Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 16:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: The Nuclearized Genocide of Native Americans


Maybe these two articles can help you?

Rebecca

--------------------------------------------------------------

Public comment draws opponents, supporters of nuclear storage plan  
By HANNAH WOLFSON  
Associated Press Writer  
  
08/21/2000  
Associated Press Newswires  
 
 
 
Copyright 2000. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.  
  
 
  
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Even if it posed no health hazard to Utah residents, a
nuclear waste storage facility planned for the Goshute Indian Reservation
would hurt the state's image and economy, according to several people who
spoke out against the plan at a public hearing Monday. 
"Property values and home sales will drop," said Dina Scheifl, a real estate
agent who was one of about 35 people to speak at the hearing organized by
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It will likely stigmatize our
produce, our diary and our other agricultural products as well as our raw
land." 
 
  
The hearing, along with a second scheduled for Monday evening, was the last
opportunity for the public to comment in person on a draft environmental
impact statement for the plan. 
The Goshutes want to build the high-level nuclear fuel storage site on their
reservation in Skull Valley, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The
site would hold up to 40,000 tons of spent fuel from many of the nation's
power plants. 

Tribal leaders have signed a lease agreement with Private Fuel Storage, a
consortium of eight electric utilities in the East, Midwest and California. 

"The utilities and the Department of Energy are taking unfair advantage of
the Goshutes, and the Goshutes are just desperate enough to accept it," Salt
Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson said. "Utah and Nevada have long been the dumping
and testing grounds for the nation's nuclear waste and weapons. We must not
allow this to continue." 

Anderson said the communities where trainloads of spent nuclear fuel would
pass through will need to be trained and equipped in case of potential
accidents, but it is unclear who will cover the costs. The state estimates
the cost of cleanup for a catastrophic accident between $14 and $320
billion. 

But Scott Northard, project manager for PFS, said there was little
likelihood of such an accident. 

"In over 30 years and more than 3,000 spent fuel shipments, we've had no
major injuries or fatalities, and no catastrophic incidents," he said. 

Susan Grant Shankman, deputy director for licensing and inspection at the
NRC, said the public might have some misunderstandings about storing nuclear
waste. For example, she said, health effects of standing at the perimeter
fence of the project day and night for a full year would be the equivalent
of just half a chest X-ray. 

Yet she acknowledged that there are issues involving the Goshute project
that have yet to be addressed. 

"There are some very good questions that were raised here today," she said. 

Some of those issues included whether the impact statement thoroughly
considered the area's seismic activity, water issues, or strategic use. 

Mart Bushnell of the Utah Defense Alliance said the location of the dump -
near the Utah Test and Training Range, where the military tests long-range
missiles and where he works - should be of greater concern. 

"We have to think of the possibility of one of these aircraft laden with
many 2,000-pound bombs going into this storage area," Bushnell said. "The
results of that are uncalculated." 

He said the only safe thing would be to limit the area used for testing,
which might in turn lead to cutbacks or even closure at Hill Air Force Base.


Others wondered how the project could affect the wildlife or people who live
in the area. 

Jeff Salt of the Audubon Society of the Great Salt Lake said any radiation
leaking into the groundwater could threaten the millions of birds that use
the lake as a stop on their migration. 

And Cory Hoopiiaina said he fears the legacy of his grandparents, one of the
first Polynesian families to relocate in the West Desert, could be lost. 

"I love that place," he said. "Why should we as the state of Utah be the
ones to accept or even consider letting them dump their nuclear waste in our
state?" 
 


------------------------------------------------------------- 
Radiation poison brings reservation blues Navajo uranium miners never warned
that work could kill them  
Deborah Hastings  
The Associated Press  
  
08/13/2000  
The Seattle Times  
 
Final  
L6  
(Copyright 2000)  
  
 
  
400 NAVAJOS HAVE died of lung disease on the reservation since the 1960s,
when the dangers of uranium mining began to take a toll on workers desperate
for any kind of employment. 
COVE, Ariz. - Inside the stifling cinderblock house of Dorothy Joe, nothing
moves but waves of grief. 
 
  
One by one, the old widow and her children begin to sob, as if despair were
contagious. The weeping circle begins and ends with her, sitting at the
dining room table, staring at weathered hands as if they held answers. 
She murmurs in Navajo, describing the white man's prized uranium and how it
destroyed her husband. 

"They never told us it would kill us," says son David Joe, 38, choking on
his tears. "I'm sorry," he says, drawing a deep breath. "I'm sorry." 

They received $100,000 from the government for the death of Raymond Joe, who
scraped radioactive rock from surrounding mountains to fuel the Cold War.
The conflict never turned hot, but it killed Ray Joe just the same. 

He died six years ago but his family is inconsolable, as if he were just now
drawing his last breath from these stagnant rooms. 

Lung disease has killed at least 400 uranium miners on this reservation,
according to the Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, a Navajo advocacy
group. 

The Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles in the Four Corners area, where
the boundaries of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico intersect like the
cross hairs of a rifle scope. 

Here lies the world's largest deposit of uranium ore, and the Navajo who
have lived on it for seven centuries. Neither troubled the other until the
1940s, when mining companies began blasting holes in stippled sandstone
cliffs. 

Virtually unburdened by health, safety or pollution regulations, the mines
ran at least two shifts every day for nearly 40 years. By the 1980s,
decreased demand closed the mines. 

By then, Navajo men happy for the work and ignorant of radiation had loaded
millions of tons of ore into open rail cars. 

They wore no protective masks or clothing. They ate their lunches in holes
choked with radioactive dust. They drank mine water that would have
triggered a Geiger counter. They staggered home to wives who washed their
filthy overalls with the family laundry. 

Few old men left 

The dying started in the 1960s. In places such as Cove, there are hardly any
old men left. Instead, there are poisonous dumps, contaminated springs and
thousands of gaping mines. 

Recently declassified documents show the government knew from the start it
was playing with poison but concealed the dangers. 

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and
apologized for failing to protect uranium workers and their families. It
ordered payments of up to $100,000 to miners in Wyoming, Washington state
and the Four Corners area, and to others who lived in the Nevada Test Site's
fallout. 

The money did not come easily. To get it, the Navajo had to produce
documents that have no place among their people, like marriage certificates,
death certificates, pieces of paper unable to convey whole truths. 

A special tribal court was convened to verify marriages, births and deaths,
a process that takes months. Witnesses must appear "to verify, sometimes, a
person's existence," said Timothy Benally, a former miner who leads the
victims committee. "We had six people die while their claims were pending." 

On July 12, Congress amended the compensation act, increasing benefits and
reducing paperwork. Still, the Navajo say it is not enough. "Nothing can
equal a human life," Dorothy Joe said. 

Like the reservations, radiation is now part of the white man's legacy - a
primer on what happens when the government tries to make amends for debts no
man can pay. 

The Promised Land 

The Navajo call themselves Dine (Din-EH), meaning "the people." Four Corners
looks much as it did when they arrived in the 1300s from Northwest Canada.
Red rock rises from upland plains. Deep canyons give way to barren badlands.
The mountains, always green, sprout cedar and locoweed. 

To the Navajo this is the Promised Land. The natural wonders of Shiprock,
Canyon de Chelly and Rainbow Bridge are the dwelling places of their Holy
Ones. 

They plotted life according to nature's cycles. Many still do. In summer,
when the valley shimmers in 110-degree heat, they climbed to the mountains.
In winter, when howling winds batter the highlands, they returned to their
hogans - dome-shaped dwellings of logs and clay - on the lowland. 

>From the Spaniards, they learned to herd. From the pueblo people, they
learned to plant. 

White soldiers came in the 1800s. During the Long Walk of 1864, more than
8,000 starving Navajo were driven 300 miles in the dead of winter to Fort
Sumner on the Pecos River. There, they were prisoners. Nearly four years
later, during a searing drought, they were sent back to a ravaged homeland
now called a reservation. 

Decades passed. With each one, it became increasingly clear that a life on
the reservation wasn't much of a life at all. There was little work and less
to do. 

In the middle of World War II, when the government wanted something, it came
calling in the name of patriotism. 

First it courted men to be Code Talkers. The Japanese, who broke nearly
every U.S. radio code, never cracked spoken Navajo. Then, the government
wanted uranium to make atomic bombs. 

$45 better than nothing 

When Kerr-McGee and other corporations arrived to run the mines, no one on
the reservation thought twice about the work. Navajo miners were paid $45 a
week, a small sum even then but better than nothing. 

Kerr-McGee declined to comment. "This is a subject that is under
litigation," said a spokeswoman. The company is being sued for allegedly
causing the deaths of two Navajo by exposing them to radiation. 

The Oklahoma-based company gained notoriety for environmental accidents and
the 1970s saga of employee Karen Silkwood, which was turned into a film. The
energy conglomerate was America's leading producer and refiner of uranium. 

Johnny Sam, now 60, worked a hopper for five years beginning in 1975,
examining chunks of rock under a special light to identify high- grade
uranium. The good stuff was blue. The low-grade was gray. 

Most was yellow, meaning average. "Leetso" is the Navajo word for uranium.
It means "yellow brown" or "yellow dirt." 

"They didn't explain to us what it did to you," said Sam, his dark eyes
scanning the hillsides of Church Rock, which is 17 miles northeast of
Gallup, N.M., and site of one of the biggest nuclear accidents in U.S.
history. 

In 1979, a dam collapsed at United Nuclear, unleashing 93 million gallons of
radioactive waste that flowed 115 miles into Arizona. Regulators say there
was no long-term environmental damage. 

Residents including Benally say there is so much radiation sickness and
contamination in Four Corners, who can isolate the effect of a specific
incident? 

Sam remembers foremen ordering miners into smoky shafts minutes after a TNT
blast. The longest tunnels ran 1,800 feet, often with no ventilation. The
men trudged in, their hats beaming shafts of light, their lungs filling with
radioactive dust. 

It has been 20 years since Sam wore a miner's hat. His breath comes hard now
and his lungs burn. He never has smoked cigarettes; he blames the mines. 

"Nothing bothered us right away," he said. "Fifteen or 20 years later,
things bother you." 

Next generation closes mines 

Cove Mesa, which rises more than 100 feet above the tiny outpost of Cove, is
a four-hour drive to the west. Here, nothing moves but a lizard trailing a
fine rain of dusty rock. 

Donald Ellison Jr., 39, points to blank mine faces, each bearing a
spray-painted number. Ellison left a well-paying highway job in Shiprock for
temporary mine reclamation work in Cove. He wanted to come home. His
89-year-old father has been diagnosed with lung cancer. 

Donald Ellison Sr. mined uranium for seven years at 40 cents an hour,
starting in 1947. He spends his last days herding sheep, walking the land he
was born on. 

His son's job was to blast shut the abandoned shafts. His crew counted 2,000
of them within a 20-mile radius of Cove Mesa. No one is sure how many
pockmark the rest of the reservation. 

"The people use these mines to shelter their sheep," Donald Ellison Jr.
said. "They store hay and grain in there and then feed it to the sheep. Then
they eat the sheep." 

Benally first walked into these holes in 1948 when he was 14. "The mining
company said, `The government needs a lot of this stuff.' That's all they
told us," Benally said. 

He worked on and off until 1964. He says he cannot get compensation because
the government decided that he hadn't been blasted with enough radiation to
meet its exposure standards. 

Anger is not the Navajo way. 

"What would you have us do?" Benally asks. "To say `Enough is enough' means
I take up a gun and start killing people." He stops, lets this hang in the
dusty air. 

"What we would really like," he says evenly, "is for the government to come
in and clean up this mess they made." 

Lung cancer is a torturous and humiliating way to die. Breathing is agony.
Control is lost over private things. 

To his family, the swift demise of Ray Joe was stupefying. Suddenly, the
sturdy bear of a man weighed less than 100 pounds and couldn't get out of
bed. 

"He tried to stay strong till the end," David Joe said. "But there was
nothing left of him." 

It started with wheezing. Ray Joe couldn't catch his breath. He found
himself unable to haul well water to the house he had built with his hands.
His family took him to hospitals in Albuquerque, Gallup and Farmington. But
the cancer in his lungs was too far gone. 

Six months after his diagnosis, Ray Joe died. 

His 66-year-old widow touches the tip of each finger, ticking off the names
of other widows. When she runs out of fingers, she looks past the weeping
faces of her children, scanning a list in her head. 

"Some remarried," she says. "I married my husband. I still have feelings for
him. That is why I am single." 

The widows first petitioned the government in 1960 for redress. As their
husbands died, they began to talk among themselves, and to notice things,
like the way death started with not being able to catch a full breath. 

The wives remembered other things that seized their hearts. They used to
bring uranium chunks in the house at night so their children could watch
them glow in the dark. Their husbands' work clothes, covered in radioactive
muck, sometimes sat in the kitchen for a week because running water didn't
come to this reservation until the 1980s. 

"The government destroyed this community," said David Joe. "They destroyed
our lives." 

The $100,000 from Washington, D.C., does not ease his mother's pain. Most of
it went toward her husband's medical bills. 

The government should give more, says Dorothy Joe. 

"A new home," she says, as if that might mend her heart. "They should build
us new homes." 

She looks down at the wrinkled hands clasped in her lap. They hold no
answers. 

- 

On the Web 

Navajo Nation site: 

www.navajos.com 
 
 
PHOTO; Caption: J. Pat Carter / The Associated Press: Shiprock Mountain, in
Shiprock, N.M., stands out on the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Indian
reservation. Below, Henry Martinez, 73, a Navajo and former uranium miner,
breathes with the aid of am oxygen tank outside his home in Haystack
Mountain, N.M. Martinez worked in the mines for nine years until his lungs
gave out. He still is trying to collect $100,000 compensation from the
government.; Caption: J. Pat Carter / The Associated Press: Timothy Benally
walks his dogs near Cove Mesa, which rises more than 100 feet above Cove,
Ariz., where he worked for the uranium mines on and off until 1964. Benally
says he can't get compensation because the government says he was not
exposed to enough radiation to meet its exposure standards.  
  

On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 12:32:03 GMT, postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
wrote:

>  Hello,
>  
>  This may be a long shot, but I am looking for anyone who has CURRENT
(within 
>  two years or sooner) information about the disposal of nuclear material
on 
>  Native American Reservations or Indigenous land.
>  
>  I have material from different Environmental Justice authors and Ward 
>  Churchill's book "A Little Matter of Genocide" but I need to know to
where 
>  the Federal Government's involvement begins and ends in relation to
private 
>  contractors actually responsible for the dumping.
>  
>  This type of policy has also been called Nuclear Colonialism, but the 
>  websites I found do not explain the theory or current practice.
>  
>  Any help would be appreciated.
>  
>  Brian Drake
>  ________________________________________________________________________
>  Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
>  
>  
>  
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