Independent news from the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance
May 12, 2024
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Unjust Enrichment: Rural Water Sold to Fracking Industry Video Wins Telly Award

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The Three Affiliated Tribes created a for-profit water corporation to sell millions of gallons of water to the hydraulic fracking industry. The tribe partnered with Bartlett and West, a Kansas-based engineering business which takes pride in its pioneering past in developing rural water systems. Tribal allotted land owners — Gabriel, Charles and Howard Fettig — on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota recently filed a federal lawsuit against TAT Chairman Mark Fox, Bartlett and West and four others for trespassing and running water lines across their land. The Fettigs say the tribe and Bartlett and West — which manages all the water sales — never paid them a cent.

This film was a 2020 Telly Award. The film won a silver award in the news/general news feature category.

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear
jodi@imfreedomalliance.org https://twitter.com/JodiRave

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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