People Of Coal-Rich Northern Cheyenne Torn Between Jobs and Sacred Culture

Ernest Littlebird put his grill out on the side of Route 39 in Lame Deer, Mont., under the shade of a tree and started grilling hamburgers.

"Come get a dollar burger," he says. "Good meal, you know, something to put in the belly at least."

Littlebird is an entrepreneur. This is his second year selling dollar hamburgers out of his minivan when he couldn't find other work. Jobs are scarce here on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and so is money.

But Littlebird thinks they don't have to be.

The Northern Cheyenne Reservation sits on one of the richest coal deposits in the country. There are of the black rock buried underneath Littlebird, Lame Deer and the surrounding pine-dotted prairie. In some places, it's so easy to access that coal developers have told tribal members it could be scraped up