Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/tongue-river-railroad/)
By now the demise of the Otter Creek mine is old news. I thought I should write something about it but I didn’t. Talking to a good friend a couple of weeks later, I told him that it felt weird to write, photograph, organize and spend a significant amount of my life and emotional energy on something and then let the end of it pass without a note or retrospective. (more…) Continue Reading →
A totem pole that is a symbol of two Indian tribes’ opposition to increased coal mining and exportation has a temporary home in Billings. The 22-foot-tall western red cedar totem pole, created by the Lummi Nation as a gift to the Northern Cheyenne, was dedicated Friday outside Home on the Range, which houses the Northern Plains Resource Council and the Western Organization of Resource Councils of which it is part. (more…) Continue Reading →
On the afternoon before Thanksgiving, the Tongue River Railroad Co. asked the federal Surface Transportation Board to indefinitely freeze its permit application for the proposed Tongue River Railroad. If permitted, the railroad would condemn up to 90 miles of working family farm and ranchland in southeastern Montana to build a new rail line to ship coal from the proposed Otter Creek coal mine to proposed Pacific Northwest coal export facilities and then on to Asia. (more…) Continue Reading →
A gray sky spits cold drizzle as a dozen protesters gather on a gritty road shoulder in north Bozeman. They take up signs—”COAL KILLS” one reads—and wave to passing traffic. But their attention is mostly on the railroad tracks a hundred feet away. (more…) Continue Reading →
NORTH OF ASHLAND — A 22-foot-tall totem pole that traveled 1,300 miles in 10 days had very nearly completed its journey by Sunday afternoon. On a dry, dusty hill overlooking a big bend in the Tongue River near Ashland, representatives of the Lummi Nation officially turned the totem pole over to representatives of the Northern Cheyenne people. It will be displayed at a few other nearby locations before being placed on permanent display. (more…) Continue Reading →
