The Guardian
Mining made this US tribal area a toxic wasteland. This Indigenous nation brought it back to life
By Todd Price with photographs by Thalia Juarez in Picher, Oklahoma

The Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination They call this land the Laue. In the late 1800s, part of these 200 acres of grassland inside the Quapaw Nation were allotted to tribal citizen Charley Quapaw Blackhawk. After forcing dozens of tribes into Indian territory before the civil war, the US government then parceled out reservations and property to individual members. It was part of the governmen...