Rosebud Hog WrangleReprinted by permission of South Dakota Magazine. To subscribe to the
magazine, which is based in Yankton, phone 800-456-5117.
There is no word for 'pig' in the Lakota language, but pigs already outnumber the Rosebud Sioux five to one.
by JERRY WILSON
Ron Bowman, his niece Kristan Krogman and her father Dan Krogman
ranch on three sides of the Grassy Knoll hog farm.
On a hillcrest between Pine and Cottonwood creeks, west of White River, the first installment of what may one day be the third largest confined hog feeding operation on Earth has been built. If the pigs who live at "Grassy Knoll" had windows, their view would be breath-taking beauty -- rolling green hills and wooded valleys as far as the eye can see.
But there are no windows. Theirs is an automated world. Feed is delivered by computer. At regular intervals a blast of water washes their waste away. Periodically a human comes down the line, injecting antibiotics into those who appear sluggish or sick.
Six months ago they arrived by truck as 12-pound piglets from Colorado. Tomorrow they board another truck as 250-pound hogs and ride to a Hormel slaughter house in Fremont, Neb., part of the thousand hogs delivered to the plant each day by hog tycoon, Rich Bell. Their chops and hams may be consumed on tables in Japan.
Grassy Knoll is the property of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. The 24 gleaming barns and 48,000 hogs are part of a pyramid built by Bell. The air and the water are shared by all who call Mellette County home. And if you think access to the top secret missile silos that once dotted western South Dakota was restricted, try getting into Mr. Bell's hog farm for a visit.
But Grassy Knoll is only the beginning. If Bell's vision becomes reality, 13 such complexes will extend across northwest Mellette County from here to the Badlands. All told, 232 huge barns will cover 1,135 acres of tribal trust land. The operation will consume up to 1.7 million gallons of water each day, most of it washing away manure and urine, all requiring disposal as liquid waste in 550 acres of sewage lagoons. The Bell Farms/Sun Prairie Pork Production Facility will produce 859,000 market hogs each year, more logs than there are poeple in the state of South Dakota.
Many Rosebud people had no idea this massive project was on the horizon until the deal was done, Rosalie Little Thunder said. She grew up speaking Lakota in the traditional He Dog community west of Parmelee. She develops Lakota language training programs for reservation teachers and promotes development of the tribe's buffalo economy.
"Not enough thought was given to this project," Little Thunder said. "Economically, will they extract more resources than they contribute?" The former tribal council acted with good intentions, she said, to produce jobs. If all 13 proposed sites are eventually built, feeding 400,000 hogs at a time could employ at least 200 people. Grassy Knoll currently employs 18, 15 of whom are tribal members.
But beyond a few jobs, Little Thunder doesn't believe the operation will contribute to the reservation economy. "I'm really a fan of small business development," she said. "Ten sound small businesses are better than one big operation. I talked with the Council about a proposal for making and marketing herbal soap. We're expanding our buffalo herd. We could grow Christmas trees. We need to use our land in organic and productive ways."
"With prolongued oppression comes dependency on outside sources," Little Thunder said. "Poverty leads people to make bad decisions. We need to be self-sufficent. Instead of running to Valentine for bread, let's build a bakery." One good thing about the hog farm, she said, is that "it's generated a lot of thinking and discussion about poverty and the possibilities for empowerment and doing things for ourselves." At the hog farm, she said, "decisions are made elsewhere, the feed comes from elsewhere and the hogs go elsewhere."
Before driving to Rosebud, I called Rich Bell at his office in the 1920s Citizens State Bank building in Wahpeton, N.D. I asked for an interview and for permission to tour the facility with on-site manager, Phil Miller. Bell said if I called back the next week he would talk with me. But as for a look inside, he said, "there are only four people authorized to give tours. Their names are all Bell, and they don't live in South Dakota."
Two days later I topped a hill west of Wood on Highway 44, and the strip of barns appeared on the horizon 15 miles west. I crossed the Little White River and Pine Creek, and followed my nose to the hilltop, six miles west of the town of White River.
The sign says "Welcome to Grassy Knoll, a joint venture between Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Sun Prairie." The row of barns begins about 150 feet from the road. Half a dozen older cars and pickups were parked beside a small prefab-looking office.
I was greeted by Angela Krogman, a very pregnant young woman with a pleasant smile. She said only authorized persons could enter, so we visited in the shade outside the door.
Angela recently graduated from Sinte Gleska University with a degree in business administration. She doesn't use her degree much on this job, she said, but she likes animals, so she and her husband both took jobs at Grassy Knoll. With primary responsibility for 2,000 hogs, she earns $18,000 a year plus benefits.
A young man in a baseball cap that read "security" came out, and Krogman went back in the office. Alvin Bettleyoun said he worked several years as a tribal police officer before Bell offered him a job at the hog farm.
Krogman soon returned, having spoken by phone with the boss. Bell had informed her that I should leave immediately, and that the notes from our conversation should be confiscated. Bettleyoun instructed one employee to park a truck behind my car to block my exit, and another to call the sheriff and tribal police.
Not wanting to make trouble for the Grassy Knoll employees, I eventually surrendered my innocuous notes and was allowed to leave. Apparently the "welcome" sign did not include me. But if maintaining a tight lid on information and access to the hog barns is as important to Rich Bell as it appears to be, these employees deserve a raise.
Members of Concerned Rosebud Area Citizens, from left: LaTesha and Richard Mednansky
and baby Taylor, Eva Iyotte, Brad Shouldis and george England, stand near
the Bell Farms hog facility.
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"For almost a year I was subject to arrest if I even went near the place," said Richard Mednansky, a member of Concerned Rosebud Area Citizens, a group of ranchers and tribal members working to stop the hog operation. CRAC is co-chaired by Richard's mother, Oletea Mednansky, and Eva Iyotte, both tribal members. "We were under a gag order from Judge Kornmann. If I'd had a flat on Highway 44, I would have had to keep on going," Richard said.
But order or no order, debate has raged since area ranchers and tribal members learned two years ago that the tribal council had signed a contract with Bell Rarms. Under the deal, the tribe provides land, water and workers, and Bell supplies cash, barns and hogs. After all expenses and overhead are taken off the top, the tribe is to get a quarter of the profit. The pigs have been here for about a year, and according to neighboring rancher Ronnie Bouman, the tribe's first check was about $11,000. Bell said he doesn't know how much it was, but that the tribe refused to accept the payment and had not cashed the check.
Behind the gleaming barns lies a convoluted and sometimes secretive process by which Bell Farms reached a contract with the former tribal council. Economic and envirnomental controversies ensued, and lawyers and residents continue to wrangle over cultural values, environmental issues and contract rights.
Brad Shouldis, whose ranch abuts Grassy Knoll on the east, said his family leased what used to actually be a grassy knoll for 22 years. They were given three weeks notice to get their cattle off. "But we're not alone. Look how many farmers these corporate operations have put out of business," he said. "People see money flashed in front of them and they just get stupid." After he joined a public protest of the facility, Shouldis got an anonymous phone call telling him if he didn't back off his father would lose his lease on tribal land.
The Grassy Knoll sign
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CRAC co-chair Iyotte, who is conducting archaeological research on her family's land on Pine Creek, said the land being surveyed for hog expansion contains sacred sites, including historic trails and black pipestone. CRAC member George England, a rahncher who lives half a mile from a proposed site, is concerned about possible contamination of his water. "I've got a well in Pierre shale," he said. "It's hard water, but we depend on it."
A common complaint among both ranchers and Native Americans is that the deal was cut with minimal public participation. Bell and bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent Larry Burr point to an informational meeting held in the tiny town of Norris, northwest of the reservation, before the project began. But few tribal people knew about the meeting, Mednansky said. "We were told, 'There are four experts here. Ask them any questions you might have.' I asked them, 'Between the four of you, how many hogs have you raised?' They didn't want to answer, but they finally had to admit, none."
"When I mentioned the possibility of legal action at the meeting," Mednansky said, "Bell answered, 'You're not going to intimidate us with a lawsuit. We're in litigation all the time. I know how it works.' But I think we've slowed them down long enough we're wearing them down."
Clearly, not everyone is opposed to the hogs. Former Tribal Chairman Norman Wilson, who negotiated the deal, saw the promise of jobs on a reservation where in some communities four out of five adults are unemployed. Tribal member Bill Huber also speaks fervently of the positive effect of new jobs and the potential revitalization of dying communities. "You see a change in people who maybe were headed down wrong roads, and now they have steady employment."
Huber, who grows corn, wheat, sunflowers and beans on 25 square miles of leased tribal land, also hopes that a local market will raise the price for the grains he grows. He was considering his own hog feeding operation when he learned that Bell wanted to build on Rosebud land. Bell sent an airplane to fly Huber, Todd County newspaper editor Margaret Figert, a White River banker and a tribal councilman to a Bell facility in Colorado. They came back supporters of Bell's plan.
Huger and Figert were both impressed with the "state of the art technology," a system which relies on a covered "anaerobic digester," a 300 foot x 35 foot deep earthen pit where organic action breaks down solid wastes. Much of the liquid is recycled for flushing barns, and the rest is expected to evaporate in open lagoons. The systems is untested under South Dakota soil and climatic conditions, but Huber and Figert are convinced it will work.
I think Rich Bell is very environmentally-conscious," Figert said, "I would assume because of the well-publicized problems with Murphy Farms and others in the hog industry. I talked to the South Dakota Pork Producers, and everybody praised Bell Farms and Sun Prairie." Figert said the terrain west of White River had been examined by the BIA, the EPA and the DENR to make sure sites were over "impermeable" Pierre shale; she doesn't believe the operation will ever pollute the water.
Like other supporters, Figert says Sun Pririe, which finishes hogs in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, will be good for the local and tribal economy. But futher expansion depends partly on the outcome of litigation initiated by CRAC and supported by Prairie Hills Audobon Society, the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center and the Humane Farming Association. The interveners have appealed a federal court ruling upholding the Rosebud/Sun Prairie contract. Even if proponents prevail in court, Figert isn't sure Bell will build the entire project. "If they kick Rich Bell off the reservation, they deserve to be sued," she said. "And they won't get any more outside economic development."
Not everyone is convinced the pact is good for the tribe economically, let alone environmentally. There is no guarantee that jobs wil go to tribal members. There is no money set aside in case things go wrong. And if completed, the project will consume most of the tribe's industrial allocation of Missouri River water from Mini Wiconi, which means "water is life."
It is the potential that things could go wrong that worries many, not only in the surrounding ranching community, but across the reservation. The Environmental Protection Agency was not involved before the bargain was struck, and instead of an Environmental Impact Statement, generally required for developments of this size, only a cursory Environmental Assessment was performed. BIA Superintendent Burr issued a FONSI -- a Finding of No Significant Impact, and the EPA was not aware of the project until after the BIA's Environmental Assessment had been drafted.
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