Nation: Fuel Powwow

Indians seek a better deal

Government officials subjected his tribe to 176 official audits within three years and indicted him on seven counts of fraud and income tax cheating. But the trial ended in a hung jury, the charges were dropped, and the defendant claimed that it was all political persecution. “They are after the Navajos—I am the symbol,” cried Peter MacDonald, chairman of the nation’s largest Indian tribe. “Put me away, get me out of office, and it will be a while before any tribal chairman insists that the state treat Indians equally.”

MacDonald was five before he wore his first pair of shoes, nine before he spoke English. He says he took his name after hearing schoolmates sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm. He dropped out of school at 15, lied about his age to join the Marine’s in World War II, and served in the South Pacific as one of those Navajos who transmitted official messages in an unbreakable code, the Navajo language. He earned an engineering degree at the University of Oklahoma, worked in the Polaris missile program, then returned to the reservation to take up tribal politics.

To confer with this contradictory character, and six other tribal leaders, newly appointed Energy Secretary Charles Duncan last week flew to Denver.

Reason: MacDonald, now 50, is not only head of the Navajos (salary: $35,000) but chairman of the Council of Energy Resources Tribes. The resources that lie under CERT tribal lands in ten states represent about one-third of all strippable low-sulfur coal in the West and about half of all the nation’s uranium.

Legally, however, much of this Indian wealth has long been tied up under contracts that yield low returns. For example, the Navajos have been getting only 25¢ per ton from Utah International Inc. Coal of this type is now commanding royalties of up to $1.50 per ton. “That was one of the old, bad contracts,” says MacDonald, who has renegotiated several such leases by challenging their terms in court. “We are going to break it or shut things down.”

Another problem for the tribes in CERT is that they do not even know precisely how much coal and uranium their lands contain because they have never been able to afford accurate surveys. The Carter Administration provided a grant of $2 million to help the Indians get organized, open a Washington office and hire some legal help. But Indian leaders were annoyed that none of them had been invited to the President’s wide-ranging meetings on energy at Camp David. Protested MacDonald: “Our coal and other resources should be able to help this country survive the energy crisis, but nobody is talking to us.”

MacDonald made grandiose threats of striking a deal with OPEC, an idea that OPEC officials in Vienna dismissed as absurd. More concretely, the Indians hired one of OPEC’s most expert oil bargainers as an adviser. He is Ahmed Kooros, former Deputy Minister of Oil and Finance in the government of the deposed Shah of Iran.

These showy moves were designed partly to attract more attention in Washington, and in that they succeeded. When the Indians asked for $600 million over ten years to finance CERT, Duncan said such a sum was quite proper and promised to see if the money could be supplied. He vowed that he would create an Indian affairs section in the Department of Energy and that CERT would get a firm answer to all of its requests within 30 days. And finally, he promised a thorough survey of mineral reserves in the Indian lands would be made so that the tribes can find out exactly what they have—and just how heavy a club they wield.