This article is from the twice monthly newspaper, News From Indian
Country. It is published by Indian Country Communications, Inc.
with offices at Rt.2 Box 2900A, Hayward, WI 54843. They may be
contacted by calling (715) 634-5226; FAX (715) 634-3243.
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It also appears in The Circle, 1530 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis,
MN 55404 (612) 871-4555. Subscription - $15/yr; $25 2 yrs.
Voted BEST NATIVE AMERICAN MONTHLY NEWSPAPER - 1991, 1993 by the
Native American Journalists Association.
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>From Alaska to Six Nations to California, Participants Say Genocide
by Valerie Taliman
Stroud, Oklahoma - As hundreds of indigenous people from
throughout Native America gathered to share their concerns at the
4th annual "Protecting Mother Earth" conference held here in early
June, the message was clear: genocide is not a thing of the past.
Native peoples are still living and dying at the front lines of
environmental destruction.
Some of the most devastating incidents revealed were two "war
crimes" committed by the US against indigenous peoples in Alaska.
Pt. Hope Village President Jack Schaefer told the crowd that from
195 to 1957, more than 100 Alaska Natives were fed radioactive
iodine pills to measure the effects on their thyroid glands. Air
Force researchers believed Native thyroid glands might provide
clues as to how US soldiers could better survive the arctic
winters.
Native people were never told that they were being used as
"guinea pigs" nor was their consent ever sought. The Air Force
never released the results of the tests or tracked the health
effects on Native people. The 30-year-old experiment was uncovered
last month by Cable News Network reporters.
In addition, village leaders say cancer related deaths in nine
village on Alaska's North Slope have jumped by an alarming 93
percent in the 30 years due to a military experiment called
"Project Chariot," in which the Atomic Energy Commission planned to
use nuclear explosions to create a harbor at Cape Thompson. Though
the project was not completed, from 1959 to 1962, the [US] government
exposed Native people to radioactive isotopes to measure radiation
effects on an arctic environment. The military then buried the
radioactive waste, including illegal amounts of highly radioactive
strontium-85 and cesium-137, and covered up the experiment.
It was not until last year that village leaders discovered that
their people had unwittingly been used in radionuclide experiments
that they say were "conspiratorially conceived with genocidal
intent."
Schaefer is leading the fight to obtain classified documents
detailing the extent of the contamination and to demand clean up
for villages affected. He is also calling for a thorough
Congressional investigation.
"It's time to end the dysfunctional pattern of secrecy and
deception involved in America's nuclear war against her own people
under the auspices of national security," Schaefer said.
But it is not just the military that has contaminated Native
lands and people. Polluting industries, government agencies,
multinational corporations, and careless natural resource
development are also wreaking havoc on Native cultures.
For the Shoalwater Bay Tribe in southwestern Washington,
genocide is evident in the soaring infant mortality rate that
afflicts their 150-member tribe. In the last five years, 12 of 27
babies perished before or shortly after birth. Only nine children
in their community have survived since 1989, some of whom are
chronically ill like many other community members.
"We're losing a whole generation of people and it's hard to
take," said their tribal chair Herb Whitish in an interview.
The elders have been affected as well. There is only one woman
over 70 and the eldest man in the community is 50. Whitish is the
third oldest man in the community. He is in his 30's.
Though the exact cause of the high incidence of disease and
deaths has not been determined, environmental factors are
suspected. Shoalwater Bay lies downstream from several pulp mills
which use mercury to treat processed timber. A waste dump closed in
the late 70's is suspected of leaching onto the soil and water.
Cranberry bogs in the area are regularly sprayed with herbicides,
and the oyster beds in the bay are treated with pesticides to kill
ghost shrimp which prey on the oysters.
"We all eat from the Bay," said Diana Moser, a nurse and tribal
health planner involved in a health study that is examining
lifestyles, consumption of natural foods, prenatal care,
psychological trauma, and the environment as possible factors for
the extremely high mortality rates.
"We haven't been able to get any state or federal agency to look
seriously at the environmental aspects," Moser complained. "We'd
like them to take tissue samples from the birds and people to look
at possible contamination of the food chain."
"When seals start dying on the beach in Quinault, they send in
experts of all kinds to find out what's wrong," she said. "But
they can't find funds to see why our babies are dying. If this was
happening in a white community, I wonder how quickly (agencies)
would respond."
Mdewakanton Lakota people from Prairie Island, Minn. told of
their decade-long fight to stop Northern States Power from
expanding its nuclear waste storage site which lies less than a
half-mile from their reservation.
Members of the 370-member Havasupai Nation, located in the
bottom of the Grand Canyon, provided an update on their battle to
halt the Energy Fuels Nuclear uranium mine which threatens their
only source of drinking water.
Dine' Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment spokesperson
Leroy Jackson talked about the destruction of 300-year-old pine
trees and traditional medicines in the Chuska Mountains as logging
there continues against the will of the local residents.
Many other grassroots activists spoke of the ongoing battles in
their communities to fight hazardous and nuclear waste sites,
leaking underground storage tanks, surface and groundwater
contamination, incinerators, pesticide/herbicides contamination,
mining, overcutting of forests, dams and water diversion, and the
destruction of sacred sites.
These conflicts tie grassroots people together in a common
struggle for survival and weave the fabric of indigenous resistance
to save their homelands. Out of these struggles has emerged the
Indigenous Environmental Network, a fast-growing internation
alliance of community-based Native people working to strengthen,
protect and respect traditional teachings on the sacredness of
Mother Earth and natural laws.
The first Protecting Mother Earth conference was held on the
Navajo Nation at Dilkon in 1990. and organized by Dine CARE with
more than 200 participants. The Lakota Nation hosted the 1991
conference at Bear Butte, SD, the Klickitat Band of the Yakima
Nation hosted the gathering on the banks of the Columbia River in
Oregon with more than 500 participants.
This year the Sac and Fox Nation, along with the Indigenous
Environmental Network and Oklahoma Environmental Network, co-hosted
the four-day gathering which attracted an overwhelming turnout
attributed to the growing activism of Native people.
"EIN provides an opportunity for grassroots indigenous people to
have a voice," said Tom Goldtooth (Dine/Lakota), regional director
of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "Networking among our
people is one of the ways we empower our people."
"During recent years it was through the environmental justice
movement that our organizations were formed and empowered to
address individual environmental campaigns in our communities. It
is important for Native people to know that they are not alone in
the struggle and to share strategies that work."
This year's conference attracted more than 100 youth from as far
away as Six Nations, California, and Canada who are active in the
effort to sustain their respective counties. Their concern and
participation was much-praised, especially by elders.
IEN also strengthened the effort to designate more Native lands
as "nuclear free" zones where no nuclear waste can transported or
stored. In the last two years, 16 tribes initially applied for
$100,000 grants from the [US] Department of Energy to study storing
nuclear waste in "Monitored Retrievable Storage" on Native lands.
But through the efforts of grassroots groups to educate their
communities about the dangers of nuclear waste, several tribes,
including the Sac and Fox, returned the $100,000 grants to DOE.
However, nine tribes have moved to Phase II by accepting
$200,000 grants to identify reservation lands that might house the
nation's waste for 40 to 50 years until it can be transported to
the much-delayed Yucca Mountain (Nev.) dump which may never be
built. They include the Mescalero Apache of New Mexico; Skull
Valley Band of Goshute in Utah; Ft. McDermitt Paiute Shoshone in
Nevada; Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Colorado; Northern Arapahoe
Economic Development Commission of Wyoming; Prairie Island
Mdewakanton Lakota Community of Minnesota, and the Tonakawa Tribe,
Miami Tribe, and Eastern Shawnee Tribe, all of Oklahoma.
Some, like the Prairie Island Mdewakanton community, have
indicated they will use the funds to continue studies that will
demonstrate to their people that nuclear waste storage is unsafe.
With only three to four percent of their original land base
left, many Native grassroots groups and traditional leaders are
expanding the Indigenous Environmental Network to protect Native
communities from environmental degradation. They were joined at
this year's conference by Latino, African-American and
Asian-American community activists who are part of the "people of
color environmental justice movement" which has effectively raised
awareness on environmental racism and the poisoning of communities
of color.
With another successful gathering behind them, IEN
representatives said the 1994 conference is scheduled for
Wisconsin. For more information, contact Tom Goldtooth at
(218) 679-3959, or write to Box 485, Bemidji, MN 56601.
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Valerie Taliman's e-mail address is taliman@unssun.scs.unr.edu
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Michele Lord + If you have come here to help me,
+ you are wasting your time.....
+ But if you have come because
+ your liberation is bound up with mine,
milo@scicom.alphacdc.com + then let us work together.
Aboriginal Woman
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