Mining made this US tribal area a toxic wasteland. This Indigenous nation brought it back to life

Bison seen in the Quapaw Nation in Oklahoma on 2 February 2026. After US mining contaminated the area, the native group has restored the land, making it safe and productive for crops and cattle. Photograph: Thalia Juarez/The Guardian 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 By Todd Price with photographs by Thalia Juarez in Picher, Oklahoma T hey 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 government’s attempt to “civilize” Native Americans by turning them into private, not communal , landholders and yeoman farmers in the model of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen . Yet, for the last century, little grew on the Laue. Half of it was buried beneath towering mounds of toxic rock known as chat piles. The waste rock, laced with chemicals, was left after miners extracted millions of tons of lead and zinc from the Tri-State Mining District , where the valuable ores stretched across Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma between 1891 and the 1970s. By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated 40 sq miles that include nearly all the Quapaw Nation as the Tar Creek Superfund site , joining the EPA’s list of the most contaminated places in the country. Informally called a “megasite”, Tar Creek remains one of the largest and most complex environmental disasters in the country. a black and white archival image shows the insider of a mine in 1943. on the right a black and white archival image shows a large mound of dirt as a man walks past A zinc mine is seen beneath the surface in 1943, after heavy mining in Picher, Oklahoma. Towering chat piles, seen on the right, were left behind, contaminating the land and the air for years to come. Photograph: Fritz Henle/Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress After years of cleanup, the Laue has been cleared of chat. The ground has been restored and tested. The soil is healthy again. Like hundreds of acres across the Quapaw Nation, it has returned to agriculture. And the Quapaw, a community with more than 6,000 members, have led this revitalization themselves as the first and only tribal nation in the country to manage and carry out a Superfund cleanup . By cleaning contaminated ground – a slow process that began 40 years ago and will likely continue for decades – the tribe can expand its farming efforts and food production on its own terms. A new sense of identity and independence Last spring, the Laue, a common surname in the area, was covered in green fields of oats 2ft high. The Quapaw’s agriculture office uses the pasture to rotate a herd of about 400 catt