Genocide Against
Native Peoples Is Not
A Thing of the Past
By Valerie Taliman
Insight Features via ICC
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 this summer, 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 1950 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.
-- 30 --
Valerie Taliman's e-mail address is taliman@unssun.scs.unr.edu 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. It also appears in The Circle, 1530 E. Franklin Ave.,
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