Kalie Rider watches the sun set behind a natural gas flare near Trenton, ND.
My Country No More
An intimate portrait of a ND community in the rise and fall of the new American oil boom. by Katy Beem In early 2011, Kalie Rider, a 36-year-old dietician from Trenton, ND, felt her rural quality of life disintegrating. Under the siege of North Dakota’s new oil boom, heavy truck traffic, surging man camps and whirlwind industrialization were overtaking the tranquil prairie and farmland in northwest North Dakota where Rider’s family has lived and worked for generations. A train load-out facility for crude oil moved out 100,000 barrels of oil a day, built on land once owned by Rider’s neighbors and family. When the owner lending land to Rider’s country church considered reclaiming the land to sell for an oil refinery, Rider sat stunned in the sanctuary of tiny Trinity Lutheran Church. “It was all so surreal, I felt like I was in a documentary,” says Rider. “Stuff like this always happens to someone else, somewhere else.” Then someone reminded Rider her former pastor’s son was a documentarian. Rider contacted Jeremiah Hammerling, who grew up in Fargo and is now an independent filmmaker in California. Hammerling flew back to his home state to meet with Kalie and other local residents. “I’ve always wanted to make a film about North Dakota,”
A truck hauling crude oil drives past the Trinity Lutheran Church in Trenton, ND.
says Hammerling. “When people ask, ‘what’s it like growing up in the middle of nowhere?,’ I say, it’s not exactly what you think.’ For this film, our eye was set on asking, what does it look like when a fight over a rural area takes place, especially when all those people have been neighbors for their entire lives and they’ve depended on each other?” Six years in the making, My Country No More, follows Kalie, her rancher brother Jed, farmer Uncle Roger and others as they reflect on the conflict and opportunity before them. They attend strained county commission meetings. Jawlines tense and arms cross as neighbors point to zoning maps and debate progress and development against land owner rights and life-quality issues. Kalie’s Uncle Roger is haunted by regret for selling land originally slated for an ethanol plant, but rezoned for the
A natural gas flare lights up an oil derrick in Trenton, ND.
load-out facility. The film also tracks Ruben Valdez, a 50-something oil industry worker the film crew met in the Walmart parking lot in Williston, ND. Sleeping in his truck amidst many others doing the same in pursuit of oil field work, Valdez came to North Dakota from the Denver area. Valdez’s first job was general carpentry building worker housing (i.e., man camps) for Mann Energy. Working his way up over three years, Valdez went from pumper, to clean-up crew foreman, to manageroperator of a saltwater disposal well. “It was good while it lasted,” says Valdez. “One year I earned $93,000. Another, it was like $86,000. They were wonderful years.” When the well was sold to White Owl Energy, Valdez was laid off. “I was pretty high-priced, and they were able to
(continued on page 16)
January 2019 11
