James Garrett, Lakota Nation, South Dakota, USA
Degree in Environmental Law
Director for Environmental Affairs of the Cheyenne River Reservation
in 1992
Thank you for inviting me here to speak about uranium situation
in my homeland,
I'm a 20-year-veteran of the historical struggle to reclaim the
sacred Black Hills. That struggle is an ongoing struggle for 113
years now. in the 1970's, I worked with an organization called
the Black Hills Alliance, and we began to research all the atrocities
that were occurring within our sacred homeland. There was the
uranium mining that took place in the southern part of the Black
Hills around a small town called Edgemont. That occurred during
the forties and middle fifties on up into the sixties. During that
time, many tons of tailings were left behind, and eventually the
mines were abandoned because of the low-grade ore. During that
time, there was a spill that occurred and it contaminated the
Cheyenne River. The Cheyenne River headwaters is right in that
area and it flows out onto the prairie about 150 miles where it joins
the Missouri River. It flows right by my house, and my entire
reservation has to use that for their public water supply. The
ground water underneath - the water quality - it too bad to drink,
so we are forced to drink from the Cheyenne River.
During the seventies, the Highest Court in the land of the United
States found that the Lakota people do indeed hold title to the
sacred Black Hills. They offered us money but we stood fast and
said: "This land is not for sale!"
To this day, they will not return our sacred land, even though their
highest hypocritical court said we could, and indeed did, own the
Black Hills. I still continue to struggle for the eventuality of
regaining that sacred land.
I'm the founder of the Upper Missouri River Basin Environmental
Research Center. That organization has been documenting all of the
uranium activities that have gone on in the history of the
Black Hills.
In the 1970's, during the so-called energy crisis when gasoline and
petroleum were supposedly scarce, gigantic multinational corporations
came into the southern Black Hills and started drilling holes wherever
they felt like it; deep into the ground - they were looking for uranium,
and what they did was - because it was too expensive to properly cap
off those holes - the uranium that they found mixed in with underground
water aquifers and travelled underneath the ground to the wells that
are drilled on the Pine Ridge Reservation - a distance of about 50 miles.
In 1979, one of our organization members was a registered nurse at the
Pine Ridge hospital and she started noticing a dramatic increase in
spontaneous abortions among the women. And so she spoke to the resident
doctors and they confirmed that they had their suspicions that it was
abnormally high, also. So, when our friend and sister went to the head
of the hospital to discuss it, to discuss what could be done, what kind
of study could confirm the abnormal rise in these abortions, she was told:
"Leave it alone, we will take care of it." During the night, that same
night, everyone of the doctors was transferred out of that hospital
and we never received a forwarding address for any of those doctors. We
don't know where they are. So we initiated our own research study. We
found a biochemist at the South Dakota School of Mines who had made a
contribution to our cause and conducted a very brief study of this
situation. And this biochemist documented that there was - during
one month period that he was able to look at in 1979 - there was 38
percent of the women in Pine Ridge had spontaneous abortions. Out of
the live birth children of that same time, 50 to 60 percent of them
suffered some type of birth defect, most were respiratory ailments,
some were liver ailments, kidney ailments [Study by W.A.R.N., Women
of All Red Nations].
The Indian Health Service immediately saw that we were on to something,
so they poured in tremendous amounts of technical and monetary
assistance, not to us, but to the head of the hospital. I have with
me the final reports that Indian Health Service has done, and they say
there's been no problem. To this day, they stand behind their words
and they say there's no correlation between those spontaneous abortions
and the contaminated water supply.
However, I'm here to say that just because we're native peoples and we
don't have the same level of education as the outside society, that
doesn't mean that we are stupid. We're very intelligent people, we
can make connections, we know how the world works. And we stand by what
we say. We know that there is a connection. We just can't say it in
the correct measurements that the scientific community would like for
us to say, so that it can be validated and passed into the library and
be forgotten on a shelf. That doesn't get it with us! What gets it with
us is to have healthy families and to have healthy water that we can
drink and not have to worry that our children may die of cancer 40 years
from now. That's what we worry about. That is what my research institute
is all about. So that some day we don't have to worry about the Black
Hills being contaminated.
An old man told me a story one time, and he said that, prior to the
white man coming to the Black Hills, all the spirituality in there
was in perfectly balanced order. There was good and there was bad medicine
in there and it was perfectly balanced. But when the white intruded
into that space, the Lakota were no longer able to control and protect
that delicate balance anymore. And the white man released many bad
medicines. Those bad medicines are the minerals, gold, and uranium,
and ever since then, our people have suffered badly.
The white man, he comes and he goes. He can go. And he doesn't have
to drink that water, but just shortly. But that's our homeland for
thousands of years. That's our home, and we will never leave. No matter
how contaminated it gets. We live there! We have always lived there and
we will always live there. It's not right that Indian people should
have to sacrifice their homelands, so the rest of the world, the rest of
the industrialized world can have their damned old electricity! Or their
nuclear bombs to destroy their enemies. That is not right. And anybody
who says that's wrong, they must have evil inside them.
You know, the nuclear fuel cycle, in our country at least, begins and ends
on Indian homelands. They come and they dig it up. They contaminate
the whole countryside with their dust that blows around and gets into
our aquifers. They take it away and they do whatever they want with it.
They tell all the people of Europe, it's a good, clean industry, it's a
great way to save the world. But I'm here to tell you that now they're
knocking on our door because they can't find any place to store the
damned stuff for eternity. They come to our homeland and they want to
lease some land for 10,000 years!
My God!
They've only been there for 500 years this year. What makes them think
they are going to be here for 10,000 years? The world is seven eights
destroyed today because of those 500 years! What makes them think it's even
going to be here another 100 years going at the rate they're going at now?
They're preying upon our poverty at home. We have 80 percent unemployment
on our reservation, and they're dangling millions of dollars out in front
of us saying; "We will build you new hospitals, we'll build you new roads,
we'll put everyone of your people to work, just let us lease this land
for 100,000 years, or 10,000 years."
We're not stupid.
We know that if we bring that into our home we would have the best
hospitals in the world, but those hospitals are not going to keep
our children from being born without legs, or keep our children from
glowing in the middle of the night, you know?
I think that's about all I should say here, I think, I'm reaching
my ten minutes, I'm getting too worked up emotionally to go on, I
think. Anyway, I will leave it there.
Thank you very much for listening.
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*+*+*POISON FIRE, SACRED EARTH*+*+*
Salzburg, September 1992:
Affected people from every continent gathered at the WORLD URANIUM
HEARING to break the silence cloaking the radioactive genocide
perpetrated by our nuclear society. The witnesses - predominantly
indigenous peoples - came as living proof: whether we mine uranium,
test nuclear weaponry, or attempt to dispose of nuclear wastes, our
victims are always peoples we do not know living in regions
unfamiliar to us. At the conclusion of this international hearing
arose a unanimous request: "Leave the uranium in the earth!"
The proceedings of this historic week are now available in English:
"Poison Fire, Sacred Earth," 314 pages, b/w photographs.
The book is available from:
The World Uranium Hearing at The International Action Centre
39 West 14th Street, Room 206, New York NY 10011, USA
Tel: 212-633-6646 Fax: 212-633-2889
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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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