"BROWNING – On a recent flight over Divide Mountain, a snow-marbled peak that straddles the border between the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Glacier National Park, Lori New Breast crossed her fingers."

"New Breast is an enrolled tribal member and the co-founder of Blackfeet Women Against Fracking, a coalition of women opposed to the rampant oil and gas exploration occurring on reservation lands. She is worried that the rolling foothills intersecting the Rocky Mountain Front could soon be bristling with oil wells, and that a trove of cultural and natural resources will be dramatically and permanently altered in the process.

Dozens of exploratory well pads already checker the landscape and proposals for others continue to stack up in the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, including one at the base of Divide Mountain.

“The oil companies have pretty much had carte blanche access to our land, but there hasn’t been any free flow of information to those of us with a strong connection to the land,” she said. “People are signing away their leases and they don’t understand the consequences.”"

Tristan Scott reports for the Missoulian June 30, 2012. [2]