The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on the Wall Street Journal Guide by William E. Blundell

Author:William E. Blundell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Editing & Proofreading, Style Manuals
ISBN: 9781101667125
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1988-11-28T21:00:00+00:00

Government Caves In

The government, of course, could have just condemned the property, kicked out the Yavapai, and paid them off anyway. But confronted by their refusal to sell voluntarily at any price, by rising public sympathy for them and by the certainty of a lawsuit by the Indians and their environmentalist allies (the dam would have drowned the South Verde’s riparian habitat, bald-eagle nesting sites and archaeological ruins), the dam’s proponents are caving in.

Now most of them have reversed course, to support an alternative plan that won’t affect the Yavapai. The final decision will be made by Interior Secretary James Watt, who has already informally backed the alternative: official approval won’t be announced until environmental-impact statements are completed, but it is generally agreed that the Orme Dam is dead.

“It’s pretty amazing,” says Lawrence Achenbrenner, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, who aided the Yavapai in their struggle. “All sorts of well-intentioned people told the Yavapai they were sticking their heads in the sand, that if they’d just negotiate, they could make a heck of a deal. The $33 million was a tentative bargaining offer, really. What these people have done is an example to other tribes who can now say, ‘By God, if we get together and don’t give up, we can win too.’”

Meanwhile, on their mountain-ringed piece of Sonoran desert, the Indians celebrate because they don’t have to take Uncle Sam’s money. When news of Secretary Watt’s preliminary opinion was announced a month ago, some elders wept or cried out with joy. “I ran down here hollerin’ and my daughter said, ‘Are you sick? Are you crazy?’” recalls Bessie Mike, a 73-year-old basket weaver.

A great billowing woman in a print dress, she sits under a tree outside a tiny cinder-block home painted lilac; a rusting Plymouth Fury is sinking into the desert nearby. She has just received $1,100 for basketry it took her four months to make. Couldn’t she use $100,000 or so? Why not sell the land? “This is our place,” she says simply.

Not all Yavapai opposed the dam. One living off the reservation, Michele Guerrero of Mesa, has publicly criticized the tribe’s decision, saying that the money could have been of immeasurable help in raising the tribe’s standard of living and educational level. Many whites also find the decision incomprehensible for the same reason. “I still think they made a mistake,” says one state official. “Just think of what they could have done for themselves with all that money.”

But some Yavapai cheerfully admit they would probably just blow much of it on a spending binge. One tells of a cousin who got $1,500, part of an overall $5.1 million land-claim settlement distributed among the tribe in the mid-1970s. He splurged on an expensive Western outfit, including red boots, started nipping on a jug, and extended grants and loans to hangers-on. He awoke the next morning sans money and everything else. Even the boots were gone.

So to the Yavapai, the white man’s money is ice but the land is diamonds.

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