The Human Cost of Fossil Fuel Extraction

            Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in California has already run up against serious opposition because of its harmful effects on people and the environment. It is relatively well-known that contamination to groundwater from fracking can lead to cancer and birth defects, as well as other ecological contamination. Fracking causes destruction of the land and harm to animal species. However, for indigenous people living on reservations that are being fracked for natural resources, there are even more pressing and dangerous effects. I spoke with Kahea Pacheco of Women’s Earth Alliance (http://www.womensearthalliance.org/section.php?id=149 ), an organization which “invests in grassroots women's leadership to drive solutions to our most pressing ecological concerns – water, food, land, and climate,” about the negative impact resource extraction has on indigenous women.

            According to Pacheco, one of the most important but least known consequences of fracking on indigenous peoples is the increased risk of sexual assault for native women. When an oil or natural gas company begins work, men from across the country are brought to the area, creating a huge spike in population. Man camps –temporary housing for the workers-- are set up near the drill site or pipeline, and these camps are where the worst atrocities against native women are carried out. Women living on reservations, mostly between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, are often forcibly taken to the man-camps and report being gang-raped or sexually assaulted. There are also increasing rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as drug use and suicide, on reservations which are now being exploited for natural resources. As well as destroying the health, land, and ecology of the area, oil and natural gas companies have taken it on themselves to destroy the mental health and happiness of the people living near the drill sites.

            However, indigenous people are beginning to fight back against this many-sided threat. Native groups in Idaho, Oregon and Montana have banded together and started to blockade the roads used by megaload trucks –the trucks that carry supplies to the drill sites and piplines— to make it more difficult for the trucks to come through on reservation land. Indian People’s Action, a protest group in Montana, sets up midnight blockades for these trucks and refuses to let the trucks through when they want to pass. Because of these efforts, megaload trucks must re-direct their course and spend more money to take the supplies farther, along more roundabout routes. These groups would like to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for trucks to move supplies, so that, eventually, drilling or building the pipeline in that area isn’t economically viable.

            Resource extraction, fracking, and the use of oil and natural gas are more costly than most people realize. This source of energy is responsible for countless ecological, environmental, and social problems. The next time you turn on the ignition in your car, think, if only for a second, about the real human cost of the fuel in your vehicle.

By Kate Iida