Native Americans Fight Toxics
By John Anner
John Anner is the Publications Director at the Center for Third
World Organizing in Oakland, California.
>From sea to shining sea, America is filling up with garbage.
Mountains of trash from millions of individual consumers in a
throw-away society, tons of toxic chemicals from factories,
hazardous waste from hospitals, chemical factories and nuclear
power plants, rivers of rubbish from cities and towns Q it all has
to be thrown away somewhere. But most people, asked where the
refuse should be dumped, respond "somewhere else." Nobody, it
seems, wants a smelly, dangerous, property-value-lowering
hazardous waste dump or toxic incinerator in their neighborhood.
In fact, most communities are more than willing to pay to have
their garbage hauled away, preferably far away. But to where?
For a horde of new waste-disposal companies, the answer keeps
coming up the same: Native American land. "In the last few
years," says Paul Rodarte, a Paiute-Shoshone activist who has been
involved in anti-dump activities all over North America, "these
waste companies have gone after practically every last piece of
Indian territory that's left." "Nobody else in the country wants
it," remarked James Paddock at a conference called "Protecting
Mother Earth: The Toxic Threat to Indian Lands" held last year.
"The toxic waste company had the idea that because we were
minorities, because we are looked at as not being able to defend
ourselves, they thought they could build the incinerator in our
community." Paddock is a Din (Navajo) from Dilkon, Arizona, where
a small community successfully stopped the construction of a
combination incinerator and dump on their land in 1989. Waste
company executives say the reason they are interested in locating
toxic incinerators and dumps on Indian land is because they
believe that the fees and jobs generated by the projects would
help the impoverished indigenous communities. "It was devastating
for me to see how poor the people are," Maurice Hoben,
vice-president of O&G Industries, told reporter Bill Lambrecht," I
had never seen such poverty, not even in New York City. Putting
10, 20, 30 people to work as it gets built will give them a feel
of capitalism, and a hope for future opportunity where there is no
hope now. That's why they have an alcohol problem, and that's why
they have a drug problem." O&G Industries, located in
Connecticut, is negotiating with the Sioux nation in South Dakota
to develop a 5,000 acre waste dump for garbage, incinerator ash
and sewage sludge ash. The fight to preserve Native American land
free from toxic dumps and incinerators in Dilkon is but one
example of a nationwide struggle against the waste merchants. In
the past few years alone, dozens of battles have broken out on
reservations that in many cases have seen little or no progressive
political organizing since the 1970s. "When we went to the last
'Protecting Mother Earth Conference,'" said Marina Ortega, from
the Los Coyotes reservation near San Diego, "we found that these
situations are almost letter for letter the same everywhere. This
is the biggest movement on Indian land we've seen in a long time."
Despite hundreds of attempts, the waste-disposal industry has yet
to have a single success in constructing a facility on Native
American land, mostly due to a grassroots organizing effort. The
different cases have a number of similarities:
% Agreements are negotiated or even signed between the
local Tribal Council and the waste company with no public
review, and in most cases without the reservation
residents even knowing about it;
% When people find out about the project, and realize the
implications, they begin organizing a campaign to stop it.
The campaigns have involved the traditional tactics of
knocking on doors, holding house meetings, publicizing the
negative implications and the duplicity of elected
officials through radio and print media, networking with
other groups and some "direct actions";
% People are divided along the lines of people who are
opposed because of the environmental risk, and people who
are in favor because of the economic benefits;
% Grassroots anti-dump organizations often find
themselves fighting not only the waste company, but the
Tribal Council and the Bureau of Indian Affairs;
% Activists quickly realize that the real issues are not
simply pollution or the threat of of being poisoned, but
the lack of accountability on the part of the Tribal
Council and, especially, the threat to Native sovereignty
posed by the dump and incinerator proposals.
Targeting Indian Land "Waste companies have identified Indian
reservations as the place where, demographically speaking, there
will be the least opposition to their plans," says Bradley Angel,
the Southwest Toxics Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace. He has
compiled a list of over fifty Indian reservations where
incinerators and dumps have been proposed and says that "hundreds
more have been approached with offers." Beset with the worst
poverty, highest unemployment, lowest standards of living and
smallest incomes of any ethnic group in America, Native Americans,
in the eyes of waste company executives, are prime targets for
dump projects that nobody else wants. According to a Bureau of
Indian Affairs official for Southern California named Gil Stuart,
"I think it could be a good deal for Indian people. I suppose
there could be other kinds of economic development," he told
reporter Jane Kay from the San Francisco Examiner, "but I haven't
seen any." The companies promise major benefits from the projects.
In Dilkon, Arizona, for example, a representative of a waste
company called HiTech Recycling claimed in a public meeting that
the annual payroll generated by a dump would be more than $3
million. He also promised that the company would set up a
six-figure trust fund for the community to use at its discretion,
a comprehensive training program in health and emergency services
and vocational advancement training. Despite the incentives,
however, and the obvious need for jobs and income on reservations,
Native American nations have rejected the dump and incinerator
proposals with amazing regularity. "These guys come in and start
throwing money and promises around," Rodarte commented to the
Minority Trendsletter, "money is like a god to them. But as
Native people, we recognize that we need money, but other things
are more important. Once we show people the other side of the
story, nobody wants one [of the dumps or incinerators]." Using Our
Sovereignty to Kill Us The lure of jobs and money is not the only
reason why waste companies have targeted Native land, however. As
one waste company executive commented at a meeting with local
Tribal Council members near San Diego, California, "where else are
we going to find such a big piece of undeveloped land with a
single owner?" [reported by Marina Ortega of the Coalition for
Indian Rights]. More importantly, from the perspective of the
waste companies, under federal law and court rulings Indian
reservations operate as sovereign entities that have a
"government-to-government" relationship with Washington, D.C. In
other words, they are not covered by state or local permit laws,
environmental regulations or health and safety requirements.
States generally have far stricter environmental regulations than
the federal government, and although federal laws apply, officers
of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admit that
the agency would not be able to effectively regulate dumps and
incinerators on Indian land. "We don't put on our boots and go
traipsing around in the desert," said Roccena Lawatch, an EPA
employee in San Francisco. She noted that the San Francisco
office is 600 miles from some of the Native American reservations
it is supposed to monitor, and said that the EPA might make it out
there once a year. Ironically, it the very thing that Native
Americans value most about their relationship with Washington that
makes them vulnerable to the waste companies Q their sovereignty.
The only two institutions that stand in the way of a given Tribal
Council negotiating a contract with a waste company are public
opinion and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). And the BIA, say
Native American anti-dump activists, has never met a toxic
incinerator or hazardous waste dump it didn't like. "They are
using our sovereignty literally to kill us," says Steve Banegas of
the Coalition for Indian Rights. "The BIA won't listen to the
people, and the Tribal Councils don't care about the people
either. They only talk to each other." Toxics and
Self-Determination On the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, a
company called RSW Inc., a subsidiary of a Connecticut-based firm
named O&G Industries, signed a secret contract with the Lakota
Sioux Tribal Council to build a dump that would cover 5,000 acres.
The landfill would be filled with solid waste, incinerator ash and
sewage sludge ash shipped from all over the country. Company
representatives claim that there will be no hazardous waste
discarded in the facility, but according to Greenpeace
investigations, "both the garbage and the incinerator ash contain
dangerous chemicals and toxic metals which will contaminate land
and water." Furious about not being consulted and upset over the
possibility of their resources being poisoned, Rosebud Reservation
members quickly formed the "Good Road Coalition" to fight the
proposal. They are being helped by the Native Resource Coalition,
which successfully defeated a similar proposal by the same company
(under a different name) on the neighboring Pine Ridge Sioux
Reservation. "This is a survival issue for us," organizer Emily
Ironcrop told the Trendsletter," these dumps have the potential to
weaken our sovereignty, and we could lose our remaining land
base." "How dumb do they think Indians are?," Good Road leader Ron
Vallandra said in an interview with Bill Lambrecht, "we have only
one thing left that the government hasn't taken, and that's our
land." "The sovereignty issue is something that is very difficult
for non-Indians to understand," said Ortega, who successfully
fought to stop a giant dump on the Los Coyotes Reservation "but it
is really what is behind these fights. The people [of Los
Coyotes] were very angry that [Tribal Chairman] Banning Taylor
waived their sovereignty for this company, and that's what really
screwed him." Ortega predicts that Taylor is not going to last
much longer as the Tribal Chairman, an elected position he had
held for thirty years. The question of self-determination over
Native resources in the case of the incinerators come out in two
ways: first, as one resident of the Barona Reservation near San
Diego put it, "once you poison the land, there's no getting it
back." Second, the waste companies generally try to negotiate
into the contracts provisions that allow them to decide when they
need more land and how much to take and allow them to get out of
environmental and legal restrictions. The agreement that RSW
signed with the Rosebud Reservation Tribal Council, for example
specifically states that no local or state environmental codes and
regulations apply to the proposed dump, and demands that the tribe
relinquish the power of the Tribal Council and Courts over the
facility. Even more than the environmental menace, say activists,
Native Americans are intensely sensitive to any deal that
jeopardizes their self-determination. "Once people understand that
these contracts undermine our sovereignty and our lives," Rodarte
explained, "we've been really successful in stopping [the
projects], even when the Tribal Council is sold out." In a recent
dramatic reversal, for example, the Kaw Tribal Council in
Oaklahoma was forced to renege on a signed agreement with Waste
Tech, Inc. of Golden Colorado for a hazardous waste incinerator
after Kaw people organized themselves into a "Campaign for
Sovereignty." Lack of Accountability The battles over toxic
burning and dumping on Sioux land in South Dakota, the Campo, Los
Coyotes and Barona reservations near San Diego, the Kaw in
Oaklahoma and dozens of other Native American locations from New
York to Alaska have, in most cases, one striking aspect in common.
The community/environmental movement that organizes to fight the
project almost invariably finds itself fighting its own elected
leadership Q the Tribal Council Q as well. "These guys are like
little kings," Steve Banegas, a resident on the Barona reservation
explains, "once they get into office they try to take all the
power, and do anything to avoid losing it. They have the power to
determine who gets what [on the reservation] in the way of
housing, loans, water and electricity, and when they don't like
you they can cut you off." The Tribal Council structure was put
into place in 1934 with the passing of the Indian Reorganization
Act in Congress. Under this restructuring, a system of government
was set up whereby the people could elect their own Council, but
the Council itself was only accountable to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs in Washington. The Councils were given the authority to
disburse the BIA grants made available to each Native American
nation, and also to administer any federal programs for economic
development, social services, and the like. With little oversight
to determine exactly how the funds and programs were distributed,
many Tribal Councils and leaders quickly discovered the obvious
opportunities for graft, corruption and pay-offs to maintain power
and enrich themselves. The system functions much the same as the
various military dictatorships that the U.S. has installed in the
Third World. As in Honduras or El Salvador, for example, a
leadership (elected or otherwise) whose main responsibility is to
do what the U.S. government says or risk losing the flow of
dollars finds itself often at odds with what is in the national
interest. As in the Third World, the system often requires large
doses of intimidation to keep functioning. "When you question
authority on the reservation you put your life on the line,"
Marina Ortega told the Trendsletter, "there are goon squads and
thugs with guns. People get killed." Ortega also points out that
what appears to be a struggle over toxics is really much more than
that Q an analysis echoed by every activist contacted for this
article. As Rodarte puts it, "we can't see any of these issues as
separate. We don't separate the environment from economics or
either from the issue of accountability and democracy on the
reservation." As in the Third World, "regular people" (as Marina
Ortega describes herself) have little luck trying to bypass the
local government and deal directly with the U.S. "The BIA has no
interest in listening to the people," says Steve Banegas, "they
only deal government-to-government. One time when we tried to
recall one tribal leader and went to the BIA representative, he
told us that he would not even hear us out." As mentioned above,
the BIA is generally in favor of the dump and incinerator
proposals, seeing them as a form of economic development. (In
South Dakota, however, the BIA representative for the Lakota Sioux
nation is opposed to RSW Inc.'s plans, according to Bradley Angel
of Greenpeace.) "This system is very corrupt," says Emily
Ironcrop, "and it's time to do away with it. Our tribal elders
feel that we need a return to more traditional forms of
government. The system seems to overpower anybody who gets
elected [to the Tribal Council], no matter who they are." Putting
it All Together Native American organizers have been working to
connect the various struggles for a number of years. The two
major results so far have been two conferences called "Protecting
Mother Earth: The Toxic Threat to Indian Lands" held in 1990
(Dilkon, Arizona) and 1991 (Black Hills, South Dakota). "It feels
good," says Rodarte, "things are really snowballing. We had two
hundred people in Dilkon from thirty tribes, and five hundred
people [in Black Hills] from fifty-seven tribes." At the last
conference, held in June, a coordinating committee was empowered
to set up an office to serve as a clearinghouse, and an
"Indigenous Environmental Network" was officially inaugurated,
with Rodarte as acting director. The network, according to
Rodarte, can play an important role in connecting the individual
struggles, which is especially important given that the same
company will often approach several different reservations with
the same proposal. Waste Tech, for example, has admitted that it
want to site fifteen incinerators or dumps on Native American
land, while an internal memo from Bechtel Corporation leaked to
activists made a blanket suggestion to locate all kinds of
hazardous waste facilities on reservations all over the country.
Another goal of the network is to bridge the gap between the
hazardous waste experts and the grassroots. "We have been
successful because we are Indian people working with other
Indians," Rodarte commented, "but sometimes tying into the
environmental groups is like getting hooked into another
bureaucracy." He explained that if they are organized, Native
Americans can access the information and expertise national
environmental organizations have collected without being
condescended to. Native Americans are tired of having their
concerns included as an afterthought in campaigns by environmental
groups, Rodarte said, and are sick of being told "well, we had an
awareness session and dealt with racism for an hour and half, so
now lets move on to environmental issues." "We want to come to the
table as equals, and we want access to the money too."
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