WEBVTT - The Moonscape 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.800 Hi. I'm Alison Era. You might remember me from the 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:07.480 previous episode of Intrust. I helped Rachel report some of 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.600 the stories we told you about in this series. I'm 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:15.120 also the Indigenous Affairs correspondent for KOSU, a public radio 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:19.440 station in Oklahoma. Since Interest came out, I've been hearing 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:22.239 from a lot of people who say that what happened 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.160 to the O Sage wasn't isolated. I've heard from citizens 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.160 of other tribal nations all over Oklahoma with their own stories, 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:34.839 their own land with big mineral deposits, their own ancestors 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:39.680 who were victims of exploitation or died suspicious deaths, and 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:41.879 I thought it was important for you to hear some 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.519 of those stories too, So I'm taking the lead on 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.560 two bonus episodes. The first about a reservation not too 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:54.080 far from the O Sage Nation. That's today on Intrust. 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:00.560 Okay. We are in Picture Oklahoma, and and it is 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:05.760 basically I mean, if you can just picture mountains or 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.160 sand dunes, very large sand dunes, just a little bit 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.440 different color, that's what it looks like. And this large 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.240 one behind is it looks like a small mountain. 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.760 That's Martha Barker, a Quapas citizen from Miyama, Oklahoma. She 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.920 was the first Miss Indian USA, and with that title, 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:28.600 she helped raise money and awareness for Native causes. Whenever 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.440 she can, she draws attention to what happened to her 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.560 family and their land on the Quapaw Reservation. That's why 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:37.840 I went out to visit her on that land. And 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:41.880 Picture Oklahoma in the northeastern part of the state, about 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.560 one hundred miles east of Osage County, and that mountain 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:46.880 she's describing. 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:52.320 It's the tailings from them running the orange stuff that 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:54.480 they mine out of the ground. They run it through 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.600 these big crushers to get the lead and zinc out 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.720 of it, and then this is the leftovers. 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.360 More than a century ago, a massive amount of lead 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.079 and zinc was discovered in this area, and those minerals 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.040 were extremely valuable. A lot of the bullets fired in 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.239 World War One and World War Two came from here. 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.440 But that mining brought environmental destruction and toxic pollution two 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:26.040 Now Picture and the surrounding towns are effectively abandoned. 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:42.120 It looks like a moonscape. It was on the list 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.400 of the number one superfund sites in the United States, 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:52.000 and its lead contamination, you know, in the water, soil, everywhere. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.280 A superfund site is a place with so much hazardous 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.120 pollution that the government has to come in to oversee 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.320 the cleanup. This one's called the Tar Creek Superfund Site. 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.440 You may be familiar with this area from news reports 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:10.240 talking about a ghost town. One headline read, take a 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:18.160 tour of America's most toxic town. This superfund site is 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:22.799 sprawling covering Picture nearby Carden and Quapaw Land near the 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:27.920 Kansas border, about forty square miles. Mining companies dug so 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.320 much here that sinkholes dot the landscape, and some parts 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.360 are blocked off with wire fences to keep people from 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.720 going near there. But what often gets lost in all 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:42.720 the stories about Picture is whose land this is? Quapaw 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.960 Land and what happened to those Quapaw families whose land 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.640 held some of the greatest mineral wealth America's ever seen. 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.760 When you drive into Picture, everything on the left hand 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:02.960 side of the main drag and going all the way 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:08.400 to Cardon is basically my family's cousins, families, uncles, aunts 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:13.680 and stuff. It's all of our allotments. But you know, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.400 the lead and zinc is still down there. And it 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:22.800 bubbles up, and the streams and wells and creeks and everything. 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.200 When it rains, the water is orange and it foams. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.479 I've been there and seen it. There's lead and zinc 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.720 still in all those piles. After it rains, streams look 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:40.240 slick like oil has been spelled around tar creek plants, 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.440 and the trunks of trees are orange. 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.200 I have no idea what we can do with the land, 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.239 but it's what we've inherited. So we've inherited a big mess, 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:49.880 you know. 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.560 I want to back up here to say something about 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.479 the Quapa and how they ended up in Oklahoma. Like 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.520 a lot of tribes, they were forcibly removed from their 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:05.600 ancestral homelands in the eighteen thirties. The US government forced 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:10.719 them from Arkansas and Mississippi to what's now Oklahoma. Before long, 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:15.040 allotment came. That was the US policy to take communally 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.480 owned land from tribal nations and divide it up and 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:22.640 sell what was left to white settlers. Knowing that allotment 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.000 was coming whether they wanted it or not, the Quapot 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:31.160 decided to do it themselves. Martha said that process was corrupt. 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:34.279 There was a gentleman that came from New York City. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.520 He was Mohawk Indian, and he ingratiated himself into the 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.919 tribe and kind of took over control of our council 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.279 and befriended the BIA and took it upon himself to 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:51.880 a lot the land. He added in his children, his wife, 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.960 his in laws, anybody that would pay him two hundred dollars, 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:58.520 he would add him into the tribe. 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:03.160 The BIA. The Bureau of Indian Affairs rejected the list 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:08.040 several times, but Martha says the man befriended bureaucrats there too. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.320 And so he lauded the land, all the good quality land, 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.120 farming land, to his families and to the families that 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.039 bought into the tribe. There's probably about eight of us, 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.400 eight big families that couldn't speak English. We were given 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.960 the land that was poor soil conditions, couldn't grow anything on. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.479 My grandmother tells stories about how when they first moved there, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.640 they couldn't drink the water. That's where the lead and 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:36.640 zinc mines were discovered. 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:39.920 A lot of the mining on Martha's land was overseen 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.960 by the US government like it did o sage mineral 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:47.480 wealth as a trustee. Quapaw families say it wasn't managed 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.720 well and that a lot of times it was mismanaged. 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.839 The quapaus mineral rights belonged to whoever owned the land, 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:00.000 so that wealth it wasn't evenly distributed. Some Quapasa citizens 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:04.400 hardly got anything. Martha's family allotments had a lot of 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.960 leaden zinc under them. One rich deposit was on the 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.520 land of her great great grandmother named Anna Slagel. Martha 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:14.800 told me a story that was similar to those I'd 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.720 heard in Osage County. Anna at one point was married 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.120 to a Quapa man, and when he died, she inherited 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.920 his wealth. What happened after Anna inherited it, Martha says 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:28.320 it was suspicious. 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.560 She owned several homes down here along the Spring River 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.520 area and just kind of went back and forth between them. 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.080 She went to the BIA to get a choffur because 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:40.239 they had to pray everything. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.760 You have to remember that a lot of Quapaw families 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.680 couldn't spend any of their money without permission from the 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:47.880 Bureau of Indiana Affairs. 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.600 She came back with this homeless man. He was non Indian, 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.559 He's a white man, and he's like thirty years younger 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.160 than her. She's an old lady. He's like a young 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:05.640 young man. They wound up being married, and so she 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:07.920 was killed by him. I don't know how else to 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.000 say it, any other nice way. He drove She was 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.120 asleep in the backseat of the car, and it was 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:16.720 a big touring car, and he drove her off a 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.000 cliff and he got out. He survived. She did not, 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.200 and he inherited her money and her land. Luckily, she 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.600 did have a will drawn up, so some of her 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.120 children did get some of that land and money. 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.160 Do you have the death certificate? 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.080 I do not, but I have an article in a 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:40.680 newspaper that tells the story about it. How she was 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:49.720 any investigation, No, why no, No, are you kidding me? No? No, 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:51.520 because he was a white man and she was full 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:52.200 blood Indian. 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.080 The article Martha Mentions, from November of nineteen thirty four, 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.839 says Anna Slagel was seventy when she died and had 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:05.079 interests in seven mining leases. And according to Martha, some 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.240 of Anna's wealth went to her driver and some of 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.679 it to her children. But even the land her family 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.400 did hold on to, it's not in great shape. 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.560 I'm sure This land was probably, you know, somewhat pretty 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.720 before the mines went in, but now it's just forgotten. 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.760 It's forgotten, just like a lot of the tribes are forgotten, 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:27.000 a lot of the people are forgotten. 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:29.960 So how did the mining go as far as to 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.720 turn a once pristine prairie into such a toxic wasteland. 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.240 And if this was one of the biggest mining operations 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.920 in the country, where did all the money go? It 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.679 turns out there's a guy in town who knows the 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.719 history of the mining industry better than anyone. 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.120 When you grow up in a small town like Pitcher, 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.319 that's really all you know. There may be a town 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:54.600 next to it, but really all you know is a 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:55.240 small town. 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.760 This is at Kahili, even though picture is on the 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.400 Quapaw Reservation. A lot of non native families moved here 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:04.920 in the early to mid nineteen hundreds to work in 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:09.440 the mines. Ed's family was one of them. That's next. 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:18.160 I was born in Flippin', Arkansas. My father was a 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:24.679 sharecropper in Flippin' and in nineteen forty three he heard 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.199 that there was work in Pitcher, Oklahoma. In the mind, 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:31.959 my mother packed everything we had in a suitcase and 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:39.800 cardboard boxes, and we caught the train to job in Missouri, 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.920 and somehow we made it from jobling the wonderful Pitcher. 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:47.200 And so I lived in Picture until I was a 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:48.360 sophomore in high school. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.840 Ed Kaheely is like a walking encyclopedia. He has boxes 0:10:55.880 --> 0:11:00.840 and boxes of old receipts, maps, photographs. Started as a 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.880 retirement project. Before he moved back to Oklahoma, he lived 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.600 in California, where he was a nuclear engineer for the 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.440 government at the height of the Cold War. But Ed says, 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:14.120 even with all the projects he had going on back 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.280 in California, he couldn't stop thinking about Pitcher. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.079 I had always kept ties with the area back here, 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.079 maintained friendships and made a couple of trips a year. 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.680 So in the nineties Ed and his wife packed up 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:30.840 their things and headed back to Oklahoma. 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.080 We live about nine miles east of here along the 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.280 Spring River, and we built a home out there, raised cattle. 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:39.840 I wanted to be nearby, but I did not want 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.160 to live in Pitcher. You know, there's not a lot 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:46.240 of lawns and parks and that sort of thing. 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:50.000 Ed's been researching, digging deep into the history of the 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:54.160 mining industry. Ed's father worked for the biggest mining company 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.520 in Pitcher, called Eagle Pitcher. At first, I assumed the 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.880 company was named after the town. It wasn't until I 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.680 started talking to Ed that I realized that town was 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:06.400 actually named after the company. 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:11.360 And so they began to expand in nineteen fourteen, and 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.640 they needed a town because this was open prairie for miles, 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:21.480 and they needed employees, So they needed people. Eagle Pitcher 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.760 built a first church in town, and they built a 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:30.319 few homes for some of their their internal staff, and 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:34.240 they built first water tower, and they did everything they 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:39.160 could do to support the town, including providing law enforcement 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:42.319 in a while, and crazy Town. 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.120 By the nineteen twenties, eleven thousand miners were living in 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:51.640 and around Pitture. This was all happening on Couapa allotments, 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:57.120 mining companies releasing and sometimes buying land outright from Quapaw families. 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.200 And remember this was a time when thousands of Native 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:05.240 Americans were deemed incompetent to handle their own affairs. So 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.280 those leases and deeds they were going through the BIA. 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:13.480 They began to drill in downtown picture here just two 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:18.680 blocks over from here, and discovered the mother load of 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.280 the entire Picture mining field was beneath the city of Pitcher. 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.400 Ed says the BIA and the mining company would negotiate 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.400 leases with the verbal agreement from the Quapa landowner, and. 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.800 Then the Bureau of Innan Affairs then was supposed to 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:38.080 collect that money from the mining companies and then pay 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:39.559 that to the Indian owner. 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.240 Ed's looked at thousands of these leases, and what he 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.559 found was that the US government wasn't collecting the money 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.520 they should have been for Quapaw landowners. Millions of dollars, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.319 he says, should have ended up with Couapa a lattes 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:58.000 that mining companies kept for themselves. But it wasn't just 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:01.120 the mining companies that were getting rich of the Quapaw land. 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.440 As Ed was digging through all these documents at the 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:08.640 Ottawa County Courthouse, he started to notice something else that 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.160 there were way more leases than there needed to be. 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.720 There was a ponzi scheme that lasted for the lifetime 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:16.560 of the mining fuel. 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.880 What Ed found was that Quapaw landowners would enter into 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.360 an agreement to get a royalty rate for their land 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.520 save five percent of the proceeds. But whoever got that 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.680 lease they could release the land to someone else at 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.440 a higher rate, and then someone may package that lease 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.120 up with others and lease it to the mining company 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:47.600 for even more Basically middlemen layers of investors and companies 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:50.960 in between the quapaw a lattie and the mine operator 0:14:51.400 --> 0:15:01.440 taking their cut. But this scheme it not only cheated 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.600 the Quapaul landowners, it also ate into the profits of 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:09.680 the mining companies themselves, and slowly smaller companies started going 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:13.000 bankrupt or selling to the big players like Eagle Pitcher. 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.440 Eventually only a couple of companies had control of all 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:21.440 the mining here, and those companies they got more and 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.040 more desperate to extract as many minerals as they could. 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.360 They went back to old mines and dug some more 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.800 closer to the surface, and even dug into what they 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.960 call pillars, the places that miners leave underground to keep 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:40.480 the surface from collapsing. In the nineteen sixties, there were 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:45.000 three bad collapses in one neighborhood. Those residents moved, but 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:49.400 the ground kept collapsing and the toxic piles kept growing. 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.440 Those giant piles they're called chat. While Ed and I 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.040 were talking, he offered to take us to the top 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.280 of one to see what it looks like today. 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.560 We are on top of one of the last tailing 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:07.280 piles in the Pitcher mining field in downtown Pitcher. This 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.640 particular pile is about one hundred and seven feet high 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:15.320 and about a quarter mile in diameter. And from here 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.600 we can get a panoramic view of the old mining 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.400 field and you can see a large number of tailings 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.040 mill tailings that are still in existence, you know, three 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.720 hundred and sixty degrees from here, to give you some 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:28.880 sense of the extent of the mining. 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.560 It was a clear and cold day up on the pile. 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.000 You can see Kansas to the north, Missouri to the east, 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:40.400 with chat piles stretching for miles between like giant sand dunes. 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:43.160 There was a beat up plastic sled at the top 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.840 of the chat pile. A lot of people who grew 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.800 up here remember sledding down. These chat piles are shooting 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:49.560 bottle rockets. 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:55.640 See those buildings down there. Those are in the worst zone, 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:58.760 and the old reunion park where we used to have 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:03.080 the annual reunion is severely undermined. It was the worst 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.000 area that we found in all of the areas that 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:06.480 we that we. 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.119 Studied, ed was hired in the early two thousands to 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.879 examine the risk of cave ins, back when a lot 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.040 of people were still living in and around Pitcher. His 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.000 job was to figure out which parts of picture were 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.439 most likely to collapse. We have read the report he 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.359 submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers. The risk of 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.879 cavens was so bad that one of their recommendations was 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.399 to reroute school buses so kids weren't at risk of 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.879 the ground collapsing from beneath them on their way to school. 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.080 And there was lead in the soil and the water, 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.359 which is a serious health risk because it can cause 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:46.320 nerve and brain damage. At one point, the Indian Health 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.960 Service took blood samples from kids around here and found 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.320 elevated lead levels in thirty five percent of the children 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:58.440 they tested. Eventually, the cavens and the lead pollution were 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.480 so bad the state and the federal government came in 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.800 to buy people out of their homes. That was about 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.359 fifteen years ago. Most families didn't want to leave their community, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:14.080 a few refused. The buyout process was fraught with all 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.199 sorts of allegations of corruption all the way up to 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:20.560 the federal government. Ed said he spent a lot of 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.760 time back then trying to advocate for local families. He 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.000 was frustrated they weren't being given enough money to move 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.679 ed wanted us to see one of those cavans up. 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:37.119 Close, this particular area. This is the third time this 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:43.440 has collapsed. It has been filled and collapsed three times, 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:47.639 so that you know, you can stand here and you 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.000 can look in all directions and it looks like a 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.240 pristine prairie, and then all of a sudden you get 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.200 something like this and you say, no, wait a minute, 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:00.600 is this really? Is this land really safe? 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:05.200 The hole was deep, maybe fifty or sixty feet. There 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:07.320 was another a few hundred yards away. 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:13.600 Anybody want to go closer and look good? Yeah, I 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.000 don't know. This is a small collapse. Yes, this is 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:23.520 about sixty seventy feet across. As I mentioned, we logged 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.760 one hundred and four that were over one hundred feet across. 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:31.400 As we drove around, we saw trash aerund, the base 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:35.760 of some chat piles, beer bottles, children's toys, the skeleton 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:39.320 of an old hotel. It was mid afternoon. If this 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.919 was any ordinary town, school would be letting out people 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:47.640 heading home from work. But this is picture it's quiet, eerie. 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:50.560 Okay, we're going to hop out here real quickly. 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:53.400 There was one other thing and wanted us to see. 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.960 He took us to another place here The ground wasn't 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.720 even ed, says he has a personal connection to this spot. 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:06.199 Okay, now, let me explain to you. During the buyout, 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:08.320 they were trying to figure out where do we put 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:11.480 all of the debris from these homes were destroyed. They 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.080 came up with this bright idea that instead of taking 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.959 all of that material to a sanitary landfill and paying 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.040 for it, why don't we just put it in a 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:23.040 hole in one of the big cave ins and you know, 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.480 market complete and along with everything went in. Here is 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.960 my old childhood home. His is in here, so I 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.960 have a private stake in the in this place. 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.520 During the buyout, remnants of his home and the homes 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.960 of others were put in a sinkhole. According to Ed, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.320 this land is going to collapse again with all the 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:46.479 stuff that's wet and decomposing. At one point, the mining 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.120 company Eagle Pitcher was on the hook for almost two 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.960 million dollars for cleanup, but it filed for bankruptcy and 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:56.399 ended up paying a lot less. Now it's owned by 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:01.320 a private equity firm in Chicago. We contacted the firm, GTCR, 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:05.280 but they declined to comment. We asked ed why he 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.199 spends so much time on all this, Why not just 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:09.760 leave his childhood home in the. 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:14.440 Hole and move on everything. We've wasted it, we've messed up. 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.439 We have an obligation to fix and you know, and 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.960 it's that simple. It is so easy to mess things up, 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.119 you know. We've proven that time and time and time again. 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:30.239 But it's a whole different thing to try to fix it. 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:36.200 Fixing picture fixing the Quapaw reservation won't come cheap or easy. 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.439 But the Quapaw Nation is working on that on the 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:42.960 ground and in the courts, and Martha Barker and other 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:48.119 Quapaw citizens are doing their own reclamation. Those chat piles 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.480 we've been talking about, they're more than just hills of rubble. 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.679 They actually have value today. It's all raw material for 0:21:55.760 --> 0:22:01.639 making roads, lots of roads. That's next. 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:06.960 Different. Asphalt comes in different the chunks come in different sizes, 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:11.440 and this is a very very sought after size. 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:14.280 That's Martha Barker again. She took us out to her 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.719 family's land to show us one of the big chat piles. 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:20.800 Right as we were standing there talking about the value 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:23.160 of the piles, a truck drove up next to us. 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:24.640 Martha weaved it down. 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:26.919 Oh, by Martha Martner. 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:29.720 Okay, there are you with the tribe or the remediation. 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:33.040 The guy told Martha he was with an asphalt company. 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.200 How friackin weird was that running into an asphalt guy, right? 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.040 You know, that's the way it is. It's like when 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.400 my mom, when she came down one time. 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:46.720 I couldn't help notice Martha's suspicions of this man. That's 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:50.119 because there's a long history here between asphalt companies and 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.080 landowners and Martha's mom she was right in the middle 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.840 of it. Her name was Ardina Rivard Moore. She lived 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:00.879 in Miama, a town about fifteen minutes south of Pitcher, 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:03.400 were she taught Quapau language classes. 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:06.840 She would drive back and forth, and she kept noticing 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:09.720 when she'd drive by picture that the chat piles were 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:13.280 going down and down and down. And so she drove 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.760 out there and she noticed there's just dump bload trucks 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:20.080 lined up sixteen deep, just hauling off the chat. 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.600 When Martha's mom saw all those trucks, hauling off Chat 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:26.720 from her land. It made her wonder how much money 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:27.800 she was getting for it. 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:32.320 Her IM account hadn't changed in years, and I. 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.199 Am an individual Indian money account holds the money the 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:40.480 government manages for Native Americans. If companies were taking Chat 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:42.840 off her land, it should be showing up there. 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:45.920 No income was coming in, but obviously they were hauling 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:50.600 Chat off. So she called her cousin. They went out 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:52.560 the next day and they had a little pocket and 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:56.960 stomatic camera and they started taking pictures of these big, 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:02.480 huge trucks hauling off all this Chat. And she took 0:24:02.480 --> 0:24:05.000 her pictures. Armed with her pictures, went to the Bureau 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:09.119 of Indian Affairs in Miama and they told her, do 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:12.639 not make trouble for this office. Yeah. While that just 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:14.440 lit her fire. 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:25.879 Those pictures she took, they gave her the proof she needed. 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:29.600 Chat being sold from her land wasn't being paid for. 0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:33.720 So in the early to mid two thousands, Quapas citizens 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:37.639 boiled two lawsuits related to the sales of Chat. Both 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:41.640 alleged that their trustee, the federal government, wasn't keeping track 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:45.960 of all the sales and accused them of mismanagement. The 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.520 one filed by Martha's Mom, Ardina and other plaintiffs was 0:24:49.560 --> 0:24:53.639 over piles that disappeared in recent years. A second case 0:24:53.880 --> 0:24:58.520 was over piles that disappeared decades earlier. The US has 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:02.000 actually agreed to settle both lawsuits, though without admitting it 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:05.760 did anything wrong. We reached out to the BIA and 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:08.919 they said they're working to protect the trust assets of 0:25:08.960 --> 0:25:13.160 all Native Americans and Alaska Natives. They said that includes 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:17.720 helping people who own mineral rights achieve economic self sufficiency 0:25:18.040 --> 0:25:23.120