- Due to language and adult situations,
the following film is intended for mature audiences
and is not suitable for children.
Viewer discretion is advised.
? [upbeat music] ?
(fireworks)
?
Yeah, sorry I'm late.
It's...
Busy day already.
You ready?
?
This is a mammoth femur that's starting to appear here.
There's a scapula, from a bison.
?
We're told by the paleontologists
that you can actually see wolf chewings on this thing.
?
And you can see all these organics in here.
There's a lot of this locked up in here.
And that's 40,000 years old.
And you've got these grass layers that are locked into it,
and that's the smell that you--that you smell.
And then we start working our way up...
?
(zapping and birdsong)
?
(hammering)
?
This was just a swampland with big trees and dinosaurs,
and it eventually turns to oil.
?
So it's--basically, you knew
that was gonna be underneath here
if you knew the history of, uh, the state.
?
(seabirds cawing)
?
Divvied it up and just kept a little bit for--
like your first dollar bill kind of deal..
(laughs)
?
I don't know how I would answer the question,
"Do I like it better now than before?"
Because the before is still here.
?
And the after, we don't know what that is.
?
I still feel for the most part
that I'm living and working in the before.
?
Someplace on one of these doors my granddad used to measure me.
Someplace around here.
?
You're not allergic to bees, are you?
?
I ain't so sure if I am or not.
(laughing)
?
(bees buzzing)
?
The economy in North Dakota was flat--
people were just getting by.
But now, thanks to the discovery of oil,
the town is now changing--
For years, this oil has been unrecoverable,
but they've come up with new technology,
and, uh, they drill down two miles,
and then they drill out.
(static)
Flocked to the Williston Basin,
as it's known, looking for work.
The boom is also causing growing pains...
?
My name is Marlene Gunderson,
and, uh, right now we're working in the courthouse.
We are looking up mineral ownership.
-You said 150, didn't you? -Yup.
He is--my husband is working with me,
right alongside me downstairs.
?
When we get thousands of documents in a day,
maybe for someplace like New York City
thousands of documents wouldn't be much.
But in a small town of Stanley,
yes, that's a lot of documents.
Don't forget, after the parade,
the Fourth of July activities,
uh, in the park.
Again I'd like to welcome all our friends and neighbors
that we've known for years,
but I'd like to welcome all our new friends and neighbors.
We have lots of new people in town,
and we want to welcome you and hope that you feel like
you can be a part of our community
for a long time to come.
?
Hey, my name is Anna Lahtinen and I'm from Stanley.
Um, I work at Cenex.
You used to be able to know everyone
who walked down the street, but, like, now
you see people that you don't know
because of the oil boom.
Do you think that Stanley is going to get bigger
with all this oil?
No.
?
(laughs)
(whistling)
I'll be in Stanley tomorrow.
Uh, Byron Dorgan.
Been in the Senate for a long time.
And I'm proud that my state's gonna produce a lot of oil.
We need to be much less dependent
on the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and others.
So there's all kinds of things we can and should do
as a mixed energy policy,
and part of it is, yes, drilling in the Bakken shale,
and drilling here in North Dakota.
?
It's very much like a regular library,
except instead of housing books,
we're housing cores and samples.
It doesn't look like much on the outside, but...
Companies come up here, they look at the cores,
they decide what to drill, and they drill it.
Are you using the footage from the previous documentary?
You know, I might-- I might go back and look at.
It might be interesting to see
what it looked like five years ago.
I mean, I am gonna use...
It's very different
from five years ago.
Physically we haven't changed much,
but the warehouse is what's
really changed in the process.
We have been, in the last four and a half years,
been in a mad re-boxing campaign.
The first eight shelves are core.
The top two shelves are drill cuttings.
It gives you an idea of what is actually coming in
from the oilfields.
All of the Bakken activity.
?
(hum of truck engine)
?
There's new homes, new businesses.
It has been booming.
Has the town gotten bigger?
?
It's the most significant oil play
on the planet at the moment.
This has been a challenge--
and--and an opportunity,
but still a challenge.
A lot of activity,
a lot of traffic, huge growth.
North Dakota has, uh,
some of the fastest growing municipalities in America,
including the fastest growing in Watford City.
As--as I began to watch all of that,
one of the things I did say publicly is I thought
there should be a special session of the state legislature
to get ahead of the infrastructure needs,
which would be very substantial.
We had some mayors that weighed in,
and you know, the Governor and others,
and essentially I was told, you know,
butt out, we've got this covered.
Why is North Dakota the lone exception out there
to all of the economic distress that we've had in the nation?
It has to do with the fact that people in North Dakota
don't resist people who are trying to make investments
and--and develop things.
Taxes are low.
Uh, the regulatory climate is reasonable.
And generally speaking, you know,
there aren't a lot of obstacles in the way
of people who want to be entrepreneurs and do business.
So, uh, that's helped oil and gas.
And you know, you--you can't grow that fast,
you know, without having challenges.
Like you say, on one hand,
the benefits that have come out of it,
but on the other hand there's the...
?
This is the American dream here,
and I'm surprised there isn't more people flooding in yet.
I'm surprised that there isn't realtors
flying people in here to find homes.
(static)
People are now coming from Mexico,
coming from places where
the drugs are initially originating,
and they are coming up to North Dakota...
(broadcast fading out)
?
People started getting leases in the mail.
They didn't really understand it.
They were low, low rates,
you know, 35 dollars an acre.
But if you multiply that times, you know, people own 320 acres,
that was some money that come out of nowhere,
so of course they're gonna sign it, you know?
?
My name is Marty Youngbear.
I'm a Mandan Hidatsa Arikara from Fort Berthold.
I kind of just started out ranching,
I guess, being a horseman,
and that kind of led into other things,
and--and, uh,
as I was going along I became sober,
and that's kind of a rarity amongst our people,
so that became a job for me
is to try to promote that--that sobriety amongst our people,
and so we've, um, developed--
or we got into horse therapy.
So some of these are therapy horses.
Uh, that sorrel one over there, that red--red one.
So, they're our main ones 'cause they're the most gentlest.
Anybody can handle them.
They get along with everybody, kind of, pretty much.
We've lived in oppressed conditions since 1950.
On the Missouri River in North Dakota,
the Garrison Dam,
the largest road-filled earth structure
ever undertaken by man,
is under construction.
Modern earth-moving equipment
together with human engineering skill
will make possible a project
which will be 20 times the size
of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
?
(birdsong)
Before the Garrison Dam,
there was river bottoms
with--with, um, rich soils.
It was beautiful.
There was towns here, like, called Independence,
uh, Elbowoods.
They grew their own foods,
they had--they had their own lumber mills,
built their own homes.
So our people were highly independent at the time.
(distant train horn)
One of our main bulwarks against major floods are dams.
The 480,000 acres of land
which will be needed for the reservoir area
are being acquired by the real estate division
of the Garrison District,
under the direction of Roy Doughery.
Let's look at a typical transaction
as it was carried out by Mr. Doughery's division.
(phone ringing)
(phone beeping)
Corps of Engineers, you know,
they came and they surveyed our lands,
and one day our people looked out
and there was these flags around, I guess.
?
They brought it to our leadership,
and our leadership, when they seen that,
what--they showed everything,
that there's gonna be a lake there,
that all these lands are gonna be gone,
you're gonna have to move these towns,
they were sad, because it's like,
Corps of Engineers is probably backed up by military,
you know, and so it was like either you sign this,
or, you know, we're gonna force you to do it.
And there's a picture, a famous picture, uh,
our leader, our--our tribal chairman at the time
that he's signing that document with the Corps of Engineers,
he's standing there with his hand over his eyes, crying,
because he's--you know, he knows that life's gonna change.
Sometimes they have had to blast their installation sites
out of solid rock, destroying in order to build.
(explosion)
?
And when the dam was built,
that flooded all that bottom land
and all the people were displaced
and they were moved up into the--up into the hills here
where the--the soil's not as good.
And then they were-- they were branched out,
so families got spread apart,
boarding schools happened.
Have you ever heard of the Doctrine of Discovery?
Where the Pope, uh, was given the power from God,
to--under the Christian people,
first in time, you own it.
If you make use of the land, you own it.
Never mind what was living there before.
I remember the cross hanging in my mother's bedroom.
?
The internal conflicts which were exhibited by the fact that,
well, I'll go to church because it's better safe than sorry.
I'm gonna go to hell if I don't do this.
But yet at the same time, I don't agree with this.
She would remember the nuns-- nuns being mean to her.
Out of sense of fear she would go to church,
and not out of love for God,
not out of identity.
?
Our identity is tied to the land.
Our cultural stories,
our--what they would call myths,
our cosmologies.
Um, that's our psyche.
Our creation story's connected to the land.
And I'm not saying that Catholicism is bad.
What I'm saying is
whatever is distracting from the culture,
pinpoint that source.
There are studies for alcoholics
who go through the 12-step program as Natives
and it doesn't work.
They go to sweats, they pray,
you know, they go back to what they remember--
that's what works.
So there's something in there
that can be defined in black and white.
Something under the surface.
(static)
We saw it very plainly.
At the beginning of the thousand years
Jesus comes down from Heaven,
and that's when He resurrects the dead in Christ.
This is the good resurrection of the blessed and the holy,
who come up to reign with Him for a thousand years.
Sudden destruction comes--comes upon all those that don't go up,
and planet Earth is depopulated.
(train horn)
I know this may sound different
from what a lot of people teach
and what a lot of people, uh, believe.
But that is really, really what this book says.
I've studied this for a long, long time.
I had a minister come once to this particular talk
that I had given before,
from a different church than I go to,
and when we were done,
at the end of that meeting,
he shook my hand at the door,
and he said, uh, "Steve," he said, "I have never understood
this topic in my whole life."
Now as I mentioned there--
there will be no human survivors after Jesus comes,
but there will be survivors-- let me clarify that--
no human survivors, but there will be survivors.
Uh, the devil is not human,
and he survives the second coming,
and so do his angels.
Let's go back to--
Next, music by Mozart,
Piano Concerto Number 14.
?
My name is Chase Lindberg.
I grew up in Stanley from the seventh grade,
moved away, came back again
at the same time the boom started,
about five years ago.
?
Anna and I got together,
and with our resourcefulness,
the help of our parents,
we're here till probably forever right now.
Let's go on a ride. We'll come back.
We have a three-year-old son together--beautiful boy.
Um, long as things keep going the direction they're going,
this is the place to be.
-Can you introduce yourself? -No.
-You won't introduce yourself? -No.
They already know who I am.
?
(shrieking)
He's the happiest boy you'll ever meet.
(laughs)
He is.
You'll meet him.
You've met him.
?
I think it's a really-- it's a nice, pleasant place
to have your childhood.
?
But it's diff-- it will be different for him,
it will be a lot different for him because...
it's, like, a busier, crazier vibe now.
Mm-hm.
?
(murmur of crowd)
?
What we brought in was culture,
a place for these guys from Louisiana,
Minnesota, Michigan, everybody to come here
and feel good; it's comfortable.
You're seeing married men and their wives come out,
you're seeing single women come out again.
It's an environment that is not a roadhouse.
We've been very lucky. We've had a few...
peak drama points in the nine months that we've been open.
But for the most part it's been very safe, very lucrative.
?
There's complaints from locals,
but they don't know how good it is either.
They don't remember how slow things were.
?
Do miss--do miss the old town.
Yeah, yeah, there won't be many people that won't say that.
That's apartments, that's fancy ####.
Are you ######## me? We're not that good.
?
I kind of take a lot of my stuff, uh, as a coach,
um, to extremes.
?
Every time, every pitch,
everybody's down, everybody's ready to play...
I'd compare myself to maybe more of a Bobby Knight, uh,
if you listen to Coach Knight talk,
one thing I believe that he does is that he makes young men.
?
We have a lot of people that are moving here
because they can't make it from wherever they're from.
There's a lot of hardship going on,
no matter where-- where they come from.
Um, and then they're dragging their kids up here
and their kids are, you know--
North Dakota can be a culture shock.
?
That's where I grew up at, right there.
And here's the new development out here.
This was all farmland here last year at this time.
And these are, like, $300,000,
$400,000 trailer houses, basically.
I would never pay that kind of money.
You'll never get your money back out of this, ever.
To tell you the truth, though, I haven't really been over here.
I just usually drive by on the highway, so this is all--
I'm kind of taking this in with you right now.
?
My mouth is kind of dropping too.
?
But I have a guessing game
for you right now, and for our viewers.
And we've--we've decided to do this
because it recently made very big news.
Can you guess where rent is the very highest
out of these three cities:
New York, Los Angeles,
or Williston, North Dakota?
Are you ready? $2,394 per month.
People paying $2,500 to rent an apartment in Stanley--
it's just, you know, anybody working just a regular job,
you know, say here or the hardware store,
you know, they-- you can't afford that.
Those are $2,800 a month.
I never thought I'd see it.
The greed in some people
that has come out, I--I just--
It shocked me.
We're almost seeing it a little bit overbuilt here.
They're speculating the people will come here.
Uh, we haven't quite seen that,
uh, that they're ready to settle here.
Families are attempting to stay here,
but they're attempting to stay here at low cost,
whether it be in someone's basement or in a camper.
It's not a real reality.
I mean, in some ways--
you could call it an exaggeration--
but it would maybe be considered a third world country,
with some of the living conditions that they're under.
I'll show you where the hooker lives.
I mean, this is the story.
This is destined to become the next Detroit.
It is, it's-- you know, I'm not trying
to be negative by any means at all.
But it's...
when you rely on one industry,
like Detroit, one industry,
and that falls apart,
you're gonna be right back to where you started from.
Look at that!
?
Dirt and gravel guys
are worth a lot of money out here right now.
?
When they're done with this, Dad,
will they have to take out
all that dirt and everything?
They have to reclaim it, but...
I doubt it will be reclaimed in my lifetime.
Maybe in yours...
(birdsong)
It's just cooked clay, is what it is.
There was, uh, coal veins
underneath this clay that caught on fire,
you know, I don't know how many thousand years ago,
but it--but it baked the clay into a...
it's almost like a piece of pottery.
But it makes good road surface
for oilfield roads and locations.
County uses it on roads too, but I mean,
there's a pretty big demand for it now on all these locations.
That's about 3,500 bucks for this pile.
But I think I'm going to have more oilfield related income
than livestock this year.
I mean we would have got everything paid for.
It would have just taken us
ten or fifteen years longer than it's gonna.
And that's without any minerals.
There will be easily 500 trucks a day in and out of here
for the next probably...
18 months.
They're paying me a hell of a lot more than I could get
off of 20--produce on these 20 acres.
They use 20 acres and they pay me a thousand dollars
an acre per year.
So that's-- but that's the hugest--
I mean, that's the best location deal I've ever heard of.
(mooing)
?
This deal here is, uh,
EOG's Man Camp here.
?
They decided they'd put the camp on some property that I own,
and that's a--a very good deal.
They use five acres and they pay--
they're paying me 500 bucks a month
per trailer that they've got set in there.
You know, that's like running an extra 150 cows.
?
Always have a little leak here and there,
but they--they clean it up, do a good job of it.
I--I mean, I've been--
At least my experience around here.
The only--
it takes a lot of fresh water to--to frack them--them wells.
That's maybe the biggest downfall I can see.
You know, once they use that million gallons
to frack that one well,
that water's got to be, uh, deep injected,
so it--it's gone from the ecosystem.
Somebody'll say, "Well, I wouldn't let them have
any of my water," and I say,
"Well, the water's coming--
I mean, it's gonna get used,
so if I can make some profit off of it,
I'm gonna take the profit."
They're producing more oil than they can get out of the area.
The roads are-- they're in pretty tough shape.
And they're taking a, you know, a--
I think a $10- to $20-a-barrel hit on the price.
I don't--I don't understand what the rush is to get the oil.
You know, it's been here forever.
It's not going anywhere.
Why not--why not just, uh, produce what--
at least what you can get out of here by truck and on pipeline,
let the pipelines get built, you know,
until they can handle more volume.
But there's a lot of profit in it,
so, I mean, they're gonna produce it as fast as they can.
How many houses would that thing heat?
If it burnt like that.
And it's been burning like that for a year.
Natural gas.
That really pisses me off when I got a--
you see that being burned off,
and I get a bill for...
2,600 or 2,700 bucks to buy propane for my house.
You know?
?
That one's gonna have ten wells, isn't it, Dad?
Sexual predators that they've moved in here is--
that's a big concern.
Haven't--haven't--there hasn't
been a problem with it yet,
but there's gonna be.
That scares me worse than anything.
Of course, I've got a lot of little kids.
?
I think the environmental problem is easy
compared to that one. I don't know how to--
There's no good way to handle it.
I mean, I have some opinions,
but you're not allowed
to do that anymore.
?
(murmur of crowd)
?
There's a lot of creepers around.
There is.
Can't really say that.
She holds her own, but it's--it's scary.
It almost feels inevitable that something will happen.
Man, I'll tell you how the gas station attendants are,
I'll tell you how the bartenders are.
I'll tell you how the ######' judges are.
The lawyers, the jail, man,
this is the wrong jail to go to.
-Ready? -Don't do it.
(gunshot)
Oh, oh!
I was told one time, which has kind of proved
to be true, you know, that you know when you're in
an oil boom is first thing that fills up
is your motel rooms and your housing fills up,
and then your bars fill up full of people,
and the final third and topping
is that your jails fill up full of people.
Well, so far, I guess we can say that we're in an oil boom
because we've met all those three qualifications
that are mentioned above.
It's called "roughnecking."
That's what it is.
Hey, you know, it's called "roughnecking."
Most people, go out and do what we did,
they'll call in sick for ####### two days.
We're roughnecks. We go to work.
We're away from our family for a whole week, dude,
so we gotta have some kind of fun, dude.
What fun is it just to get off work,
go to the hotel room, go to sleep.
I'm a 27-year-old roughneck, you know?
I've got a kid, I take care of her,
got full custody of her.
I ####### hate it, man.
I should have quit the second day.
But I got one paycheck, I got two paychecks,
I got three paychecks, where the #### else
am I gonna make $85,000 a year on a G.E.D.?
I gotta work with these mother#######.
Earl's cool, but man, I've got to work
with these two #######.
Jesus Christ, man, I'm #######, I'm going bald.
(laughter)
You're only seeing a small percentage
of the whole oilfield.
Most companies are like my company
where you're not messing around,
you're not partying all the time doing drugs.
?
My name is Keegan Schunke, I work for HP,
we're a drilling company, and I'm a floorhand.
I have, like, another family.
So, I come home to this family and then I go back,
and I have a six-man crew that I spend just as much time
of my life with as I do here at home.
Guys I've worked with in the oilfield
that have worked there a long time from my company,
they call it "Old-school Oilfield."
And there's still a lot of it here in North Dakota,
but I would say the majority of it is not this way.
This is not us, but there's a big perception,
"####, fight, and trip pipe."
Fight, ####, or trip pipe.
Let's get 'er done.
(laughs)
Okay?
A lot of people say that,
and so you get a rap about it,
that that's how it is,
that it's just a bunch of uneducated fools
that are working out here, and that's not the truth.
I have a college degree.
My driller has a college degree, he was an accountant.
I've got a fifty-year-old motorman
that was a logger for thirty years,
that has five kids.
Whatever they did, they did good,
but they struggled.
So they came out here, and now they're making
a good wage, a good living for their family.
?
I never thought--I thought I was just going to struggle
for the rest of my life, and, you know,
I made the move to come out here
and it was the best thing that ever happened to me
because they will pay you for hard work,
and that's all I've ever wanted.
?
It's definitely not for everybody.
?
A lot of people have came here
to have a new life
that they haven't been able to have where they're from,
because they're making more money or whatever,
and that's good for them,
but I'm sick of living in Stanley.
?
And it's hard for her, because she does want
to move away, she hasn't left here yet,
and there's no place to go.
There's no opportunity like there is here today.
I really do hate Stanley, though.
Chase is like, "Don't be like that.
Just tell them you love Stanley."
I was just like, I'm just like,
"I think I'm really bored
and I just like to go."
We'll stay, we'll stay as long as this is where it's at.
I'd be very proud to raise my son here in Stanley.
?
The country of Syria produces a hundred thousand barrels,
so we're almost double than that country there,
so we're the number one producing oil and gas tribe
in the U.S. and there's five hundred and sixty-six
federally recognized tribes, and so,
and it's because of the Bakken shale
and it's because of, you know, the horizontal drilling,
and those technologies are able to extract this amount
of high quality sweet crude from the Bakken shale.
My name is Tex Hall, I'm the tribal chairman
of the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara tribal nation.
Let's not make any mistake about it.
The Mandan Hidatsa tribe and its members
own this land base on Fort Berthold.
We're at about 800 wells and about 160,000 barrels
of production per day.
When you get to that level
where you have more money spent
on managing your tribe than the federal government has,
you start--you can start dictating the rules.
That gives a window of opportunity for a tribe
that is developing itself back into a self-sufficient economy
like we were before 1948.
?
I call it sovereignty by the barrel.
Drop by drop.
?
So as it went along, then they found out
that this land was highly profitable.
Our land value shot up, I mean skyrocketed,
from the first leasing from thirty-five to fifty,
now they're leasing lands for $10,000 an acre.
All these guys selling land.
This was a beautiful alfalfa field.
Now they're selling it to somebody to go ahead
and protect your interests.
Eyesores.
As that was going along, you know,
we started to get outsmarted,
and what's happening now is it's going too fast,
so our environmental divisions ain't able to keep up.
The tribe, they start their own energy...
energy department, to help regulate.
(knocking)
I don't know where they're at.
I got my phone in the truck, we could call them, I guess.
(phone ringing)
Want to turn the volume down?
(phone ringing)
(phone stops)
There we go.
Okay.
?
There are a few policies that are in place
which are questionable, but not up to me.
?
The company is allowed to take the first seven days
for themselves, without having to share
the revenue with the landowner.
So within those first seven days,
there's a 24-hour rush to extract
as much oil as possible.
?
And when you do that, you're going to get accidents,
and the whole structure of it, in and of itself,
is questionable.
There's these trucks going down the road
with this frack water, fracking fluid,
and they're doing spills.
At night they open up their tanks on gravel roads,
desolated roads, and they open up their tanks
and dump that stuff out because it costs more
to take that fracking water
and put it in an authorized place.
So if they make more trips, they make more money.
Out on BIA 14 and 17, we had a truck open up
and spill its whole crude into the ditch.
It spilled into the ditch, it ran through a culvert
down into a creek.
I think I was driving back from somewhere,
and I seen oil coming in the creek.
From what I understand, the guy just dumped it there, you know?
?
They jumped on it, and reassured us they caught it,
but, you know.
?
When I grew up, it was just free out here.
I could ride all day and not run into anything,
and eat chokecherries and get hungry
and drink the water.
It's not like that now, you know?
Is this healthy for us, Grandpa?
Yeah, that's good.
Is that what Indians used to eat in the old days?
Grandpa, in the old days?
Mm-hmm.
The money, yeah, the kids will have it made,
but you know, the land is the main thing,
I mean, you can't get that back once you ruin it, you know?
So that was one day I got called to that,
and we get anywhere between two to ten a week.
So, the state is worrying about two a month
and we're worrying about ten a week.
(radio chatter)
?
Sometimes, we're still under the gun
and we got to be careful what we do, too.
We've got to make sure that we keep our jobs also.
You know what I mean? Sometimes it's tough.
This is where my spirituality started
when I was a kid, I would come and pray
with my grandpa and sweat with my family.
When we go up, when we go to Heaven,
does God create more people?
Or is that it?
It's up to us.
(chuckles)
It's up to us to do some creating.
My generation is the ones, we're younger,
and we're looking at all of this,
we're sitting back, and trying to get
an understanding of where we need to be
in the next few generations.
I started a Fort Berthold Environmental Awareness page
on Facebook.
What we're looking at is like renewable energies
like solar, wind.
We don't understand why, you know, America,
or even the world, doesn't go to that.
(helicopter whirring)
I think wind farms are a joke.
And these environmentalists that say,
"Get rid of the fossil fuels,
because fossil fuels are harmful,"
you don't read anything in the media about what
the wind generators have done to the birds,
the migration of the birds.
You don't hear or read anything about the amount of birds
that have been killed by those things.
?
People having a good time, aren't they?
?
I'm Fred Evans, and this is my wife, Joyce.
We're sitting at the Triple-T Ranch,
which is located in the middle
of Mountrail County, North Dakota.
Joyce is a...I'm kind of more of the big picture guy,
but she's a detail person,
she puts the finishing touches on it that look right,
I'll tell you that much.
(laughs)
?
You know, it's a gift from God.
You know, we don't deserve it, but it is a gift from God.
I have a hard time hearing it, but you notice it,
when it hits the top there, it goes "Chingling, chingling."
(laughs)
?
But now, after these oil wells,
I'm pretty well convinced that this land here
was really never really made for raising cattle
or raising wheat on, it was more
for drilling oil wells on,
that's where the real value is.
We have a bottle of that Bakken oil
and it's a little thicker than kerosene maybe,
kind of a blue, green, yellow-looking,
and when you smell that, it smells like a combination
of roses and money.
It's just the best smell you could imagine.
We've had the best wheat crop in the last three years
than we've ever had, way better,
and I know the rain had to have something to do with it,
but what I'm telling folks is it's this dust, and how it
accumulates on the leaves in the morning there,
and holds the moisture in better,
and the crops just keep getting better and better.
That's got to be what it is.
We could definitely have more people here but,
say if there's a group of six with another group of three,
then one of those three's just, there's no doubt about it,
one of those guys is gonna be a jerk for sure.
So then I've got a problem.
But then if that group of five or six, they bring a jerk,
then they've got the problem, I don't have to worry about it.
It can happen in Ohio, in can happen in Pennsylvania,
it can happen in California,
but there needs to be lightening up
on regulations, and just be more industry-friendly,
and then enjoy the wealth.
Our politicians, they have oil companies.
So our chairman, a few of our councilmen,
they have interests in some oil companies.
I'm finishing my eleventh year, it'll be soon the twelfth year,
that's the most in history, and I always wondered, why me?
People wanted me to come back.
They said that we lost a lot of money in the leases.
We got thirty five dollars and fifty dollars
for leases that I personally, as a businessman,
I formed a company and was a landman,
and I obtained leases for a company,
and we got a thousand dollars.
My grandfather was here, you know, my father was here,
and now I'm here, and we're still trying
to ask for a hospital from the Garrison Dam.
I said, "Something's wrong with that picture."
That's why I say we will become more sovereign
by the barrel, so we better keep drilling
and getting those barrels of oil
and managing and investing those dollars.
It's kind of embarrassing, you know,
for us to have leaders who are having
a conflict of interest,
and who are doing all of these ridiculous things.
For instance, they're taking our oil revenue,
I think our tribe makes nine to twelve million a month
off of our tribal lands right now
that are being developed, and they go out
and they buy these,
what the heck is that,
a million and a half dollar yacht,
they bought a helicopter, and these ridiculous things,
you know, like some kids,
and we don't have no say in it, as a people,
and we're getting disgusted with that.
You know, in beef, in buffalo,
they call it "gate to the plate."
That's when you retain ownership,
you process them and then you sell the steaks
to the Four Bears Casino, or wherever else,
that's called "gate to the plate."
In oil and gas, I call it "drill to the fill,"
because it's a non-renewable resource,
it will not be here forever,
and our maximum is probably going to be
about 2,500 to 3,000 wells,
and we're at 800, so we're starting
to move in at about a quarter or to a third now.
So our values are changing and we're more about money,
and it's kind of sad, you know, to know our history as a people.
Ninety-nine percent of all the people
on this tribal nation that own land
have signed leases with oil companies.
So, it's a minute thought to think that,
"Well, I'm against it and it's not gonna happen."
It is gonna happen because they are the landowners
and they... they signed their land
for lease for oil development.
?
If you ever figure out how to reconcile the western system
and our system, and make it work,
you must come back and tell me.
(laughing)
So, that's pretty much the gist of it.
?
Now, one of the biggest factors in bringing more jobs back
is our commitment to American energy.
Climate change is a fact, and when our children's children
look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could
to leave them a safer, more stable world,
with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say,
"Yes we did."
(applause and cheering)
And this congress can help by putting people to work
building fueling stations that shift more cars
and trucks from foreign oil to American natural gas.
(applause)
?
It's not just Congress that is impossibly grid locked,
the country has chosen sides.
Most people driving down the street today tune in
on the radio to a program that reinforces that which
they already believe.
Those same interests, talk radio,
cable television, and others,
have described compromise as a four-letter word.
You either stand for your principles,
or you compromise and cave in.
So, the result is, most--most politicians
are reluctant to compromise.
Because if you're a compromiser now,
some people have been conditioned
to believe that you don't stand for anything.
Well, that's--that's absurd, that's not the case at all.
The lubrication of democracy has always been compromising
between people of different views.
I'm Byron Dorgan and I served in Congress for thirty years,
left the U.S. Senate two years ago,
and so, just doing many things, including writing books,
written two new novels since I've left the Senate.
?
Are you feeling good about the decision to leave Congress,
and how do you feel about that, looking back now?
People have said, "You've not changed careers,
you served in politics, then you write fiction,
so what's the difference?"
?
It's a great place, and it was a great privilege
to serve there, but I think I made
the right choice to leave at the right time.
But I do grit my teeth along with the rest
of the American people when I see some of the things
that are happening.
You know, my view of this is that the additional supplies
of oil and natural gas, which are very significant,
are good news for the country
and transformational for the country,
but it should not be the kind of good news
that crowds out the substantial interests
that we have in more renewables and clean energy.
This country desperately needs to have diversified sources
of energy, and while we've made real progress
in wind energy, beginning to make progress now
in solar, it's not as fast as I would like to see.
We do need to have much more aggressive,
direct involvement in helping produce
more wind and more solar energy.
With oil and gas corporations the way they are,
do you have confidence in the free market to diversify
on its own, or--
No.
Well, first of all, there's no...
first of all, there's no free market in oil,
I mean, we know that, it's just an absurdity.
Ninety percent of the oil reserves in the world
are controlled by countries,
not companies, which is why I think
the most important thing for us to do,
and I tried very hard in the Senate,
couldn't get it done, we need a national
renewable electricity standard.
We have thirty states that have some kind of standard,
and the Koch brothers are out there
trying to repeal those standards
state by state, as you know.
There's a lot going on, a lot of fighting going on
about what our energy policy should be.
In the end, at the moment, we don't have a policy
that's really very effective.
The all-of-the-above energy strategy I announced
a few years ago is working,
and today America is closer to energy independence
than we have been in decades.
(applause)
?
Tonight they're having that meeting down over there
about those man camps,
and they gave us a flyer, and they're from Texas.
?
They're proposing that, "If you let us lease that,
we'll build all these mobile facility homes,
like a hundred and fifty of them,
to house oilfield workers,
and, on top of that, we'll pay for all of that.
We'll even give you twenty-some houses over here,
we'll build a little community over next to it,
not too far, maybe half a mile away,
on that same lease that you're giving us,
and we'll give it to you.
That'll be yours in the community."
I don't want no man camp around here.
I've heard stories about man camps.
We have man camps here already, and there's stabbings there,
there's jurisdiction issues there.
You know, we can't arrest Caucasian people
with our tribal police.
Just like the state of North Dakota
and the cities and counties in western North Dakota
are trying to find their footing and get their balance
and try to understand what does all this mean,
so too is tribal government, which is a sovereignty,
and so, they're out there fighting for their own interest.
Jobs, wealth, expansion, opportunity, overcrowding,
traffic, crime... is that good or bad?
You know, it's change.
The only thing constant in our life is change.
But we do have some opportunity from time to time to determine
what kind of change we want, and to help manage that change,
and that's what you always hope for
as all of these things move forward.
Six o'clock, that's where that meeting's at,
in the Four Bears there,
and I'm gonna talk there, I'm gonna go in there
and share how I feel about it,
share what I'm-- everything about everything,
I'm not going to leave anything out
because right now our people need a voice.
I want to thank everybody for coming this evening
to hear the people here that's gonna present
on some housing issues that we're having.
?
Marty's my relative.
We do a lot together through ceremonies,
through singing, through just everyday living.
Marty is one of our finest warriors.
He's a man of his word.
He's exceptional.
He won't tell you all of this but he's a bronc rider,
he's very successful in that.
He does a lot for the community.
He's quiet in his ways, you know,
but he's always out there and he helps everybody.
The first thing that you learn when you're oppressed
is that victim mentality, "This guy did that to me,"
and "Man, that's no good, this guy does this to me,"
and that's one of the sure signs of oppression,
and not being healthy,
not being brave in the first, not taking an honest look
at yourself and wanting to better yourself.
Let's get in this chess game and say,
"No, you're gonna have to hold on for a while,
I need to think a few moves ahead."
?
Thank you guys for the meal, that was pretty good, yeah.
Kind of support that, come together, and eat together.
I thought we voted as a community
not to have a man camp,
and I still stand by that.
I don't know how many of you
are here to come and listen to these guys
pull the wool out of the bag.
But myself, I don't want to really hear it.
Boy, it probably really looks nice on paper,
you know, how much you guys care for our community,
how much you care for those people
that are out there, homeless, you know, how much you care,
and how much money and effort you're willing
to put forward to better our community.
But we're doing all right.
I don't know if you guys know or not, but our tribe right now
we're making twelve million a month off of our oil revenue,
and if we get some better leadership,
maybe we'll take care of this housing problem
ourselves someday, you know,
rather than buying yachts or helicopters or other things.
We could put it to our immediate needs.
We don't support a man camp
and if you're gonna use our leadership on us,
we also have leadership, as a community.
We can go about this thing in a good way.
If you guys continue,
the people are gonna fight you,
and we don't want to fight, we don't want to argue.
We're peaceful people.
We like to go about things in a good way.
We just ask that you don't continue.
But, if you do, well, that's okay, too.
You know, you probably got lot of money invested in it,
and you guys ain't here out of the goodness
of your hearts.
I understand how people are.
You know, that's probably gonna be
a highly profitable business.
But, like I said, I'm speaking for the majority,
as far as I know, that's how we still feel,
we're gonna oppose it.
So, you can go ahead with your program, thank you.
(applause)
?
The reason why you were invited
to a community meeting was to listen.
I said there's always two sides to the story.
Now tonight you're here to listen to the other side.
You have heard his side of the story,
now we're going to listen to the other side of the story,
and it's up to you to make the decision.
They went through this spiel about, you know,
"This is gonna be a beautiful facility.
We're gonna have background checks
for all of the employees that come in here."
All of that, you know, they made it look nice,
and then, so they got done,
and then, that councilman was up,
that councilperson representative
was up there again, and boy, a lot of the community
got up and let her have it.
My parents were flooded out, and this is the home
that they bought, this land up here.
You know, the situation that we're going through right now,
it's the same thing.
Sister, please.
Listen to your constituents.
We borrow it from them.
We didn't inherit it.
We borrow it from our grandchildren.
To us it's spiritual.
To you, it's money.
We're disappearing on our own land right now.
(mixed chatter)
?
I got nothing to gain in this.
I have nothing to lose in this either.
I have a home.
There's a lot of people that-- just let me finish here.
You back there, too-- you don't have a house
-to live in. -I'm okay.
Yeah, he's okay-- he wants to live
in a teepee somewhere, I will too.
So this is the other side of the story, you guys.
Now don't be disrespectful, please listen to them,
make your own opinions, I don't care which way it is.
I got nothing to gain from it,
and I've got nothing to lose from it.
It's the people that I'm worried about.
You guys need to open your minds up.
You need to listen to things said.
The future is there.
Are we going to let oil ramp and run
through our reservation?
And they are doing it.
You have let them come on your land for money.
You are benefiting from it.
We appreciate all of you showing up,
if there are any more questions or comments,
now is the time to say 'em.
Are we gonna have a vote today?
-Another vote? -Judy?
?
This is just informative.
I want you guys to digest it.
?
She said, "No, no, no, we'll just let people
digest this information."
And then so when they did take a vote,
there was overwhelming votes, you know,
only 12 people were for a man camp,
whereas like 200 and something in the community
were against it.
So, that was just one thing that got addressed.
(rumbling)
?
They cannot find bus drivers
to get the kids back and forth.
They move here, and they're like this.
I want big bucks, I want big money for what I do.
The guy that was taking care of the mechanic bar in here,
he just up and quit.
Said he's gonna go get more money somewhere else.
So all these busses right now are all broke down.
So we take these busses to games
and then the engine light comes on
and you're like, "####."
What is it like now driving around here
with that bus full of kids?
Dangerous.
Not an exaggeration by any means.
Dangerous.
?
If I compared it to what it was like
when I was a kid: Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
?
Everybody is in a hurry in the oilfield.
Everybody is.
?
We could have done this so much better
had it not been so Wild Wild West.
?
People here are not against oil development
or coal development, I mean they're just--
it isn't--it doesn't come from that basis.
It comes from the idea of we should be good stewards
of the land.
And that's just not happening.
?
So, oil and a good place to live can go together?
It can go together.
Um, it can go together,
but what it needs is--is, um...
how do we get there?
It is wonderful that, you know,
the people of western North Dakota
are the great beneficiaries of this boom.
?
They have succeeded, you know,
because of their hard work and their diligence,
and their conservatism about fiscal matters.
So all of this benefit really is to the good--
is all gravy for those folks.
?
Our government today is incredibly corrupt.
And it's a good ol' boy network.
And we--there needs to be some things
that poke holes in that.
My sense is is they need to quit promoting so much
and start regulating a little bit more.
What are you thinking, Joyce?
Well, it's hard to even think of that, really.
'Cause there's so much happen in the last few years, that--
Yeah, and we're enjoying the present so much,
man, we haven't had time to think about the future here!
This is so good.
My opinion, if I could sell out where I'm living right now,
and build me another place that I have out in the country,
-it would be pretty nice. -About ten miles north.
About ten miles away from town, and that would be pretty ideal,
if I could sell where I am and move out there and build up.
?
It'd be great if there would be no more development,
but I can see that coming,
and the minerals supersede the surface,
so you really don't have much say in the deal.
You--you don't get what you wish for,
I mean you gotta deal with reality.
?
How it--how the oil thing has changed my life?
I'm trying very hard to not let it change my life.
I'm still gonna farm-- farming's what I do--
going out and buying a new pickup, or buying a--
no, none of that.
My work shoes have still got a hole in 'em,
I still don't wear matched socks.
Folks have both been gone for many years now,
but this is my home.
My name is John Warberg,
and as far as how long I've--
I remember that name, but no idea where...
No number from before, nothing, huh?
(phone ringing)
We're sorry, the number you have--
I was trying to get in touch with this guy John Warberg.
Oh, and we don't know where he is.
He had--they interviewed him early on
and they said, "Well, what are you gonna do
now that you got an oil well?"
"I'm going to put new hinges
on the doors of my pickup," he said,
"The hinges are getting shot on that old pickup I got."
So that was a good line.
But I don't know where John is now.
He left the country.
(beeping)
(gravel crunching)
(knocking)
Hello?
We drove up to his house,
there's a car there with Utah plates.
And he was getting oil checks?
Who knows, man.
Who knows where he's living--Switzerland.
He's renting his house out to some Utah guys, looks like.
Yeah, can't imagine.
Do you know--
I might have asked you this already--do you know--
-you know that guy John Warberg? -Yeah, mhm.
Do you know what happened to him, where he went?
I've been asking everybody because we can't--
his number is out of service and we can't--
I have his daughter on Facebook.
But do you know what-- did you hear anything,
'cause his farm is-- no one's there anymore.
That's weird, he must've left.
But, um...
I'll ask her.
Do you want me to ask her, for real?
Hey, Noah, John Warberg here.
I will give you a jingle in the morning.
Talk to you later.
(wind blowing)
?
I threw a bid in, and I am now a cabin owner.
?
Basically, east to west in North Dakota,
we're right in the center, and we're 5 miles from Canada.
So, I kind of abandoned the old farmstead,
and went where it's a little quieter.
Uh, have you ever seen a gate in a house?
-No. -Okay.
Come on up.
Actually from being there and living there all my life,
there's parts of that city--or town--
that I wouldn't recognize.
I think if you closed your eyes,
or dozed off as somebody was driving in,
and you opened your eyes,
you wouldn't recognize it, you know.
And now you walk down the street and you don't know the people.
?
And that's I guess the one thing I like about up here
is we're getting to know the people, you know.
You drive down the road here
and you just about wave at everybody.
You know, you're getting to know them,
and it's got that small town flavor yet,
up here, which is--
I am very fortunate to be able to find it
and move to it.
?
There's a series of wells being put in
just to the east of us,
but nothing to the extent of back home,
uh, the Mountrail County.
Will it happen?
I don't know.
It likely could.
But hopefully the hills here stay a little bit quiet.
That's being selfish,
but that's the way it is, you know.
(beeping)
I miss the farming, yes I do.
Uh, but farming by yourself,
with the traffic, and that thing, to--
very difficult.
?
Being Cath was a fireman
and then went on to be a state fire--
or a deputy state fire marshal,
she really got into the collecting
of the houses.
?
Now I wonder, are they actual--
like some of these-- firehouse number 9,
or the number 3 Hook and Ladder--
is there one like that in some city?
I don't know--or was there?
I don't--I don't know.
We are now building another cabin
just across the bay here.
You know, if the government lets us alone,
we can be self-sufficient.
You gotta build, you gotta mine,
you gotta mill, you gotta farm, you got--
the country's got to raise or do things to make,
you know, we can't all be making widgets.
And that's what we're doing here, in this state.
?
We went for a year or so without a light over the table,
and we were trying to figure out just what we wanted,
and he said, "I know a guy that does them lights,"
so if you walk around it--
Cath was a fireman,
so basically it's our life history on it.
Cath was a fireman,
and then Cath was in rodeo.
I was a little bit, too--
she's a lot better than me, though.
Then we raised cattle, and the hunting.
And then you have, well, it was my dad's brand,
and then I inherited it,
and the wheat crop, and then Cath and Dick's brand.
And then hid on the backside...
we got what paid for it all.
?
But we kind of hide that on the backside.
?
But I think that about takes care of it.
?
The kind of heating that we're gonna use
is gonna be different, you know.
And so we want to be self-sufficient,
be off the grid, you know?
Use solar and wind.
Whatever kind of different green technologies
we could use in our home,
we're gonna try to apply it.
So that's kinda what we're doing now.
We're rediscovering that sacred wisdom
that was in all of those earth lodges and...
...making it a home again.
And then what we have to do--
look at our traditional values, we have to heal our past,
like what--you know, see, that's that smudge right there,
that subtle ceremony to help you to open up.
Become self-sufficient.
And this is not being self-sufficient,
this is being dependent.
This is our current--
current constitution,
referendum, petition,
get this changed, practice our sovereignty again.
Now I'm gonna speak to you on the personal end
of me as a personal individual, tribal member,
aside from a director of environmental regulation,
and what I feel.
The displacement as an analogy from the Garrison Dam
is very much what's happening now.
The land is being eaten up at an exponential rate.
?
And I know that this may sound weird,
because I come from the--
the logical background, too.
Mother Earth is mad.
She's hurt.
And she also has a temperament.
And the repercussions from that are coming.
?
It's the intention that you reach down into Mother Earth
to pull out oil without giving anything back.
If there was ever any policy,
if you could term it with the Indian,
it's give and take, give and take.
Your stature within a people is based on how much you give,
not how much you take,
and this is upside down right now.
?
As this goes on,
people are focused on the battle on both sides.
The extraction of the oil and the revenue
and the temporary pleasures that these afford.
Who is looking after our culture?
?
I'm a father, so as this goes on,
what I'm thinking is, when I'm long gone,
on the other side,
what's gonna happen to my children?
Who will they be?
?
Let them battle it out out there.
How it turns out is how it's gonna turn out.
The guys in Washington, the oil companies,
I don't think we can stop them.
So my suggestion for our people is to just focus.
Don't be distracted, learn what you can,
save it for the next generation 'cause when this is gone,
and God forbid this is a wasteland after it's done,
at least we'll have tried, we'll have saved something,
our children will have an identity.
They'll have memories of culture,
in the midst of however it turns out.
?
(distant horn blowing)
(beeping)
The regional weather forecast
from your National Weather Service office in Bismarck.
Sunrise today is at 6:26 a.m.
and sunset is at 9:15 p.m.
Fog formed overnight and remains over areas
mainly north of Interstate 94.
The fog will lift through the morning hours
and skies will be clear this afternoon.
Look for highs today in the 70s north
to the 80s across southern portions
of the region.
Late this afternoon there will be a chance of showers
and thunderstorms in eastern Montana,
and just across the border in southern Canada.
Expect showers and thunderstorms
to move east into North Dakota
and South Dakota tonight.
The main threats will be large hail,
and high winds along with heavy rainfall.
The total precipitation for the season
now stands at 9.04 inches,
which is 2.75 inches above normal.
The total precipitation for the year
is now 17.41 inches,
which is 5.73 inches above normal.
(insects chirring)
?
Well, this is the Cold Regions Research
and Engineering Laboratory's permafrost tunnel.
This was an army research project
during the Cold War.
At this location in interior Alaska,
we have about 40 thousand years of the silt.
The climate is changing in the high
and northern latitudes faster
than anywhere else in the world.
And so, when you look at the Earth as a system,
you get basically your early warning signals,
or the canary in the coal mine,
is what's happening in the Arctic.
Any organic matter, any plants,
animals that die during the course of the year,
contribute to that soil and they are just added on top,
layer after layer after layer,
year after year after year,
and it's been accumulating for millennia like this.
With the changing climate,
there's a threat that this massive amount of carbon,
which has been stored
in the high northern latitude soils for so long,
could become thawed,
and the order of magnitude
of the carbon that might be released
could be comparable to the amount of the carbon
that's been released
by the entire Industrial Revolution.
?
It would be an accelerant,
or what we would call a positive feedback.
So more warming leads to more thawing permafrost,
which leads to release of greater amounts
of carbon dioxide and methane
from the natural environment.
These are the kinds of natural feedbacks
that would just exacerbate
the current business-as-usual scenario
of continued fossil fuel emissions by human activity.
?
So, we're really looking to see
if we can identify portents of whether or not
we may be approaching a threshold,
or a point of no return,
for large-scale release of the permafrost.
?
My name is Chip Miller.
I'm from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology,
and I am the principle investigator
of the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs
Vulnerability Experiment, or CARVE,
which is a five-year airborne sciences mission.
We're here in Fairbanks, Alaska,
in the hangar where behind me you see
the CARVE C-23 Sherpa,
which is a NASA airborne sciences aircraft
that we have completely re-fitted and optimized
for making measurements of carbon dioxide,
methane, and other greenhouse gasses
coming up off of the thawing permafrost.
Now, to date, we've seen all kinds
of physical indications that the permafrost thaw
is widespread and is happening more rapidly
than any of the sophisticated computer models
that we use have predicted.
Um, current rates are maybe 30 to 50 years ahead
of what most of the models say.
?
It's very clear from the experimental evidence,
and from the observational records
that there is an incredible amount of change
taking place, especially in the Arctic,
and there are clear indications
that the root cause of this change
is man's activity.
In fact, the imprint of human activity on the Earth
is so widespread and so obvious
that it's now in the geologic record,
and many people have started to call the current era
the Anthropocene, or the Age of Man.
?
(beeping)
?
Two, one.
Hi, my name is Chip Miller.
We're trying to determine whether climate change
is impacting the permafrost.
Today it's a very, very comfortable
17 degrees centigrade,
and we saw indications of elevated levels of methane
just to the south and west of Barrow.
?
-Go. -Hi, I'm Chip Miller,
and we found some quite large signals
just to the south of town, where we found
some of the highest methane levels
we've ever observed.
In fact, it's difficult to see those in, uh,
in and around places
where you have natural gas production going on.
So we're really excited about that,
and we're going to continue our flights on this afternoon,
going down to the south,
near Bethel and the Yukon River Delta,
to see what kind of methane
and carbon dioxide concentrations
we observe down there.
In a little bit, we're going to take
some of the local citizens on a tour of the CARVE plane,
and we'll show them what we're doing,
the equipment that we use,
and some of the science that we try to pursue.
Do you guys believe in aliens?
Maybe.
Pshh, I do.
I don't know why anybody wouldn't.
?
I believe in aliens.
I think aliens are just as stupid as we are.
No, I think that they're smarter,
and one day they're gonna come and--
They're trapped on a planet just like Earth...
-No, no. -...in another dimension,
and they're just as dumb as we are.
What the #### do UFOs do?
Why would they come here?
They already know we're screwed.
One day they're gonna help us.
No.
We're dead, we're dead.
We're doomed.
So what do you think's gonna happen with the oil,
or like how, like,
what do you guys think?
Dead.
?
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