinary number of scientists given its size. Doney and Christenson praise Liz McClain and Scott Friskics for inspiring the students’ love of science. McClain did her research in microbiology in Africa before coming to Fort Belknap in 1995. She has her Ph.D. in entomology from St. Louis University. Friskics started teaching at the tribal college in 1993 and helped start the natural resources program there. He has a master’s degree in environmental studies and bachelor’s degrees in religious studies and biology. After Doney and Christenson graduated, he left teaching to become a development officer for the college.

After graduating in 1997 with associate degrees in natural resources, Christenson and Doney began working at the Fort Belknap College Water Quality Lab. Doney and Christenson live with their families in Hays, driving 32 miles each morning to get to work. “The kids think it is pretty cool that we know so much about water,” said Doney, whose son is 17. Christenson has five children ranging in age from 13 to 28. “They like math and science; they are following in my footsteps,” she said. The two women enjoy working with state-of-the-art equipment, being mentors for their own children and neighbors, and most of all working to protect the reservation resources.

The Fort Belknap Reservation looks relatively untainted by development. Bison nurse their orange calves on the reservation’s rolling prairie where prairie dogs chirp warnings about intruders. The federal government is re-introducing an endangered species, black-footed ferrets, into the prairie dog towns, believing they will be relatively safe. One can see the Little Rocky Mountains on the southern edge of the reservation easily through the clean air, which smells of sage not smog. As one drives south into the mountains, the gravel road is lined with campsites used by several generations of tribal families as they attend pow wow celebrations and the annual sun dances.

Despite appearances, salts, iron, sulfur, nitrates, and parasites frequently taint rural water supplies in the West. Wherever there has been hard rock mining that has been inadequately contained, toxic heavy metals get into the water supplies. The threat at Fort Belknap is especially ominous because of the size of the mines. Gold was illegally discovered on the reservation in 1884. The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes reluctantly gave up that portion of the reservation to the federal government a few years later, leaving an irregular southern reservation boundary with a giant bite taken out of it. In the 1970s, the mines expanded, eventually developing into the largest heap cyanide gold mines in the state. They operated for 20 years until 1998 when Pegasus Gold Corporation went bankrupt, abandoning the huge pits.

Largely in response to the mine problems, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the tribes an environmental justice grant in 1997 to start the Fort Belknap Water Laboratory. Subsequently, the college has received grants from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education to support science instruction and lab activities.

While isolation makes the reservation attractive for re-introducing bison and ferrets, it has been a problem for the lab, which has experienced high turnover in the director’s position. The college recently was lucky to find Joe Savage, who is the fourth director in four years. Savage, a non-Indian who is frequently teased by his Indian colleagues about his name, has three valuable assets: a master’s degree in organic chemistry, experience in bringing labs into compliance with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, and willingness to come to the reservation.

Up until now, the lab has been primarily a research and teaching facility with a lot of field work. The college hired Savage to get the EPA’s credentials, which means that the college lab’s data can be compared with data from other labs and can be used in court. In the past, the tribe had to call the EPA to collect credible water samples.

Credibility in court is important for the tribes, which have been involved in legal action against the mine for several years. Working with state environmental groups and an Indian rancher group, the tribes now have turned to the courts and to Congress for funds to reclaim the mines. They say that the cyanide and other heavy metals are polluting the surface and ground water, threatening their drinking water, farming and ranching, and bison range. Tribal advocates allege 22 violations of the Clean Water Act, including illegal discharge of wastewater and ruptures in waste pond linings.

In March, the college was awarded a major, $250,000 contract for an aquatic resources study as the result of a legal settlement between the mining company and state and federal regulators over such environmental violations. Originally, the settlement called for the research to be done by a mainstream research university, according to Friskics. As the college lab credibility increased, however, it was decided that the college lab could do the work, Friskics said. He sees advantages to having the work done by the college’s lab. “People here are never quite sure that outside researchers have the interests of the Fort Belknap community at heart. They are more confident that the college will do a careful study,” Friskics said.

The two-year study takes a comprehensive look at aquatic systems on the southern end of the reservation, including surface water, ground water, and tailings. The lab staff and students study every living thing, from microbes to fish, including plants on the creeks. They are also working with tribes’ cultural committees to look at the impacts on plants used for traditional and ceremonial purposes. “This is a wonderful training opportunity for the students. They can directly participate in the study,” Friskics said.

The lab director, Savage, appreciates Christenson and Doney and expects them to do a good job on the study. “You couldn’t ask for more enthusiastic technicians anywhere.” Hiring members of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes is smart for the college, he believes. “They are concerned about their own welfare. There is more of a sense of purpose.” Tribal members are also more likely to stay in their jobs. Christenson and Doney have provided the continuity as directors changed. Savage said environmental labs normally expect a three-year turnover in staff regardless of location. “By the time they are trained, they are gone.”

Another Fort Belknap College graduate, James “Scott” Snow, IV, worked at the lab as an intern this summer, but Snow plans to leave again in the fall to complete his education. Snow is working on his bachelor’s degree in water quality and environmental health at Montana State University-Northern (see TCJ, Vol. 12, N.1, p. 26). Doney and Christenson hope they can also continue their education by distance education from Salish Kootenai College (SKC), a tribal college in northwest Montana. SKC offers a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, which it hopes to have accredited by next year, and also has its own environmental laboratory.

The graduates’ education clearly has changed some attitudes in their community. Now people know there are knowledgeable tribal members they can turn to when they have water problems. As more tribal members graduate from the local college and become scientists, they also impact the community’s interest in education. Fort Belknap College expects to continue producing graduates to work in the lab and protect the resources for years to come.

Marjane Ambler has covered American Indian natural resource issues since 1973, including her 1990 book, Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development. She has been editor of the Tribal College Journal since 1995.