Battle over oil

Hurry up, Cobell said. Hurry up.

In 10 years, Cobell has met many of the plaintiffs and sees them regularly at updates held in Indian Country throughout the nation. "The saddest part of it is that I look out into the audiences sometimes and there are elders missing, and you know what's happened," she said. "There are thousands of people like Mary Johnson who have been waiting for justice. It's very emotional."

For Johnson, the Cobell lawsuit is just one piece of the long battle over payment for oil pumped and transported across her land. Half her life has been spent fighting a variety of injustices related to rights of way, mineral leases and royalties on the 160 acres.

Johnson's father died in 1950, which put her mother in a position to negotiate lease and other agreements on the family land. But her mother spoke only Navajo, and Johnson's family alleges she did not have an impartial translator. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs used another resident of Montezuma Creek to witness the agreement, and that man ended up with 25 percent of royalties on oil produced on Johnson's land, her family says.

To this day, according to Johnson's family, the children of that witness get 25 percent of oil pumped from the Aneth Field Unit project on Johnson's land.

Johnson's family is appealing the terms of this contract to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Shell and Texaco oil companies, which both have operated on Johnson's land, never have provided accurate figures about how much oil was pumped there, which makes it impossible for the family to determine exactly what Johnson is owed.

In one recent case, an oil company paid $20 for a 20-year oil pipeline right of way. Johnson's family has tried to negotiate new right-of-way agreements based on how many barrels go through the pipes a day, but there is no way to do that. The BIA does the appraisals and will not release documents to Johnson's family.

Tribal restrictions and complicated government records make it difficult to determine how much oil comes from Johnson's wells.

Officials at Resolute Natural Resources, which operates with Navajo Oil on the northern Aneth oil field, say 10,000 barrels come out of the area every day but that the life of the oil field is coming to an end.

Now oil officials are drilling again. They will shoot carbon dioxide into the old wells again and try to shake out a little more crude. Rights of way for the carbon dioxide will have to be negotiated with Indians again.

Recently, Resolute offered Johnson $128 for a 20-year right of way. No way, her family answered.

"If they want to poison us," Philemon said. "They have to pay us money to do it."

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