Page 2 Spring - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment 6 August 1945

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Thefirst suspicion that the attacks had little to do with was not a forgone conclusion. Immediately after the first test either ending the war or saving American lives came as early explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July, 1945, U.S. as 1946. The Army Air Force released a study, the Strategic political leaders, Pentagon strategists, and atomic scientists Bombing Survey, asserting:" Prior to I November 1945 (the entered into a debate: should the United States pressure Japan proposed date of the U.S. invasion of Japan), the Japanese to surrender by verbally threatening them with the bomb but would have surrendered, even if the atomic bomb had not been not actually dropping it? Might such a threat be made more used, and even if no invasion had been planned or contem- effective with a demonstration explosion in, say, an unpop- pl~ted."~In 1948, a distinguished British physicist who had ulated region? Or should an actual attack be executed? been involved in the wartime debate claimed the bombings After the actual attacks took place - Hiroshima on August constituted a gross power play to ensure that the U.S. would 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 - an explanation came from have the upper hand in negotiations with Russia after the war.3 Washington: they had been motivated by military necessity - This suspicion is now accepted as historical fact. to end the war and save American lives. As President Truman The latest suspicion centers on the matter of race. Would later wrote, "The Japanese in their conduct of the war had U.S. strategists have so easily considered dropping the been vicious and cruel savages and I came to the conclusion devastating weapon on their European counterparts? Or was it that if two hundred and fifty thousand young Americans could easier to contemplate the bombings given that the targets were be saved from slaughter, the bomb should be dropped."' to be "savage" Asian people?

t eight seconds past 8: 16, the Little Boy*had exploded. through her body became a sensation of intense heat. Then she A Fifty-one seconds previously it had been dropped from heard the crackle of burning hair. As she put her hands to her the bomb bay of the Enola Gay at a height of almost six miles. head, it seemed to her that every part of her was on fire. The three B-29s - the bomb carrier itself and the two observa- Without conscious thought, she ran inside and began to roll on tion planes - had turned sharply, as their pilots had been the tatami, the straw mats that covered the floor, in an attempt trained to do, and had fled the scene of imminent disaster. The to put out the flames that she felt were devouring her. explosion occurred at a height of 1,850 feet and less than two Then the whole house began to quiver. Rising from the hundred yards from the target point, the T-shaped Aioi Bridge floor, she now saw that countless bits of jagged glass had that spanned the widest of the seven streams. The huge fireball pierced her body; her arms and legs were bleeding; she could that formed afterwards possessed, for a fraction of a second, a even feel the sharp fragments of glass in her face. Hardly temperature of a million degrees. To many of the people who knowing what she was doing, she crept downstairs, where the saw it, the fireball looked like a tremendous bluish white flash family kept an emergency first aid kit. The stairs too were that blazed for about three seconds. The Little Boy had strewn with broken glass. Then she saw the walls of her house released the equivalent of 13,500 tons of TNT over the center had caved in; the doors had been blown off; the house no of the city . . . . longer had a roof. Outside, it was as dark as though the city The next thing she was aware of was a sudden blinding had been enveloped in a heavy dust storm. flash that seemed to sear her eyeballs; at the same time, her -Pacific War Society, whole body felt as though a silvery current was flowing The Day Man Lost Hiroshima: 6 August 1945 through it, and she heard a slight rushing sound, as of falling * Little Boy is the name of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. sand. Within a split second the current that she had felt passing Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 1

Ever since western world views emphasizing the domina- ated each word of his answer. "The . . .future . . . is . . . tion of nature and "progress" replaced the older ecological broken." He unclipped the microphone from his shirt and philosophies of people-in-relation-to-the-cosmos,the theme of walked away. human experience has centered on arms build-up, expansion- There was nothing more to say. ism, and colonization. The startling quote on the cover of this Beginning with physicist Enrico Fermi's revealing declara- issue alerts us to the inevitable union, in the imagination of the tion at the moment the scientists realized they could catalyze a dominating mind, of the ultimate weapon with the ultimately controlled chain reaction, this issue of Race, Poverty and the feared, the ultimately despised. Environment - BURNING FIRES: NUCLEAR TECHNOL- The unraveling of this union has begun. At the World OGY AND COMMUNITIES OF COLOR - marks the 50th Uranium Hearing in Austria in 1992, people of color from all anniversary of the Nuclear Age by tracing the intertwining of over the world - from Namibia, Tahiti, Mongolia, Tibet, the the nuclear fuel cycle with the contamination -and activism American West, Canada, Peru, the Arctic Circle - testified to - of communities of color. a board of scientists, journalists, and scholars about the effects War-making is the starting point - from Hiroshima to the of nuclear development on native peoples. Remarkable facts Persian Gulf. Next we move to nuclear research at Los Alamos were revealed: over 70 percent of the world's uranium deposits National Laboratory and then pay a visit to the uranium mines lie on lands inhabited and considered sacred by indigenous of the Grants Mineral Belt in the Southwest. Next we cover the peoples. For every ton of uranium oxide used by the nuclear uprising of African American communities in Louisiana industry, up to 40,000 tons (still emanating 85 percent of the against uranium enrichment facilities, radioactive contamina- ore's original radioactivity) remain behind - often left in tion at the Savanna River Site, transport of spent fuel rods mounds, seeping into the water table, scattering in the wind through low-income urban neighborhoods and Indian nations, across indigenous lands. Nuclear testing disproportionately and waste disposal on the lands of indigenous peoples. This rains down upon people of color. environmental justice view of the And today industrialized nations are nuclear fuel cycle is enhanced by luring impoverished tribal govern- The startling- quote- on the cover of essays on related subjects: recent ments with promises of money in this issue alerts us to the inevitable medical perspectives on radio- exchange for storing nuclear waste contamination; growing up African on their ancestral lands. union, in the imagination of the American in the Nuclear Age; and Remarkably too, the totem dominating mind, of the ultimate spiritual and political visions of the creature of the World Uranium weapon with the ultimately feared, future. Hearing was the Njamal Rainbow These days. some people are Serpent, a monster etched into the the despised- saying that such concerns are a thing cliff walls of the Upper Yle River in of the past, that the Cold War is Australia long before European over, that the dismantling of nuclear people ever set food in the region - weapons is imminent. Yet those of and discovered uranium there. According to Njamal legend, the us who live in the cold shadow of the nuclear industry know Serpent sleeps within the Earth. Its job is to guard over the that, while restructuring of priorities is indeed taking place, elemental forces that lie outside the realm of human control, commitment to future nuclear development is as vital as ever to but if the Serpent is disturbed, it will rise in vengeance in a government and the nuclear industry. The drive behind this deluge of destruction and death. commitment springs from forces greater than concerns about At the Hearing snakes were everywhere: snakes in unemployment within the nuclear industry: it is the product of Namibia, snakes in the land of the Cree, the DenC, the Tewa. the New World Order. With the recent achievement of An ancient petroglyph of a serpent adorns the entrance to the interlinking high technologies that virtually crisscross the globe largest open-pit uranium mine in the world, the Jackpile Mine and "free" trade agreements giving corporations a "bill of at Kawaika (Laguna Pueblo) in New Mexico, and the corpora- rights" to supersede local and national autonomy, transnational tion that dug this mine managed to name itself after the mean, corporations have finally achieved a goal that previously was slow-moving constrictor of the Amazon, the anaconda. mere science-fiction fantasy: they have arranged the world's One of the most startling moments at the World Uranium institutions, people, and resources into a global system of Hearing occurred when a North American television network mechanistic, autocratic, non-sustainable control. Given the approached a Maralinga Tjarutja aborigine for an interview. In affront to humanity imposed by this dominion, the corporate a painstaking process that took some forty-five minutes, the world and the governments backing them need protection. Big man was outfitted with hidden microphone and arranged in protection. just-so lighting by a swarm of television producers and camera You and I, we live in historic times. It is crucial that we people. Finally, when his bright red headband was adjusted to remember this - and live accordingly. just the right angle, the cameras began to roll and the question When Jeannette Armstrong of the Okanagan Band in was put to him: "What is your story? Why did you travel British Columbia recently visited nations of indigenous people halfway around the world to this conference?" in the former Soviet Union, she returned with insight for us all. With great dignity and a stiff Australian accent, he enunci- Continued on page 42 Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 3

got there, there was no corpse's dress at the top and was playing Pacific War Society, The Day Man no street, no nothing. Only with the breasts. When we came up to her, Lost Hiroshima: 6 August, 1945,Tokyo, dead bodies, horrible smell, and rubble she clutched tight at both breasts and Kodansha International, 1981, p. 235. still burning. I can still hear the voices gazed up at us with apprehensive eyes. The Pacific War Society consists of crying for help. I went to the hypocenter -Masuji Ibuse, Black Rain fourteen Japanese researchers. In 1965, to find my father. I dug through the they produced Japan's Longest Day bodies. They looked like dark rotten about the final twenty-four hours before peaches. Most people died in the fetal 11 the houses around them were Japan's surrender in World War II. position, with char on their backsides A shattered and fallen, fire curling and and the frontsides still somewhat crackling in the ruins. Mii-chan stumbled Kanji Kuramoto, interviewed in identifiable. Then I went where the over broken tiles and rubble, past burned Chellis Glendinning, "How Did You survivors were congregating, but I bodies and blazing houses. From beneath Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the couldn't identify anyone. Some didn't piles of rubble that had once been houses, Bomb? " San Francisco Bay Guardian, have faces anymore. Others had mouths people screamed for help. There was August 7, 1980. Kuramoto was visiting burned away. I never found my father. nothing that Mii-chan and mother could Japan from the United States when -Kanji Kuramoto, do to help them. On and on they stumbled, World War 11 broke out. He went to "How Did You Learn to Stop Worrying fleeing the terrible destruction. The streets Hiroshima two days after the bombing and Love the Bomb?" were reduced to a burning desert. to find his father. Since then, Kuramoto Hiroshima had disappeared. . . . has become an outspoken Japanese- "We must try and get to the river," American activist for medical compen- gasped mother. "Water! Water!" echoed sation of U.S. atomic bomb survivors. The huge fireball that Mii-chan. formed afterwards They were not alone. Many others were around them, a pathetic tide ebbing Surely hell could not be possessed, for a fraction away from the burning city. There were more terrifying than this. of a second, a temperature children with their clothes burned off, of a million degrees. their eyelids and lips swollen, some of them unable even to open their eyes. Most Masuji Ibuse, Black Rain, Tokyo: people were naked, their clothes ripped Kodansha International, 1969, p. 107. off by the force of the blast. They moved Ibuse was born in Hiroshima in 1898. like ghosts, their skins burnt by the flash, set off along the embankment with He won Japan's highest literary award, peeling and hanging off them in shreds. . . the idea of crossing Aioi Bridge. the Noma Prize, for Black Rain. I In places, people fell to the ground in Countless dead bodies were lying in the exhaustion. Others fell on top of them, undergrowth at the foot of the embank- Toshi Maruki, The Hiroshima forming small heaps of human bodies. ment on our right. Other bodies came Story, London: Adam and Charles Surely hell could not be more temfying floating in steady succession along the Black, 1983, pp. 12-14. Maruki went to than this. river. Every so often, one of them would Hiroshima soon after the A-bomb fell. -Toshi Maruki, catch on the roots of a riverside willow, As an illustrator and author, she has The Hiroshima Story swing around with the current, and since focused much of her artwork on suddenly rear its face out of the water. the experience. In 1952 she won the NOTES International Peace Prize for the series Or one would come along rocking in the 1. Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon, New water, so that first its upper half then its York: Vintage, 1981, p. 2011. "Genbaku no Zo" (Pictures of the A- lower half bobbed to the surface. Or bomb). another would swing round beneath a 2. U.S. Air Force, U.S. Strategic Bombing willow tree and raise its arms as though Survey , Washington, D.C.: General Account- to grasp at a branch, so that it almost ing Office, 1946. seemed, for a moment, to be alive. We had sighted from some way off 3. P.M.S. Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb: the body of a woman who lay stretched Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, New York: Whittlesey House1 out dead on top of the embankment. McGraw Hill, 1948. See also Gar Alperovitz, Suddenly Y asuko, who was walking Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, ahead of us, came running back with a New York: Penguin, 1965, and Barton cry of "Uncle! Uncle!" and burst into Bernstein, "The Atomic Bomb and American tears. As I drew closer, I saw a baby girl Foreign Policy, 1941-1945: An Historical of about three who had opened the Controversy," Peace and Change, Sp.1974. Page 4 S~rino- Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment

The American

An estimated 1,500 American hibakusha (A-bomb survi- weapons. Realizing the implications for the future, many have vors) of Japanese and Korean ancestry live in the United transcended personal pain to tell others of their experience. States. Over half of these were American citizens, born in the Since 1977, the U.S. hibakusha have relied on Hiroshima United States, who were receiving education or visiting doctors who come every two years to help monitor their health relatives in Japan and were stranded there when the war broke status. However, the duration of future medical missions is out. Other hibakusha of Japanese and Korean ancestry married uncertain. It is long overdue for the U.S. to take responsibility Americans after the war and later immigrated to the U.S. for all of its radiation-exposed citizens, including the American Three out of four U.S. hibakusha are women, now in their hibakusha mid-50s, 60s, and early 70s. Most were between the ages of The primary goal of the Committee of Atomic Bomb five and twenty-four when exposed to the bomb. Many Survivors in the United States is to secure government- hibakusha still suffer from physical, emotional, and financial sponsored medical care for American hibakusha. Since CABS hardship as a result of their exposure nearly fifty years ago. began its lobbying efforts in 1971, legislation has been They still fear the long-term effects of radiation including introduced in nearly every congressional session, but every leukemia, cancer, genetic damage, diabetes, heart disease, and effort has been squelched in committee from lack of sponsors. emotional trauma. Their medical costs can cause heavy CABS continues its struggle. burdens. Friends of Hibakusha has been assisting the American The U.S. government has spent well over $80 million since survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 1981 through 1947 to study the effects of ionizing radiation on the hibakusha cultural, educational, and informational support. population, yet nothing has ever been allocated to medically Together, CABS and FOH sponsor visits from Japanese assist the American survivors. Free health care is offered in medical teams offering the hibakusha and their children the Japan; but for most American hibakusha, a trip to Japan is comprehensive medical screenings they cannot obtain in the prohibitively expensive and logistically difficult. United States. For over two decades U.S. hibakusha have sought medical For more information, contact: CABS, 1765 Sutter St., assistance through government channels, and many have San Francisco CA 94115; 415-921-5225 and FOH, 1759 Sutter spoken out to inform the public about the effects of nuclear St., San Francisco CA 94115; 415-567-7599.

"The sun was dazzling bright that morning when a single atomic bomb instantly destroyed this town of Hiroshima and took its deadly toll. And it pains me to be unable to stand before this monument to those dead and to report that we finally have a world free of nuclear weapons."

-Takashi Hiraoka, Mayor of Hiroshima 6 August 1994 Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 5

DEPLETED URANIUM: Legacy of the Persian Gulf War

By Dolly Lymburner

Department of Defense Manpower Data (September 30, Depleted uranium is a waste product from the enrichment 1992) tell us that people of color are only 20% of the total process that extracts U-235 from natural uranium for nuclear U.S. population, yet they accounted for nearly 50% of those weapons and power plants. Disposal and storage of DU waste, sewing on the front lines during the Gulf War. In the sewice, about one billion pounds according to the Department of as a whole, people of color are 32% of enlisted categories but Energy, is a growing problem. only 13% of the officer corps. The production, testing, and use of DU pose health risks to -Editor anyone who inhales or ingests the substance. Uranium oxide is created when DU weapons bum, corrode, or are machined. The United States has a poor record of how it has treated When inhaled, small particles can lodge in the lungs exposing the men and women who have served to defend their country the delicate tissue to alpha radiation and often causing lung and have been exposed without knowledge or consent to toxic cancer. DU, like other heavy metals, is also a chemical poison. contamination. Some veterans who served in the Persian Gulf Food or drinking water contaminated with DU particles can, War (PGW) are now suffering from the "Gulf War Syndrome," when ingested, cause irreparable damage to the kidneys. which can exhibit a variety of symptoms such as headaches, The Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network of the Military fatigue, recurrent diarrhea, bone or joint problems, muscle Toxics Project recommends that independent health studies of weakness, loss of hair, rashes, and kidney problems. There also PGW veterans be conducted to determine the toxic and appears to be a high incidence of both reproductive problems radiological effects of exposure to DU. An epidemiological and birth defects in babies born to P,GW vets. study should be done of all service persons who were exposed In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. forces used uranium to DU, and of their families. Additionally, the children con- anti-tank munitions for the first time. Made from "depleted" ceived and born after the Gulf War should be examined for uranium (DU), these bullets and artillery shells are both evidence of radiation-induced genetic damage. Health studies radioactive and toxic. DU was also used to armor plate tanks. should also include military and civilian personnel at DU Uranium weapons are effective because, when alloyed with manufacturing sites and DU test sites across the United States. titanium, they are extremely hard. DU is also pyrophoric, "An Assessment of External Interest in Depleted Uranium which means that it bums upon impact. Use by the U.S. Military" is a report contracted by the Army Environmental Policy Institute to identify the issues and concerns that individuals and groups have expressed about the Army's use of depleted uranium. It concludes that the Depleted There appears to be a high Uranium Citizens' Network has been effective in raising public incidence of both reproduc- awareness in regards to health and safety issues. In response to the latest form of military radioactive tive problems and birth de- pollution, the mission of the Depleted Uranium Citizens' fects in babies born to Network is to provide outreach and unite people affected by the Pacfic Gulf War vets. production, testing, and use of DU for military purposes and to demand cleanup, health care, compensation, and the end of DU munitions use worldwide. Dolly Lymburner is the coordinator of the Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network, P.O. Box 845, Sabattus ME 04280; 207-375-8482. Page 6 Spring - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty €4 the Environment

Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis Freedom from Annihilation Is a Human Right By Carl Anthony

As far as we know, the Cuban Missile Crisis marks the beneath the crudity of his image, the points he sought to make closest the world has ever come to nuclear destruction. In the were closer than Kennedy's Camelot to my own hopes and thirteen days between October 14, 1962, when CIA officials dreams. obtained photographic intelligence that Soviet missiles were Castro was different from the other two. At thirty-five he being assembled in Cuba until October 27, 1962, when Nikita was the only one who had actually made a revolution. The Krushchev agreed to pull back, the people of the United States people of Harlem loved Fidel, and this made a big impact on lived on the brink of nuclear disaster. me. Harlem residents remembered 1960 when Fidel came to I was almost twenty-four years old, living with two speak at the United Nations. Planning to stay at a hotel near the roommates in a basement flat on the lower East Side of UN in downtown Manhattan, he and his entourage were harassed by the management and unceremoniously evicted. In a move which greatly embarrassed the U.S. State Department, In a move which greatly embarrassed Malcolm X invited Fidel to stay in a modest hotel in Harlem. the State Department, Malcolm X Like many young African Americans of my generation in invited Fidel to stay in a modest hotel New York, I had met Malcolm X and talked with him. We had lunch several times at Mosque Number 7 on 116th Street. Yet in Harlem. Malcolm X frightened me. I would go up to Harlem to listen to him speak. There were usually 500 to 1000 Black people. Malcom taught that African Americans should think of themselves as global citizens. He said the African American Manhattan, a student at Columbia University. As a result of my struggle was not for civil rights, but for human rights. Civil social activism in the civil rights movement, the segregated rights derive from the authority of the state. Human rights are worlds which had formed my social practice and consciousness natural rights that precede and transcend the restrictions of a as a youth were unraveling. The summer and fall of 1962 had particular sovereign nation. As a people umepresented by the been a season of hope and bitterness. The hope came from national government, we must demand our human rights. mobilizations within and between communities. People I knew Malcolm counseled Black people to be peaceful unless they were talking for the first time about their dreams and passions for the future, love affairs, and a glimpse, previously unimagin- able, of the end of racism. Martin Luther King had been It infuriated me that somebody's arrested protesting segregation of public facilities in Albany, program of blowing up the Georgia. The newly formed Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee had galvanized the nation with courage. But a would interrupt the business of bitterness grew from the intransigence of Southern racists, the my growing up and healing the fickleness of the Kennedy Administration in protecting the lives of civil rights workers, and the powerlessness of African corrosive scars of segregation= Americans to secure even the rudiments of dignity. Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis can be understood as a conflict between three were provoked, in which case he instructed us to use "any figures - Kennedy, Krushchev, and Fidel Castro. Kennedy means necessary." I would gaze out over the crowd, beyond the represented the "great white hope," the debonair Bostonian, the barricades that had been placed to contain the Black people, apex of American mastery and intelligence, the model of what and look into the eyes of the white policemen. I could see fear every American of my generation had been conditioned to in their eyes. worship. Khruschev was his nemesis. He was fat, old, and bald. Fidel accepted Malcolm's invitation to stay at the Hotel He couldn't speak English, and he had a habit of taking his Theresa on 125th Street and 7th Avenue. On his arrival, Fidel shoe off and banging it on the table to make his point. But was lavishly welcomed by thousands of Harlem residents who Race, Poverty & the Environment Sorina - Summer 1995

lined the streets to greet him. They saw slavery as a defining crucible of national everything was finally coming to- the abusive treatment he received by identity. Much of the culture reflects a gether? I remembered when I was a kid; those in power as similar to the discrimi- New World amalgam, blending ancient air raid sirens would go off every few nation they experienced daily. Yoruba, Carib, and Iberian traditions. It is days in our neighborhood. My father On October 16, 1962, President a culture inaccessible to a U.S. nation instructed us to get under a table when Kennedy's advisors told him that the which, despite its large multicultural we heard the wailing sound. He told us Soviet Union was building nuclear population, regards itself as "white." The not to look out of the windows when weapons launching sites in Cuba. After a majority of the Cuban population had the whistles blew as bombs might be week of deliberation, Kennedy an- been dispossessed by exploitative global dropping from the sky. I stared across nounced the crisis to the nation, charging military, economic, and political forces. In the intersection at a sullen sky, expect- that the Soviet Union had lied to him. 1961, the U.S. had launched an ing at any minute to be confronted with Armaments and military equipment were unsucessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay evidence that a war had begun. Would being sent to Cuba, and now there was of Pigs. Castro feared that the United there be a warning siren? Would there "unmistakable evidence that offensive States would try again. It was this fear of be a flash of light? Would the ground missile sites were in preparation." U.S. aggression that led the Cuban tremble beneath my feet? Kennedy ordered a strict quarantine of government to ask for Soviet missiles. But Later that day the news came. "ships of any kind bound for Cuba," Kennedy read the crisis as an act of Soviet Inexplicably, Russian ships had not promising they would be turned back if aggression rather than Cuban self-defense. challenged the quarantine. "We have a they contained offensive weapons. He By October 24, the quarantine was in preliminary report which seems to ended his speech with patronizing full effect, and Russian ships, including a indicate that some of the Russian ships remarks to what he called "the captive submarine, were nearing the 500 mile have stopped dead in the water." The people of Cuba." barrier. Kennedy now faced a major report was confirmed. Still the crisis "I speak to you as a friend, as one choice. The US had to intercept or was not over. Russian technicians were who knows your deep attachment to your announce withdrawal. in Cuba, uncrating and assembling fatherland . . . Now your leaders are no That afternoon, I learned that the bombers capable of delivering nuclear longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban confrontation was about to take place as I weapons to the U.S. mainland. ideals . . . We know that your lands and came up out of the bowels of the subway The President had said that the lives are being used as pawns by those and fixed on a newspaper headline: missiles could hit targets 1000 miles who would deny your freedom." NUCLEAR WAR IMMINENT. away. How far was it from Cuba to From a white perspective, the Cubans It infuriated me that somebody's New York? More than 1000 miles I were only a marginal factor in the program of blowing up the planet would thought. The missiles might hit Atlanta, struggle between super powers. The interrupt the business of my growing up Charleston, Albany, Georgia, cities tom perspectives of Black people in the and healing the searing, corrosive scars of apart by racial strife. I was struck by the United States were irrelevant. But today, segregation that were tearing me in half. absurdity of Black people risking their in a world fraught with ethnic tension, it How could they do this to me when lives so they could sit at picnic tables in may be impor- public parks or tant to under- go into public stand the crisis bathrooms from these marked "white undervalued only." Southern points of view. racists feared Cuba is a black bodies in Spanish- public swimming speaking, multi- pools. They racial Caribbean didn't want Black Island. One people to vote or third of the go to white population is colleges. They visibly African, sent police and a much officers to beat larger percent- up pregnant age of the women, and population backwoods views the vigilantes shot up struggle against homes of civil

Carl Anthony and his mother, Mildred Anthony, on a New York street, circa 196.5. Page 8 Sorino - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

rights workers. Meanwhile hour by hour, minute by minute, missiles to be aimed Maybe preventing a nuclear holocaust was at these same cities were being erected in Cuba. more important than gaining civil rights for During those days in October, I Black people . . .Icouldn't accept the possible experienced a crisis of consciousness. I couldn't find a point of balance, a center. truth that total annihilation was worse. As I read the news, a space opened up within me to two types of terror: one concrete, routine, familiar; the other abstract, technological. Which was Cuba. In exchange, he asked Kennedy to inevitably would bring their prejudices worse? I couldn't say. It was eerie cancel the blockade and agree not to and fears to the devastating decision to waiting for the bomb to drop, trying to invade Cuba. The next day, Krushchev annihilate whole peoples. The concentra- sort out my emotions of rage and sent a more threatening proposal tion of nuclear power in the hands of a impotence. My anger came from the demanding that the U.S. dismantle Eurocentric technological elite, paranoid reluctant admission that maybe the peace missles aimed at Russia, sited in Turkey. about the aims and aspirations of the activists were right all along. Maybe Kennedy ignored the second letter and majority of the world's population- preventing a nuclear holocaust was more agreed to the terms of the first. The people of color- magnifies the potential important than gaining civil rights for Cuban Missile Crisis was over. for global disaster. The great and Black people. Great sighs of relief were felt growing gulf of human communication Webster's dictionary defines the verb throughout the land. But some saw in between the rich and poor, European and to annihilate as "to destroy all traces of, Kennedy's actions another example of non-European, multiplies the potential to obliterate, to nullify or render void, to white arrogance, the willingness on the antagonism that could result in planetary abolish." It is possible to argue that part of Kennedy to risk the threat of holocaust. In this context organizing segregation is a lesser evil than annihila- global nuclear disaster rather than lose against nuclear proliferation is, by tion because in the former, a human face. Kennedy chose to force Krushchev definition, a multicultural effort, bringing being may be degraded but is at least to back down unilaterally, with a the intelligence and wisdom of every allowed a physical existence. In a potential loss of face. But the question community to the global task of defeating nuclear blast, all people would be remained: what would have happened if the excesses of racism, human aggres- eliminated. This instant stands in Krushchev had refused to back down? sion, and technology-gone-berserk. contrast to the social death routinely Today, the Soviet Union no longer Nuclear weapons are a violation of enforced, which allows one set of exists. While many are gloating over the the sovereignty of the world's people. people, through conscious and uncon- success of the "free" market, we might Freedom from annihilation is a human scious acts of commission and omission, pause to remember that it was right. to abuse another people. I couldn't Krushchevl not Kennedy, who saved the Trained as an architect, Carl Anthony accept the possible truth that total from a We are is the executive director of the Urban annihilation was worse. still faced with the threat of proliferation ~~bi~~~Program and the chair ofthe On the evening of October 25 weapons. Many Westerners East Bay Conversion Reinvestment Kennedy received a "very long and fear a future in which Third World Commission. emotional" letter from Krushchev. Some nations have access to these weapons. people who reviewed the message The leaders of these countries are more ominously suggested it showed that like Fidel Castro than they are like Krushchev was unstable and incoherent. Kennedy or Kruschchev. The ethnocen- In his book, Thirteen Days, Robert tric bias and the terror of the Cuban Kennedy thought otherwise. "It was not Missile Crisis remain with us. incoherent, and the emotion was directed Nuclear weapons are tools of a at the death, destruction and anarchy that conquering, violent culture. Racism at nuclear war would bring to his people domestic and international levels and all mankind. That, he said again and heightens the potential vulnerability and again and in many different ways must miscalculation surrounding nuclear be avoided. We must not succumb to proliferation. Few people of color have 'petty passions' or to 'transient things' had any role in debate, development, or he wrote, but should realize that if war decision-making about the goals of this should break out, then it would not be in brutal technology. In a nuclear holocaust our power to stop it, for such is the logic whole populations will be vaporized in of war." Krushchev ended the letter the flash of an eye. People deciding the proposing to withdraw weapons from appropriateness of such a choice Race. Poverlv & the Environment S~rina- Summer 1995 Paae 9

Los Alamos, D.C.* Growing Up Under A Cloud of Secrecy By Hilario Romero

That one day in early 1954 remains vivid in my memory was 80 percent Hispano and Native American, it is no wonder today. My parents, my brother, and I were at the gates of Los that New Mexico was one of the highest per-capita states for Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) on a routine visit to my volunteers and draftees. The men served bravely, many losing padrino's house in Los Alamos. My father and my padrino their lives at Battaan and Corregidor, as many New Mexican grew up together in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and by 1940 recruits had been assigned to the 200th Coast Artillery in the joined the Army Air Corps. After their discharge in 1945, my Philippines. In all, over 1,500 New Mexico men lost their lives padrino went to work for the lab as a technician, but it was not during World War 11. Many of these soldiers believed they until 1949 that housing was made available to him and his were making a difference, and their families supported them. family in Los Alamos. We visited many times. They believed they would keep the Japanese from invading the The imposing tower first caught my attention as we continental shores on the Pacific. approached the last hill coming into Los Alamos. Three guards When plans were initiated between 1939-42 by a group of carrying rifles were standing at the gate entrance, a fourth came civilian scientists to study the feasibility of developing an out of a booth, and a fifth was stationed in the tower. The atomic bomb, very few citizens knew of such an effort; in New soldier from the booth approached the car and asked my dad to Mexico fewer still knew of such a plan. What little information provide several pieces of identification, while two guards did trickle down to the average New Mexico citizen was that inspected the car from the outside. The main guard asked my whatever the U.S. War Department was doing, it was for dad to open the trunk of the car and allow them to search the national security and could not be questioned. Northern New interior of the trunk and the car. Once we were through the gate Mexicans knew nothing of the plans in 1942 to convert the on our way into Los Alarnos, my dad explained to us that the sacred lands of San Ildefonso Pueblo, formerly taken by search was routine and was important to national security, squatters to become the Los Alamos Boys Ranch, into a major which showed his patriotic duty as a U.S. veteran. scientific laboratory. Its sole mission was to develop and My padrino was extremely loyal and patriotic to the produce a usable weapon with great destruction capability. mission of the lab and remains loyal today. I remember that Environmental and waste management concerns were way there were two questions we were not allowed to ask him. The down the list in terms of priorities for this mission. Health and first was, "What do you do at the lab?'and the second was, safety concerns for workers and the surrounding communities "What goes on at the lab?" could not be measured due to inexperience with and ignorance During the war years of 1941-45, northern New Mexico about nuclear technology. The scientists involved only under- was a self-sustaining agricultural and ranching area only stood this new technology theoretically, not in practice. marginally dependent on modem society. With most of the They chose a semi-isolated area upwind from the northern land and water rights taken from many of the pueblos and pueblos and Hispano communities and created "security Hispano communities for national forests, mining, and other controlled buffer zones" which, they informed the public, were uses, these communities had to become more creative in for health and safety reasons. However, these "zones" were maintaining their traditional lifestyles through sacrifice and used more for securityfrom the public; with only eight miles sustainable development appropriate to their traditions. separating the lab from the nearest community, they were far Politically, many of these rural communities were responsive from being a safety net. only to their local leadership, who could speak their language By 1944, the fist formal arrangements were made to test and lived among them. There was distrust of those outside the the bomb the scientists had developed. A place was needed communities who talked about addressing their problems but where they could explode the bomb. Once again, the choice of rarely visited the villages. Even though these communities the location was secret; not one New Mexico citizen knew were somewhat out of touch with the so-called "modem anything about it. The Alamogordo Bombing Range in South world," they were aware of major global events through radio, central New Mexico was chosen. The code name for the area and many of their young men went to war as a means of was Trinity Site, and the bomb was affectionately called "the helping the family with a steady income. gadget." On July 16, 1945, the gadget was set in place on top The war brought forward over 60,000 New Mexican men, mostly young, mainly Hispano and Native American. When * "Los Alamos D.C." is the term Chicano and Indian children you consider that the total population of New Mexico in 1940 used in the 1960s to describe LASL. Page 10 Spring - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment of an eighty-foot tower and detonated. great difficulty opening up communica- elementary school and bragged about The pristine New Mexico sky lit up and tions with the public, and especially how he developed the H-bomb. He also the ground shook for miles along the Rio with the northern New Mexico commu- bragged a little about his part in the Grande fault. Once again, environmental, nity. production of the A-bomb. health, and safety issues regarding this As news articles began to expose the My nephew was not impressed. He explosion were not of concern to the "environmental mess" that must be felt that Edward Teller had no interest in project. The fallout from this blast was cleaned up (before and during the 50th humanitarian issues. Yet, at the measured by crude instruments that were anniversary celebrations in 1992), government's expense the scientists were unable to define the short- or long-term LANL continued on with its propaganda wined and dined and given heroes' effects on human, plant and animal life, in an attempt to counter the realities of welcomes. land, air, and water. To this day, the area fifty years of nuclear dumping. During There are a large number of histori- is still hot, left that way since the the past few years, we have learned of ans, researchers, and writers who have detonation, and those who visit the exact releases of 3.2 million curies over the revisited the WWII years of 1941-45, and site must wear protective suits. This was once-pristine New Mexico skies; 2,500 many have written about the turning the first detonation of an atomic bomb in dumps, which are mostly unlined and point of the war. Their conclusions reveal the world, with New Mexicans as its first contain a toxic-radioactive soup which that the dropping the bombs on Hiro- guinea pigs. cannot be categorized because of sloppy shima and Nagasaki was not what caused As the years passed and the gates LANL record keeping; and the leaking the Japanese to surrender. As early as came down, my trips to Los Alamos OMEGA West reactor which has been 1946, it was documented that they were became more frequent, and I still noticed leaking three gallons per hour over an about to surrender even before the plan my padrino's reluctance to talk about his unknown number of years, draining was conceived to drop the A-bomb. job. Even today he seldom talks about radioactive liquid discharges into It is my hope that our efforts to make his tenure at the lab. Its secrets are safe arroyos and the Rio Grande (a major LANL accountable now and into the with him. water supply for New Mexico and future will be met with openness and Now here we are, fifty-two years Texas). There have been no apologies, honesty, as the future of New Mexico and after the initial opening of LASL. As a regrets, or even concerns from LANL. the world depends on shifting away from New Mexico historian, I have spent a There has only been rhetoric, excuses, the proliferation of nuclear weapons great deal of time researching the lab and and a much-publicized plan to deal with technology and working toward true its history. However, everything I have the situation with millions of taxpayer peace on this planet. I will leave you with found was written from the lab per- dollars for "cleanup experiments" which a quote from Albert Einstein: "The spective by authors and historians who have yet to be proven safe. unleashed power of the atom has changed were part of the labs or the federal During the 50th anniversary ceremo- everything save our mode of thinking, government. Everything was written in a nies in 1992 (at which I presented and and thus we drift toward unparalled void, almost as if there was this lab that performed), many of the former Manhat- catastrophe." hovered over the New Mexico skies, tan Project scientists were invited, at Hilario Romero is the director of the bringing security, power, and jobs to the government expense, to return to LANL New Mexico Educational Opportunity United States, and a few of the latter to and celebrate their accomplishments. Center and co-chair of the LANL 2000 New Mexico. Hidden in secrecy for fifty Edward Teller, one of these noted Task Force. He is also the former New years, Los Alarnos National Laboratory scientists, paid a visit to my nephew's Mexico State Historian. (LANL - as it is called today) has had sixth grade class at a Los Alamos

Trinity Site, White Sands, New Mexico - Courtsey Museum of New Mexico Race. Povertv & the Environment S~rina- Summer 1995 Paae 11

Radiation and AIDS

By Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman

A presentation of the hypothesis that radiation led to Sternglass and Scheer further support their hypothesis by mutations which give rise to AIDS was made by Ernest referring to a 1957 study published by the United Nations Sternglass and Jens Scheer at the annual Conference of the Scientific Committee on the Biological Effects of Atomic American Association for the Advancement of Science on May Radiation, which found that the highest concentrations of 29, 1986.* The response of the scientific community to the strontium-90 in human bone were in the high rainfall areas of paper was complete and utter silence, despite the fact that it Africa, with measures four times greater than those in much- provided a potential explanation for why and where AIDS first drier South Africa. They continue: emerged. A summary of the paper begins as follows: The crucial role of diet could also explain the puzzling fact that on the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, Two of the principal unexplained aspects of the AIDS with equal populations of African and Asian Indian epidemic are the timing of the sharp rises beginning in origin and comparable percentages of homosexuals, 1980-82 and the initial geographic concentration in there were forty-five cases of AIDS diagnosed among Central Africa, the Caribbean, and the East and West those of African origin and none among those of East Coasts of the U.S. These findings can be explained by Indian descent. A detailed study of the dietary differ- the hypothesis that beta irradiation of bone marrow cells ences and strontium-90 concentrations in bone for the by strontium-90 and other bone-seeking radioisotopes in two ethnic groups would serve as a valuable test of the the diet during the period of nuclear testing may have present hypothesis. led to mutation of an AIDS-related indigenous human or animal retrovirus, and also produced a cohort of There is therefore persuasive evidence that fallout from susceptible individuals whose immune defenses were atmospheric bomb testing may have damaged developing impaired during intra-uterine development. immune systems in the early 1960s, and may have also accelerated the mutation of an AIDS-like virus found in Although atomic bomb tests began in 1945, the worldwide indigenous African monkeys that made it more virulent to increase of strontium-90 in the diet did not take place until humans. after the large hydrogen bomb tests of the mid-195OYs,rising most sharply between 1962 and 1963. The greatest increase in AIDS occurred some eighteen to nineteen years later, or There is persuasive evidence between 1980 and 1982, when the large cohort of potentially that fallout from atmospheric immunodeficient infants would have reached maturity and been exposed to sexually transmitted diseases. Thus, the AIDS bomb testing may have damaged virus would spread among people of this cohort wherever developing immune systems in conditions favored high rates of sexual contact or other the early 1960s and may have efficient means of transmission directly to the bloodstream. Since 90 percent of fallout comes down with precipitation, also accelerated the mutation of this hypothesis could explain why the AIDS epidemic began in an AIDS-like virus . . . . areas of high rainfall such as Central Africa and the Caribbean Islands close to the latitude of the Pacific test sites and rose most rapidly in the high rainfall areas of the East and West Coasts of North America. Dr. Jay Gould formerly served on the EPA's Science Because strontium-90 is transmitted mainly through diet, it Advisory Board. He has written$ve books. Benjamin also explains why Southeast Asia, although high in rainfall, Goldman is the author of Hazardous Waste Management and shows fewer AIDS cases, since rice and fish have a much The Toxic and Mortality Atlas of America. Reprinted from lower strontium-90 to calcium ratio than milk, bread, meat, Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High Level Cover-Up, fruit, potatoes, beans, and vegetables dominant in U.S., by Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman. Copyright 1990. With Caribbean, and African diets. permission of the publisher, Four Walls Eight Windows.

'E.J. Sternglass and J. Scheer, "Radiation exposure to bone marrow cells to strontium-90 during early development as a possible cofactor in the etiology of AIDS," Philadelphia: American Association for the Advance- ment of Science Annual Meeting, May 29, 1986. Page 12 Sofino - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

ed by Fallout

By Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman

Consider the implications of Psychological Association in Septem- Ernest Sternglass's discovery, later ber 1979. There it was predicted that supported by two U.S. Navy psy- SAT scores would begin to improve chologists, of the adverse impact of again in 1981, eighteen years after bomb-test fallout on Standardized atmospheric bomb tests stopped in Achievement Test (SAT) scores. In 1963. Secret Fallout, Sternglass described Two Navy psychologists investi- his reaction in 1975 when reading a gated whether these findings could New York Times article on the throw light on the difficulties new re- puzzling but steady decline in SAT cruits were having in mastering scores since the mid-1960s, generally complex weapons technologies. They by no more than two or three points found that: per year until 1975, when they . . . . the state having the dropped by ten points in a single largest drop in [SAT] scores year: from children born during the Suddenly, the question flashed two year period 1956-1958 through my mind: When were was Utah, a fact which is these young people born or in consistent with Utah's proxim- their mother's womb? Most of ity to the Nevada Test Site and them were eighteen years old the general northeastern when they graduated from motion of the fallout clouds high school. What was produced by the Nevada tests, eighteen taken from 1975? It providing very convincing and was 1957, the year when the disquieting evidence closely largest amount of radioactive linking the SAT score decline fallout ever measured de- to the cumulative effects of scended on the U.S.. from the nuclear fallo~t.~ highest kilo tonnage of These "disquieting" findings were nuclear weapons ever deto- largely ignored by the media, as was nated in Nevada.' the fact that SAT scores have risen By 1979, with the help of the since 1981. educa6onal psychologist Dr. Steven Bell, Sternglass was able to secure state breakdowns of the SAT scores, NOTES 1 Ernest Sternglass, Secret Fallout: Low-Level which indicated that the greatest Radiation from Hiroshima to Three-Mile declines had indeed occurred in states Island, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972, 1981, closest to the Nevada Test Site. The p. 81. greatest decline was registered in the 2. Bernard Rimland and Gerald Larsen, neighboring state of Utah, where the "Manpower quality decline: an ecological large Mormon population had the perspective," Armed Forces and Society, Fall lowest rates of cigarette, drug, and 1981. alcohol consumption in the nation, Originally published in Jay Gould and traditionally had very high SAT and Benjamin Goldman, Deadly scores. Deceit: Low Level Radiation, High These findings were presented at Level Cover-Up, New York: Four the annual meeting of the American Walls Eight Windows, 1990. Race. Vovertv & the Environment Sorina - Summer 1995 Vaae 13 Fight Back: Uranium Mining in the Grants Mineral Belt By Simon Ortiz

The Grants Mineral Belt cuts across central New Mexico threaten the heritage they had struggled to keep for so long. and includes the native lands of Kawikameh (Laguna Pueblo), Right out of high school I worked in the mining and milling Aacqu (Acoma Pueblo) and Dineh (Navaho Nation). region of Ambrosia Lake. I was nineteen years old. My father, -Editor like others, had worked for the railroad for years, as a laborer In the early 1950s, Anaconda opened the ground north of on section crews and a welder on extra gangs. Most of the Kahwaika. All the time since it was formed, the land on the railroad workers I ever saw were Indians, Indo-Hispanos, and east slopes of Tsebinah was mesa, canyon, and grassland. Blacks with occasional Okies, and the foremen were always Paguate village people had gardens and fields at the mouths of white. My father firmly said that he did not wish for me and canyons and arroyos and alongside the small stream from the my brothers to ever work for the Santa Fe railroad. We were to mountain. It had been like that for ages, but now the machines go to school, get an education, and find something that was not and Mericanos in hard-hats came. grueling labor. Mining agreements were made between the Kawikameh We had always been poor, though sometimes it didn't feel leadership and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which was like it except we knew we didn't have much and were always within the hold of the Department of Interior. And the interna- envious of others who had more. One of the things we said was tional mining company worked efficiently and quickly after "Gaimuu Mericano," speaking of the good fortune of being a that. The Anaconda engineers surveyed and plotted, and soon white American. We were resentful too, of course, though at they drilled the stone, filled the drill holes with dynamite, and nineteen I didn't know intellectually why or how that was the blasted. And pushed the rubble away. They did it over and over case, except that at times angrily we would seek out Indo- again, until the land was just so much rubble pushed aside to Hispanos and whites to fight. We knew we were close to the find the strata of uranium bearing ore. bottom of the social scale, and we knew that was a scary and There are songs painful place to be. So I went to work at Ambrosia Lake. about the rain, Mostly, I worked at the Kerr-McGee millsite although so beautiful. several times I went underground into the mines. At the mill, I White soft mist, worked in crushing, leaching, and yellowcake, usually at gentle on the land, various labor positions but later as an operator which was not flowing in rivulets, much different or more skilled than laborer. I had a job, and for stone, shining, so beautiful. poor people with low education and no skills and high unem- There are songs. ployment, that is the important thing: a job. In 1960, some Kerr-McGee even earlier than Anaconda's development on subsistence farming on small garden plots was still done at Laguna land had already begun mining and milling in the Cove Aacqu, but faced with the U.S. economy and its impact, a wage and Shiprock area in northwest New Mexico. It had the same income was becoming necessary. pattern. Navajo people had a small farming economy but most Mining is dangerous work, whether underground or of their livelihood was in raising sheep. It was bare subsis- surface, but people continued to work there because there was tence, and most Navajo people were faced with unemployment no other employment available. It was total and intensive work, and dependency on welfare which was begrudgingly meted out and the New Mexican and national economy required it. It was and used to control the people. not the safety or health or lives of the miners there was concern The Navajo men who went into the underground mines did for. In the national interest, mine operators, oil corporations, not have much choice except to work there, just like the utility companies, international energy cartels, and investors Laguna miners who found themselves as surface labor and sacrificed these men and women. In the Grants Uranium Belt semi-skilled workers. The Kerr-McGee underground mines area, which is the area between Albuquerque and Gallup, there were dusty, and in twenty years the Navajo miners who had was a miner killed every month. At home in Aacqu there are stayed for any length of time underground breathing the dust former miners who walk around crippled, as maimed as if they laden with radon gas would find themselves cancerous. The had been wounded in wartime. Laguna miners would find themselves questioning how much At moments I got paranoid about my own health. In 1960, real value the mining operation had when their land was over- there was no information about the dangers of radiation from turned into a gray pit miles and miles in breadth. They would yellowcake, with which I worked. I didn't know if workers got ask if the wages they earned, causing wage income depen- any more information or warnings than we did twenty years dency, and the royalties received by the Kawaikah people were before. The company managers and superintendents knew worth it when Mericano values beset their children and would something or at least scientists did, but they didn't allow for its Page 14 Snrino - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

dissemination. If they did pass it on, it On the way to Srahkaiya No, we said, Arreh-eh. was low key, and it must have been low the day before, Yes, he said, in the olden key in 1960 because there didn't seem to I had met old man times. be much worker organizing for safer beloved Bowtuwah We wanted to hear handling of yellowcake. But twenty above his sheep camp. about the olden times, years later, I worried about it, and I got He told me about some hawks and he would tell us. angry because there weren't any special nesting in the cliffs nearby. It's true, Bowtuwah precautions we were required or urged to When I was a boy, would say, it's all true. take then. Bowtuwah would bring his sheep In the milling operation at the end of to water at the chuna, Later, he would have us the leaching and settling process, the the Rio de San Jose, chasing dragonflies yellow liquid was drawn into dryers and we would run up and down the river, which took the water out. The dryers to greet him every time trying to catch were screen constructions which he did so. at least one, revolved slowly in hot air; yellow pellets Uncle, we would call, but they were always too fast. were extruded and crushed into a fine how are you? If you can catch powder. The workers were to keep the Fine, he would say, the fastest one, machinery operating, which was never and he would laugh. that will be the tastiest smooth and most of the work involved He was a kind, gentle, he would say, laughing. was to keep it in free operation; i.e., and funny man, younger then. Well, I better go see frequently having to unclog it by hand. And he would always if my sheep haven't There was always a haze of yellow dust tell us stories and jokes. all drowned. flying around, and even though filtered masks were used, the workers breathed Once he told us, He is gone now, in the fine dust. It got in their hair and it was true he said, and sometimes I wish cuts and scratches and in their eyes. I that in the olden times, he were still with us was nineteen then, and twenty years later the people ate dragonflies. and I was a boy I worried about it. Dragonflies, we cried. listening Yes, he said, fine food, to stories tasty, fixed a certain way. by the river, all of us laughing.

The Serpent of the Upper Yule River was originally painted by the Njamal people of northeast Australia to guard over the elemental forces buried in the Earth. With permission, the World Uranium Hearing re- printed the Serpent during its meetings in 1992. With the blessing of the Hearing, Race, Poverty and the Environment pictures the Serpent throughout this 50th anniversary issue. 1 3 .* Race, Poverty & the Environment S~rino- Summer 1995 Page 15

The struggle goes on and it will their drilling, mining, milling, refining pumped out and processed. continue. It is in the stories of the oral and processing operations. If they don't The forty-three mines in the late tradition and the advice and counsel that do that, they will not understand what 1970s were dewatering, because most it will go on. Aacqu and her sister Pueblos in the of the underground ore bodies were The Southwestern U.S. is caught in Southwest are fighting for when they seek wet, between 190,000 to 250,000 the throes of economic ventures and time and time again to'bring attention to gallons per minute. Nevertheless, even political manipulation which are ulti- their struggle for land, water, and human with all this activity, it was uncertain mately destructive if the U.S. govern- rights. that peak production would continue as ment and the multinational corporations even then mines were closing and do not have people and the land and their That feeling workers being laid off, causing even continuance as their foremost concern. It of lL~therne~~" more economic distress for the people is not a matter of higher income for came on as I lay in the area. In fact, by the early 1980s, Indians because there will be higher in the shade uranium ore extracting and processing incomes as inflation goes higher. It is not of a juniper. was drastically reduced, and there was a matter of a higher standard of living It passed, almost none going on by the 1990s. The and I got up which we are led to seek as the only and walked market for uranium had dropped, some possible alternative. It is the survival of into a canyon of it due to concerns and protests about not only the Aacquemeh hanoh or the which would radiation hazards and pollution. Dineh or other Southwestern native enter into a valley. This much is certain now however: peoples, but it is all people of this nation. As I walked the people of Deetseyamah and It is not only a matter of preserving and into the valley Deechuna and Kahwaikah downstream protecting Indian lands as some kind of I saw some horses. from the Grants Uranium Belt do not natural wilderness or cultural parks; One was a pinto have enough water any more for their rather it is a matter of how those lands and the other one was red. few remaining cultivated fields and The sun had long set. can be productive in terms which are The horses were alert gardens, and the water they drink is Indian people's to make, instead of to me as I passed by. contaminated by Grants and the past Indian people being forced to serve a Suddenly, they bolted, processing mills. The hanoh anxiously U.S. national interest which has never and galloped watch the springs at Ghoomi and adequately served them. Those lands can into the canyon Gaanipah. Their strugle will go on; be productive to serve humanity, just like toward Srahkaiya. there is no question about that. the oral tradition of the Aacqumeh hanoh I watched them We must have passionate concern says, and the people can be productive until they vanished for what is at stake. We must under- and serve the land so that it is not wasted into the folds stand the experience of the oppressed of of the evening earth and destroyed. that was the canyon this nation, by this nation and its But it will take real decisions and entering into economic interests. Only when we truly actions and concrete understanding by the dark near mountain understand and accept the responsibili- the poor and workers of this nation. They Srahkaiya. ties of that understanding will we be will have to see that the present exploita- able to make the necessary decisions for tion of coal at Black Mesa Mine in In 1980, there were forty-three change. Only then will we truly Arizona does not serve the Hopi and uranium mines operating in the Grants understand what it is to love the land Navajo whose homeland it is. They will Uranium Belt and five mills. According to and people and to have compassion. have to understand that the political and a BIA study, 107 mines and twenty-one Only when the people of this nation, not economic forces which have caused mills would be in operation by the year just Indian people, fight for what is just Hopi and Navajo people to be in conflict 2000 in the Belt and the San Juan Basin. and good for all life, will we know life with each other and within their own Uranium yellowcake production in New and its continuance. And when we nations are the same forces which steal Mexico was 9.7 million pounds in 1977; it fight, and fight back those who are bent the human fabric of their own American was to have increased to 24.1 million in on destruction of land and people, we communities and lives. 1980. There were thirty-one companies will win. We will win. They will have to be willing to do so exploring for and developing uranium in One of the country's most important or they will never understand why the New Mexico. Kerr-McGee, Conoco, Gulf, Native American writers, Simon Ortiz Four Comers power plants in northwest- Mobil, Philips, TVA, Pioneer Nuclear, (Keres) has written Woven Stone, From ern New Mexico continue to spew and United Nuclear are all energy Sand Creek, After and Before the poisons into the air, destroying plant, corporations; they were all there. Mobil Lightning, and other books. This edited animal, and human life in the area. They and TVA were planning in situ mining in excerpt from Woven Stone printed by will have to be willing to face and which chemicals are pumped into drilled permission of the author. Copyright challenge the corporations at their armed holes, interacting with uranium ore bodies 1992 by Simon J. Ortiz. Published by bank buildings, their stock brokers, and deep in the earth, and the solution is University of Arizona Press. Page 16 S~rina- Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment

The Jackpile Mine: Testimony of a Miner

By Dorothy Ann Purley

Good morning, my name is Dorothy Ann Purley. I am a would shake the homes so severely that dishes rattled and Native American from the Pueblo of Laguna which is one of , glassware would fall off the cabinets. You could feel the land the nineteen pueblos located in New Mexico. I have lived on under your feet move. If the blast was close enough, we could the Laguna Reservation all my life. The village where I come hear the rocks that had been blasted fall back to the earth. from is called Paguate. It is one of the seven villages in Laguna What was even worse was the smell of sulfur. We were told Pueblo. It is where you can find the ghost of what once was the that it was only blasting powder, nothing to be afraid of. The Anaconda Jackpile Mine. smell would linger in our homes for hours. A fine mist of dust In 1952 when the uranium mine first opened, it seemed like would settle on our tables as we walked back into our homes to a dream come true. It gave many of my people of the reserva- finish our lunch or dinner. tion a chance to find employment. At that time we did not It seemed Anaconda became obsessed with their pursuit of foresee the potential danger of radiation and health hazards to uranium. It was in great demand at that time. It did not seem to come. The only thing that we did see was that there was plenty matter to the company that homes and lives were being of money to be made. The Pueblo of Laguna was held in high destroyed. They made many promises, such as the renovation esteem for being self-sufficient. If we had only known the of our homes. They promised that everything that had been dangers in the beginning. altered would be corrected. Most of the homes along the edge As years went by things started to change. The mine was in of the cliffs where I lived started showing signs of blast full operation. More and more machinery was being used and damage. Walls began to develop large cracks and fractures. more and more Native Americans were being employed. They Some roofs started to sag and walls started to buckle. In our started using explosives to loosen and dislodge the hills and home, the floor gave way. The Anaconda Company came in to valleys that were once there. They tore up land that was once repair it twice. We eventually had to repair it again at our own used to plant our crops. They tore up orchards filled with fruits expense. Just recently, the house that I was born and raised in and fields that once held livestock. This made my heart heavy totally collapsed. All that remains is the emptiness in my heart. because my childhood friends and I would play on the grassy fields. On Sundays we would take walks and have picnics. We would run up and down those hills and play tag. I can still All that remains is the emptiness picture it in my mind. Now all that is there is an ugly cancerous in my heart. scar. With the mine in full operation, life seemed great. People were living comfortably with their fat paychecks. Almost In the 1970s we started to see and hear about health issues. everyone had a new automobile. We tried not to notice the land People started dying from cancer. It seemed like an epidemic. being destroyed. We were concerned about raising our fami- We started hearing about people being affected by upper lies. I cannot ever recall anyone talking about radiation or its respiratory ailments like emphysema. Our younger generations dangers. Once in a while, you would see a white man walking were afflicted by leukemia and tumors. Babies were born with around holding a gadget that looked like a small radio in his birth defects. We wondered what was going on and did not hand. realize that our people were being affected from the exposure The Anaconda Jackpile Mine seemed to get closer and to radiation. closer to our village. They started to build underground In 1975, I started my employment with the Anaconda tunnels. We still do not know how far those underground Copper Company: In the beginning, there were only four other tunnels extend. In the afternoons, they would set off a signal female employees. Here are a few of my jobs: siren to warn us of an explosion or blast as they called it. There Dump Operator Controller ' was a blast at noon and again at four p.m. When we heard the Hobo Ore Car Controller at the crusher sirens start, we would run out of our homes to play it safe. We Receptionist with the safety office were usually eating our lunch or dinners at this time. The blast Security Guard at an entry gate Race, Poverty d the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 17

Greaser for R25, R35, and R50 trucks All these physical hardships cannot compare with the Truck Operator for R25, R35, and emotional turmoil that I have gone through. R50 trucks As you can see, my exposure to radiation was great. My term of employ- ment was approximately eight years. As without any warning and walk with the forgiveness. a result, I have developed lymphoma, aid of my cane. Soon, I will have all my Today I am here in hopes that we which is cancer of the lymphatic system. teeth pulled. My vision is blurry and the may get things accomplished. I feel that As for now, I am in remission. I pray muscles in my eyes are being affected. I the Anaconda ARC0 Corporation has daily that it stays that way. lost my hair during the first month of the responsibility to aid our people with Due to economic reasons, the value chemotherapy. health issues which have resulted by of uranium changed and so did the All these physical hardships cannot their greed. They need to compensate employment status. Anaconda began to compare with the emotional turmoil that families of cancer victims. This is the decrease employment at a steady rate. I have gone through. I have two grand- least that they could do. Perhaps if my The uranium mining operation came to a sons who are eleven and three years old. people were better educated in health or halt in the early 1980s. Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I had prior knowledge on the effects that As time went on, my health was not was able to do a lot more with them. I radiation could cause, we may have at its best. I started to lose weight and would accompany my older grandson on never allowed uranium mining on our noticed two lumps in my right breast. I school fieldtrips and did a lot of volun- land. The 1990 Radiation Exposure was in a lot of pain and I was afraid to teer work at his elementary school. I was Compensation Act does not include tell anyone. All kinds of thoughts raced able to run and play with my little three- open-pit uranium miners or uranium through my head. I continued to notice year-old grandson. I was able to ride a millworkers. Perhaps we could enforce a that the lumps were enlarging as days bike and to do all the things that compensation act that would cover open- went by. I finally informed my doctor. grandmas are made to do. I have lost a pit uranium miners and millworkers. He immediately performed a biopsy. lot of this. Right now I am seeking Dorothy Ann Purley (Keres) is One week later, I was diagnosed as professional help to help me deal with active with the Luguna Acoma Coalition having cancer. I chose to receive high- my disease. I am finally able to talk for a Safe Environment, Box 100, dose chemotherapy. This treatment was about my cancer. People tell me that I Paguate NM 87040; 505-552-9352. This for a duration of eight months. I have look good on the outside, they just can't testimony was first delivered to the New experienced many adverse symptoms as understand how it really feels. Mexico Conference on the Environment a result of the chemotherapy. I have pain Yesterday I sat at the edge of the in 1994. Since then Ms. Purley has in my breasts and throughout my body. I mine to gather my thoughts for today. I spoken at hearings all over the country, endure sleepless nights. I have swelling could not stop the tears that flowed. including the President's Advisory in my hands, legs, and toes. I feel numb- There in front of me is a vast waste of Committee on Human Radiation ness all over my body. I have severe land. The violation was too much for my Experiments in Washington DC and migraine headaches. I fall frequently eyes. I asked my Great Spirit for Santa Fe NM.

The 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensa- tion Act does not include open-pit uranium miners or uranium millworkers. Perhaps we could enforce a compensation act that would cover open-pit uranium miners and millworkers. Page 18 Spring - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment

By Mildred McCIain The Savannah River Site (SRS), located in Aiken, South percent of capacity after a study revealed they had been run for Carolina, is a complex of nuclear reactors and weapons years at what might have been unsafe temperatures. factories and ishe Department of Energy's facility that most In 1987 the Environmental Policy Institute issued a second directly affects African Americans. According to the South report on the Savannah plant entitled "Evading the Deadly Carolina Energy Research Foundation, since operations at the Issues: Corporate Mismanagement of America's Nuclear Savannah River Site began in the 1950s, the plant has released Weapons Production." The report claimed that more than millions of curies of radiation to the air, soil, and water.* High three-quarters of the radioactivity from the nation's military quantities of non-radioactive, hazardous chemicals have been waste was held in fifty-one tanks on the site, each holding released as well. Tens of thousands of workers at the site, and 750,000 to 1.3 million gallons of waste. Taking into account people in communities around the downstream of Savannah the number and individual vulnerability of the tanks, the River Site, may have been affected by these releases. Many of chance of any one of them suffering an explosion, the report these people who live in Georgia and South Carolina are held, was one in fifty each year. Officials of E.1 du Pont de African Americans. Nemours & Company, which managed the facility, disputed Throughout the Southeast, both private military contractors the report, but said the evidence supporting their position was and government military installations introduced health classified or in draft form. hazards. Operating behind a screen of secrecy, military In Jasper County, southeast of the SRS, infant deaths contractors violated health and safety laws inside their plants climbed from 22.9 per 1,000 live birth in 1950 to 29.2 in 1980, and environmental regulations outside them. The claim of although the state average dropped from 38.9 to 15.6. Heart military necessity frequently provided the justification for disease in Soreven County, Georgia, also southeast of the plant, ignoring or dismantling major public safety and environmental rose at a rate nearly five times the statewide increase. In regulations. neighboring Georgia's Burke County, the cancer rate multi- Military installations presented emerging environmental plied five-fold between 1950 and 1980. These counties are and public health problems. Seventeen percent of the federal predominantly African American. facilities placed on the Environmental Protection Agency's Repeated community demonstrations have protested the Superfund list were in the southeastern states, as were 22 health hazards caused by the plant. In 1983, fifty demonstrators percent of the Pentagon's in-house Installation Restoration who blockaded the entrances of the plant were arrested for programs. blocking traffic. Their two-day trial exposed many facts. The health hazards introduced by the Atomic Energy Finally, increased militarization, alongside the Southeast's Commission's Savannah River Site in South Carolina illustrate deepening poverty, contributed to intensified racism. Histori- the dangers associated with nuclear energy. Locally known as cally, the military adopted the norms of the region's white the "Bomb Plant," the Savannah River Project spreads over power structure. During WWII, for example, the Manhattan 312 square miles of land. Its construction required the reloca- Project at Oak Ridge recruited black workers from Alabama, tion of 1,500 families who received an average of little more Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee only as common laborers. than $12,000 apiece in compensation. Farmers took a particu- The military authorities rigidly segregated their housing, larly heavy loss, since they did not receive sufficient compen- education, and services. Blacks even had to pay 25 cents to sation to buy new farms. obtain identity passes. After the war, when Union Carbide took SRS has been the source of endless community contro- over the management of the project, segregation persisted in versy. In 1987, two of its reactors were closed because of employment, as well as in theaters, barber shops, and self- cracks and other flaws. Other reactors operated at less than 50 service laundries. School desegregation lasted until after the One million curies is the estimated measure of radiation released at Hiroshima. Race. Povetiv & the Environment S~rino- Summer 1995 Paae 19

Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board groups. While many of the nuclear Americans living and working at the of Education decision. weapons facilities are sited within SRS, Chicano farmworkers, and Native The Southeast is the home of the communities of color, secrecy and the Americans living and working at Blackbelt where the majority of African jobs blackmail factor have effectively Hanford or Los Alamos National Americans live, work, and suffer. Many excluded participation. The notion that Laboratory all care about the health of of the counties that surround the people of color don't care about health or their children and the threat to future Savannah River Site and are downstream the environment is a clear misconception. generations. The health studies being have significant African American The health of oneself and family is a undertaken by the Department of Health populations. primary consideration regardless whether and Human Services can only be African Americans have been on this employed by DOE or living by those effective and accurate if inclusion and land for 400 years, and our status as dangerous facilities. Rural African participation are primary goals in the impoverished and exploited citizens has process. not changed. American democracy has Mildred McClain is the founder and not afforded us the human rights of the director of Citizens for Environmental dominant culture. It is within this frame Historically, people of color Justice, P.O. Box 1841, Savannah GA of reference that African Americans find 31401; 912-233-0907. She holds a themselves not only living as a semi- have been excluded from the doctorate in education from Haward colonized people but also bearing the nuclear weapons debate by University. A longer version of this essay , brunt of environmental racism. both the DOE and anti- is used in stakeholders's training Historically, people of color have sessions to teach about the Savannah been excluded from the nuclear weapons nuclear groups. River Site and the struggle for environ- debate by both the DOE and anti-nuclear mental justice.

TOP TEN NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTRACTORS

Top 10 Parent Companies, in rank order, of U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapons System Manufacturers, Fiscal Year 1993

1. Lockheed Corporation 2. McDonnel Douglas Corporation 3. Westinghouse Electric Company 4. Martin Marietta Corporation 5. Northrop Corporation 6. University of California System 7. AT&T 8. Bath Holding Corporation 9. United Technologies Corporation 10. Rockwell International Corporation

Researched and published by Nuclear Free America, The New Abolitionist, Fall 1994. Page 20 Race, Poverty & the Environment

You Do It in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana

By Citizens Against Nuclear Trash

If you were a nuclear-power advocate, staring two decades In issuing this grossly deficient Draft EIS, it seems that the of failure in the face, how might you try to restart your flagging NRC is trying to forget CANT's prior victory in successfully industry? You might try to lull some investors into financing a arguing to the NRC's administrative law judges that the issue new fuel fabrication plant. Then you might look around for a of environmental racism is entirely relevant to the licensing spot to build your plant - why not rural Louisiana, where the proceedings and must be ruled upon after a full airing at trial. only possible objectors would be a few poor African American This will be the first time that the NRC has been called upon to folks? deal with this issue. Indelicate as the language may be, that's what Louisiana The nuclear power industry itself has acknowledged that it Energy Services (LES) has in mind. The proposed plant would considers this a crucial test case, making CANT's stance all the be located in the middle of two low-income, African American more formidable. As Ed Davis, president of the American communities: Forest Grove and Center Springs. We, the Nuclear Energy Council, said in the Washington Post, if CANT citizens from these communities and the surrounding area, is successful in stopping the LES project, the nuclear power organized in 1989 into a group called CANT - Citizens industry would have to question its entire future: Against Nuclear Trash. We are a small, hardworking grassroots If we can't get a site for a facility like this, an enrich- group, and we intend to defeat this proposal and demonstrate ment facility, how are we ever going to get a site for that David can beat Goliath. another reactor? It's just a factory. If we can't make a Before this proposed facility can be constructed, a license convincing case on this [the LES plant], then we'll have must be obtained from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission our work cut out for us on future power plants. We'd (NRC). CANT, represented by the Louisiana office of the have to question our whole future. Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, has intervened in the licens- CANT is ready and willing to cause the entire nuclear ing proceedings before the NRC to oppose the licensing of the power industry to question its continued viability. facility. CANT is well aware that every uranium processing plant in this country has caused toxic and radioactive injury to the We are a small, hardworking- environment and to the people who live near them. The grassroots group, and we intend to members of CANT are not willing to be the next victims of such a facility and are particularly disturbed that two poor defeat this proposal and demonstrate communities- which are not close to either the source of the that David can beat Goliath. raw material for the proposed plant or the markets for the end product - have been targeted for such a dangerous plant. Recently, the draft environmental impact statement (Draft The proponents of this plant were probably counting on a EIS) for this project was issued, but it contains absolutely no subdued populace, more concerned about the alleged economic discussion of any impacts of the proposed facility on the two benefits than with environmental protection. Instead, they have African-American communities of Forest Grove and Center found a group of people determined to prove that poor commu- Springs. In fact, neither of these historic communities appears nities will no longer be acquiescent targets for polluting on any of the numerous maps included in the Draft EIS, industry, and that the nuclear industry is dead, not only in the although more distant, predominantly white communities of rest of America, but especially in northern Louisiana. We have similar size are noted. A more blatant instance of environmen- successfully lobbied both the Southern Christian Leadership tal racism is difficult to imagine. Conference and the NAACP to pass formal resolutions Race, Poverty & the Environment Sorina - Summer 1995 Page 21 opposing the proposed facility. will soon be dwindling. This has made environmental mess in the country." It was in June of 1989 that LES LES desperate to lock in long-term With reason, the citizens of Forest announced plans to construct a uranium contracts before the market crashes. Grove, Center Springs, Claiborne enrichment plant in the midst of Forest Notwithstanding its economic question Parish, and Louisiana in general have Grove and Center Springs, which are marks and environmental hazards, the environmental concerns about the LES four miles outside of Homer, Louisiana. LES plant has received heavy backing facility. The polluting waste water from Homer is located in Claiborne Parish, a from local officials, who have accepted the plant will be discharged into a poor rural county about fifty miles east significant financial gifts from LES. At stream which is part of the Lake of Shreveport. LES is a consortium the federal level, Senator Johnston Claiborne watershed. The threat of composed of a European fm, Urenco; sponsored legislation to ease the licensing groundwater contamination near the three U.S. nuclear utilities (Duke Power, of this plant by amending the Atomic plant looms very large for the forty Northern States Power, and Louisiana Energy Act of 1954. Johnston has homes within five miles of the plant site Power & Light); and a contractor, Fluor received substantial campaign contribu- which rely on wells for their drinking Daniel. tions from members of the LES consor- water. Further, many elderly residents Uranium enrichment is one of the tium. In contrast, two local African who would live near the plant and have steps involved in the conversion of American churches turned down what no transportation, are also concerned natural uranium into fuel for nuclear they called LES's offer of a "bribe." about how they will get out of the area reactors. The proposed LES plant would The state of Louisiana already bears in the event of an accidental release of produce approximately 4,000 tons of more than its share of this nation's ill- uranium hexafluoride. radioactive uranium-238 (U-238) waste treatment of our natural resources. We believe that our battle goes far per year, in the form of uranium Louisiana ranks first in the nation in the beyond our own backyards; it encom- . hexafluoride. U-238 has a half life of amount of toxic chemicals discharged to passes many of the issues that are most more than 4 billion years. LES plans to its air, land, and water. The Bayou State is important to the environmental justice store the waste on site in fourteen-ton the top emitter of toxic air pollutants per movement: pollution, disparate impacts cylinders. person, dumps into its water eight times on communities of color, the right of Relying on Louisiana's history of lax more toxic pollutants than any other state, communities to have a say in their enforcement of its environmental laws and has more commercial dump sites than future, and agency sensitivity to cultural and regulations, its poor economy, and any other state. In the words of The New impacts. Our fight demonstrates that U.S. Senator J. Bennet Johnston, who York Times, Louisiana is "the worst citizens united can effectively stand up has been one of the most outspoken to industrial interests: they can change supporters of nuclear energy, the nuclear the way business is done. We are not industry has selected the LES facility as Relying on Louisiana's his- rich and do not hold positions of power, a test case for what some analysts so we have organized and empowered believe is an initial step in an attempted tory of lax enforcement of ourselves. Our efforts could have revitalization of the nuclear power environmental laws and U.S. repercussions far beyond Claiborne industry. Senator J. Bennet Johnston, Parish. In recent reports though, several Citizens Against Nuclear Trash is a well-respected industry analysts have the nuclear industry has group of activists living in the commu- expressed serious doubts about any selected the LES facility as a nities surrounding the designated resurgence of the nuclear power indus- test case for an attempted location of the LESplant. They can be try, given the industry's terrible record of reached at: P.0. Box 195, Homer LA revitalization of the nuclear investor losses. If there is no such 71 040; 31 8-927-6942. Thanks to resurgence, the number of potential power industry. Norton Tompkins for permission to customers for LES's enriched uranium print this article. Page 22 Spring - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment Deathon the Road: Transportation of Spent Fuel Rods

By Nancy J. Nadel

After years of proliferation of reveal that the cost will reach $1 trillion. Sciences at UC Davis, speaking on behalf nuclear power plants in the U.S. and Meanwhile, around the world the of Psychologists for Social Responsibility abroad, the federal government is faced existing storage pools for spent fuel rods at a 1993 DOE hearing, noted that both with an unsolved problem: what to do are rapidly filling up, leaking, or at risk High and Low Enriched Uranium (HEU with spent nuclear fuel rods. While of boiling. The U.S. Department of and LEU) pose dangers of leukemia, companies like General Electric, Energy (DOE) is faced with devising a cancers, genetic mutation, diabetes, Westinghouse, EG&G, WINCO, and plan to address this urgent problem. sterilization, and circulatory disorders. Bechtel Engineering have made huge Radiation can kill or damage cells. profits from building nuclear plants, it is WHAT ARES PENT FUEL RODS? Therefore, depending on the amount of the communities that are left with the Spent fuel is made up of intact fuel radiation exposure, death is the ultimate responsibility of handling the dangerous assemblies that are discarded after risk. waste. The problem has been caused by serving their useful life inside a nuclear The risks occur when there are shortsighted, contradictory U.S. policies: reactor. In its Environmental Impact exposure opportunities. Exposure can promoting nuclear energy, for Statements (EIS), the DOE defines spent occur from a problem with the existing which there is no waste handling nuclear fuel rods as also including storage pools, newly constructed pools or solution; uranium/neptunium target material, other depositories, or a transportation proliferation of nuclear energy blanket subassemblies, pieces of fuel accident during the movement of spent power plants worldwide; and and debris. The average useful life of a fuel rods from their current storage non-proliferation of bomb- fuel assembly is about three years. After location to a more permanent location. grade plutonium, which is a that, the assembly is so heavily contami- component of spent fuel rods nated with fission products that it will WHY ARE SPENT FUEL RODS FROM from nuclear plants. not efficiently support a chain reaction. FOREIGN RESEARCH REACTORS The U.S. government helped finance It must then be transferred to storage A U.S. PROBLEM? a worldwide nuclear industry before pools to cool down for several years Since the 1950s, the U.S. has pro- finding a technical solution for long- before shipment to either a fuel repro- vided HEU to foreign countries for use in term disposal of waste. Since 1989 $23 cessing plant or a final high-level waste research for peaceful applications - on billion has been spent to create the repository. the condition that these countries not nuclear waste problem. Estimates of the HEALTH RISK make bombs with the spent nuclear fuel. total cost of clean-up range from $200 to Marc Pilisuk, a professor in the In 1968, the U.S. also began taking the $600 billion. Upcoming studies may Department of Applied Behavioral spent fuel back. The U.S. began develop-

Countries With Research Reactors Expected to Generate Spent Nuclear Fuel

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain (stored in Scotland), Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zaire Race. Poverhr & the Environment S~rina- Summer 1995 Paae 23

ment of LEU for research reactors to (Norfolk VA; Portsmouth ME; Pearl convert to use of LEU during the ten- reduce the amount of HEU available in Harbor HI; Puget Sound WA) and one year period. The storage site or sites international commerce to prevent prototype reactor site (Kesselring NY) will also be explored-including proliferation of nuclear weapons. In were considered for naval spent nuclear Savannah River, INEL, Hanford, and 1986, the return policy was expanded to fuel. In response to public comment in the others. include LEU of U.S. origin. The return scoping process, two more potential sites While preparing the foreign spent policy for HEU expired in 1988 and in were added: Oak Ridge Reservation in fuel EIS, the DOE was informed that a 1992 for LEU. Until September 1994, no Tennessee and the Nevada Test Site in group of six foreign research reactors shipment of either fuel had been received Nevada. The DOE did not choose a had urgent spent fuel rod problems that since 1988. preferred site in the EIS but the Navy, as a couldn't wait until the EIS was U.S. STRATEGY cooperating agency, identified the INEL finished. According to the DOE, several The DOE is faced with the problem as their preferred site. of these reactors had no option other of storing spent nuclear fuel rods from Currently, approximately 2,700 metric than to rely on the U.S. to accept their both existing U.S. reactors and foreign spent fuel or shut down. Failure of the research reactors. They are again U.S. to assist them could lead to The import and transport of considering a policy of bringing back all charges that the U.S. did not live up to spent fuel originally supplied by the U.S. spent nuclear fuel rods has its obligations under the 1970 Treaty on Since a technology has not yet been strong environmental justice Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. developed to handle spent nuclear fuel To address this problem, DOE implications. rods in the long-term, the DOE is developed an Environmental looking for short-term solutions for the Assessment (EA) of the proposed return spent fuel rods which are currently of spent fuel elements from foreign stored world-wide in pools. The problem research reactors. is urgent because many of the pools are tons of heavy metal from U.S. spent According to the EA, DOE wanted full. nuclear fuel have not been processed. This to bring the elements into the U.S. Instead of looking at the issue of number is likely to increase to 2,800 tons through four potential ports: handling the spent fuel rods as a whole, by the year 2035. Charleston, Hampton Roads, Portland, DOE is issuing a separate EIS to address The EIS discusses management of and Wilmington. Qasimah Boston, the domestic and the foreign problem. In spent nuclear fuel during the next forty associate director of Citizens for Environmental Justice in Savannah GA, I June 1994, the DOE released a draft years. Evidently DOE scientists and I Environmental Impact Report on policy makers believe that in forty years a says that her organization-in Nuclear Spent Fuel Management. This technology will be developed for perma- coordination with the Natural report only addresses the management of nent disposition. Resources Defense Council and the 1 Energy Research Foundation-prepared spent fuel rods at U.S. sites. The DOE is FOREIGN FUEL a response to the EA: they needed more preparing a separate document on The U.S. State Department, the time to understand the EA; the transportation of spent fuel rods from Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the community needed more education international locations, the EIS for Arms Control and Disarmament Agency about the shipments; and workers Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear are urging the DOE to renew acceptance needed more training on how to handle Fuel. of spent fuel rods from foreign reactors the assemblies. Even Governor Carroll DOMESTIC FUEL with U.S.-origin fuel. The State Depart- Campbell (R-SC) agreed that there was Most domestic spent fuel is currently ment indicates that failure to renew no need to take in the shipment. "Let's stored at three primary locations: the acceptance of spent fuel rods could face it," said Campbell, "these allies are Hanford Site in Washington; the Idaho jeopardize negotiations to renew the stable allies, with the capacity to store National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear this material safely. Having it babysat in Idaho; and the Savannah River Site in Weapons. To address this issue, DOE'S in South Carolina, with no long-term South Carolina. Smaller quantities EIS will analyze the environmental issues plan, solves no problems." Judge remain at other locations. Since 1957, related to acceptance of up to 15,000 Mathew Perry ruled in favor of the state spent nuclear fuel from nuclear-powered foreign research reactor spent fuel and issued a restraining order blocking naval vessels and naval reactor proto- elements. The EIS will study acceptance the DOE from shipping fuel rods from types has been transported to MEL. A of both HEU and LEU which would be foreign nuclear reactors to the court order dated June 28, 1993, how- shipped by commercial container ships to Savannah River Site. The DOE ever, now limits the number of ship- ports in the U.S., where it would be appealed the ruling, and on September ments of spent nuclear fuel to Idaho. transferred by truck or rail to a U.S. Therefore, most naval spent nuclear fuel storage site. The policy would remain in 23, 1994, the federal appeals court , granted DOE permission to bring is retained in shipyards. In addition to effect for ten years, with an option for a ashore two freighters of spent nuclear 1 the three main sites, four naval shipyards five-year extension for reactors that I Paae 24 S~rino- Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment fuel rods for storage at the Savannah fish, hunt, gather plants, and pasture fatalities at less than one over the forty- River Site. livestock. The railroad line that goes year period of normal operations. The through the reservation has the highest "one" fatality is "latent" because the ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE derailment rate on any portion of the cancer may take many years to cause Despite President Clinton's February Union Pacific track. The river water is death. This estimate is for incident-free 1994 Executive Order on Environmental the tribes' drinking water. Comments transportation. The evaluated Justice (EJ), the 1994 Programmatic from Elwood Patawa, chairman of the transportation accident scenario with the Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Board of Trustees of CTUIR, appear in largest consequences (a transportation (Domestic) EIS did not include an the DOE Programmatic Scoping Report. accident in an urban area) would lead to analysis of environmental justice Mr. Patawa speaks of four key concerns: fifty-five latent cancer fatalities. DOE impacts. According to DOE spokesper- 1) protection of tribal rights, 2) protec- claims that the probability of this son Brenda Fleming, the absence of this tion and restoration of the environment, occurrence is one in 10 million. analysis was noted in the public com- 3) protection of cultural, religious and All transportation accidents are ments and the final document. The DOE archaeological resources, and 4) supposed to be reported to the Depart- now knows, Fleming reported, it must protection of the reservation, members, ment of Transportation (DOT) or the include EJ in its analysis. and residents from hazards caused by Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The import and transport of spent the transport of radioactive and hazard- But considering the fact that accidents are nuclear fuel rods has strong environmen- ous materials to and from Hanford. often unreported, it is difficult to trust the tal justice implications. Many of the The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have DOE's low risk numbers. For example, proposed ports of entry are surrounded a similar situation with respect to INEL, on March 22,1979, a truck carrying fifty- by low-income communities of color. comments Chairperson Keith Tinno. four drums of uranium crashed, breaking Highway routes pass through low- Their lands, the Fort Hall Indian over twenty drums and spilling thousands income communities of color. Native Reservation, sit forty miles southeast of of pounds of the powder. The DOT's American nations lie along transporta- summary report says that only six drums tion routes. Many of these communities broke. DOT accident report #7070949, are already impacted by other industrial On March 22, 1979, a truck describing a Brisbane CA accident, hazards and freeway emissions. No carrying fifiy-four drums of shows a scratched out number with a "0" cumulative analysis was included in the uranium crashed, breaking handwritten next to it. In fact, four Programmatic EIS to address the risk persons were hospitalized. from more than one hazard in these over twenty drums and communities. Since the site specific spilling thousands of ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS analysis was so weak in the Program- pounds of the powder. The The DOE's low risk numbers and matic EIS, a similarly weak analysis is lack of detailed, site-specific environ- expected in the Foreign Research DOT's summary report says mental impact analysis leads to strong Reactor EIS. that only six drums broke. public distrust of both the Programmatic In the 1980s, West Oakland resi- EIS and the Foreign Research Reactor dents, led by recently deceased activist EIS. One Oakland resident at the Foreign Chappell Hayes, demanded that the Port the INEL and along a major corridor for Research Reactor EIS Scoping Session, of Oakland refuse to import nuclear transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods. Lillian Nurmela, made the following spent fuel rods. Aided by other environ- The tribes feel that INEL should not thoughtful suggestions: mentalists and activists like Saul Bloom, receive, process, and store spent fuel Len Conley, and Janan Apaydin, the waste. 1) stop all shipments of uranium effort was successful. The Port of Likewise, Congresswoman Patsy to foreign research reactors; Oakland passed Resolution 29577 on Mink of Hawai'i, commenting on the June 3, 1986, banning the movement of U.S. proposal to store spent fuel rods at 2) leave the spent fuel on site at spent fuel rods from ocean-going vessels Pearl Harbor, recalls the Navy's track foreign reactors. To protect the to the Port of Oakland. Oakland residents record on handling radioactive materials stockpile from being used for have since voted to make the city a at Pearl Harbor. She cites a 1992 EPA manufacture of bombs, place it nuclear free zone. report showing the Department of under secure international control; Similarly, the highway and rail route Defense has 88 radiologically-contami- for materials sent to Hanford passes nated sites of the 125 listed in Hawai'i. 3) recognize that radioactive through the Umatilla Nation. The entire waste is irreversible. Shipping it Hanford Nuclear Reservation is located RISK OF TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENTS around the world will not make it on lands ceded by the Confederated According to DOE in its disappear, and we have no place Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reserva- Programmatic EIS, the risk of in this country to store it either. It tion (CTUIR) to the U.S. under the transportation accidents for all the cannot be safely burned, stored, Treaty of 1855. CTUIR retains rights to alternatives estimates latent cancer transported, or buried. Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 25

Environmental engineer Nancy J. Nadel is an elected director of the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Existing Spent Nuclears Fuel Locations Married to activist Chappell Hayes for$fteen years prior to his death from pancreatic cancer in 1994, Nancy is also the mother of Sele Nadel-Hayes, age 13. Nadel is founder of the Oakland Quality of Life Coalition and a commissioner on the East Bay Conversion and Reinvest- ment Commission.

REFERENCES A Nuclear Waste Primer, League of Women Voters Education Fund, 1982.

"U.S. Losing the Nuclear Waste War," Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1994. 1995 Inventory (Metric Tons Heavy Metal)a Legend U.S. DOE Foreign Research Reactors Spent Hanford 2,133 Source No. of locations Nuclear Fuel Draft EIS, 1994. Idaho National 289 rn U.S. Department of 8 Engineering Laboratory Energy Facilities Savannah River Site 202 @ Naval Sites 7 Transcript for the Public Scoping Meeting Oak Ridge ReSe~ation 3 for the DOE EIS for the Proposed Policy for Other DOE Facilities 28 @ Special-Case 4 Commercial the Acceptance of U.S. Original Foreign Universities 4 A Domestic Non-DOE 8 Research Reactor Spent Fuel, November 18, Other -16 1993. Total 2,675 @ Urgent Relief 5 Foreign Returns Department of Energy Programmatic Spent (potential port of entry) Nuclear Fuel Management and Idaho Universities 33 National Engineering Laboratory Environ- b 1 Naval sites . State DOE Facilities State mental Restoration and Waste Management Kesselring New York Argonne National Programs Draft EIS, June 1994. Newport News Virginia Laboratory-East Illinois Norfolk Virginia Brookhaven National The Transportation of Radioactive Materials Pearl Harbor Hawaii Laboratory New York in the United States, N. Frank, R. Phillips Portsmouth Maine Hanford Washington Puget Sound Washington ldaho National and J. Rosier; Greenpeace, April 1980. Windsor Connecticut Engineering Laboratory ldaho Los Alamos Matthew Wald, New York Times, September National Laboratory New Mexico 24, 1994. Oak Ridge Reservation Tennessee Sandia National Laboratories New Mexico Savannah River Site South Carolina

a. A metric ton of heavy metal is the unit used throughout this document to indicate the amount of spent nuclear fuel. It correspondsto 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of heavy metal (uranium, plutonium, thorium). b. Name of shipyard or site.

Figure 1. Locations of current spent nuclear fuel generators and storage sites

From DOE Programmatic Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Summary, June 1994 Paoe 26 Sorino - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

Another Broken Promise Another Broken Promise Another Broken Promise

Another Broken Promise

Another Broken Promise Another Broken Promise

By Manuel Pino

In January of 1995, the Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe common practice to lie to its own citizens. As Indian people, Environment (LACSE) was asked to present testimony before we have experienced this practice more than any other race in the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation this hemisphere. The 400-plus broken treaties signed between Experiments. The one-day hearing was conducted in Santa Fe, the U.S. government and Indians are one of the best examples New Mexico, on January 30, 1995. of this practice. They lied to kill our people, they lied to steal Testimony presented at the hearing took me back one our land, they lied when they told us our way of life was hundred years to the late 1800s when heathen and savage. As I sat in Indian people, without their knowl- the hearing I thought to myself, edge, were given small pox-infested Testimony presented at the hearing we have circled this rock before. blankets by the Listening to people from all government. The took me back one hundred svears to lies, theft, and the genocidal extermi- walks of life presenting testimony the late lBooswhen Indian people, nation of Indian people by the U.S. that they had been cheated and government to get what they wanted without their knowledge, were given lied to made me think, "Now they was being revisited at the Santa Fe small pox-infested blankets by the know what it is like to be an hearing. The ideology of the U.S. Indian." Veterans who faithfully U.S. government. government using people on an served their country as patriots experimental basis without their prior were appalled that their country knowledge or informed consent is would use them as experiments. nothing new to Indian people. Almost all the people who The U.S. government used a program called "Operation testified said they had no idea they were being used in Sunshine" in the 1950s to gather soil, water, crops, and even experiments involving radiation. People of all colors at this bones from dead infants to try to learn the extent of worldwide hearing could relate to the small pox blanket scenario of one radioactive fallout from U.S. weapon tests. The samples were hundred years ago. The U.S. government has made it a collected under the cloak of secrecy and through the use of Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 27 elaborate cover stories, according to uninformed of the dangers of uranium actually going to have positive results for testimony presented and documents mining, they put their full faith in the the victims. As the true owners of this released by the Presidential committee. hands of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to land that we have seen destroyed before Civilian testimony included relatives negotiate in their best interest. Forty- our very eyes, we hope and pray to the of prisoners who were incarcerated in the three years later, we are left with Creator that this is not just another 1960s who were given $10 and time off contaminated land, unsafe drinking federal governmental committee that is if they participated in experiments that water, and a growing segment of our full of broken promises. As people of the required injections of radioactive population that is sick and dying of sacred colors, we can only hope that the substances. When the children of cancer. U.S. government, in its commitment to prisoners were born dead or with birth Our testimony included a 1953 letter nuclear weapons and nuclear power, will defects, the response from prisons was from Duncan A. Holaday, an official not ignore this damning evidence, deny similar: they said the prisoners had with the federal Division of Occupa- the truth, mislead our people, and signed releases. What about their wives tional Health, to Allen D. Look, with the jeopardize our health and even life itself. and children? They didn't sign releases. U.S. Bureau of Mines. Holaday states Manuel Pino (Keres) is an environ- Another person presented testimony that that there was a high concentration of mental activist from Acoma Pueblo in his grandfather was injected with radioactive dust in the Jackpile Mine on New Mexico who has worked on ura- radioactive plutonium in a San Francisco the Laguna Reservation - so much that nium mining issues for the past seven- hospital in 1945 without his knowledge. teen years. Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratoy told committee members that Scientists from Los Alamos enthusiasm for discovering the effects of radiation on humans overshadowed any National Laboratory told soul-searching over ethical consider- committee members that ations. One scientist even allowed his enthusiasm for discovering six- and eight-year old children to volunteer to be injected with plutonium the effects of radiation on and radioactive iodine. Los Alamos humans overshadowed any scientists stressed that it was necessary soul-searching over ethical to do some testing to determine how the body processes plutonium. The necessity considerations. One led to injection experiments in 1945-46 scientist even allowed his at the Rochester School of Medicine in six- and eight-year old New York, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, children to volunteer to be and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in injected with plutonium and Tennessee. radioactive iodine. As I sat in the audience listening to horror story after horror story, it made me wonder what the federal government is doing to humans today that we are two minutes of exposure could give a going to find out forty years from now. person the maximum amount they should Indian people throughout history have receive in a day. However, Holaday had minimal participation in the legal stated, "We have not worn respirators in process that has decided our fate. Acts of the mines primarily because we actually Congress, Supreme Court decisions, do not spend many days a year in high treaties, and the U.S. Constitution have concentrations. Also, the psychological used legal strategies to take our land, effect on the miners probably would not water, and natural resources. All this be very good." legal maneuvering was accomplished This letter is just an example of the because Indian nations' assumed the use lies we have had to live with in the thirty of integrity and honesty on the part of years uranium was developed on Laguna the U.S. government. land. In this day and age of militias and When Laguna Pueblo was ap- the Contract "on" America, with all its proached by Anaconda Minerals, anti-environmental legislation pending in Company in 1952 to develop uranium on Congress, makes me wonder if the their lands, the people were not informed Presidential Advisory Committee on of the dangers of radiation. Unaware and Human Radiation Experiments is Paae 28 S~rine- Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment High Hopes: Testimony on Human Radiation Experimentation

By Caroline Cannon

We Inupiat people, with all respect, welcome visitors to the family. He had been born with a disability on his leg. He was community, and to this matter we were taken advantage of our one of these children that was shipped out and adopted by warm welcome. Military researchers exposed the Inupiat another family. He was one of many. people from the Arctic region to radioactive isotopes in experi- There also has been testimony about hunters noticing ments designed to measure the ability of U.S. soldiers from the differences or deformation on the animals, some being sickly lower forty-eight states to survive in the arctic climate. You and unedible. In 1988 an entire whale landed by a whaling must keep in mind that there was a language barrier, limited crew was so terribly ill that it couldn't be eaten. Through tests, information, and little done to overcome known language there was a diagnosis of disease that could have made people barriers. A communication gap was the big problem when the sick if they ate the whale. As far as history goes back, whalers United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) distributed and Elders cannot recall or find any recorded information about radioisotopes in our soil and water using contaminated radioac- a whale being as sick as this. tive soil from Nevada. The experiment occurred at Cape In the spring and summer of 1956 and continuing into Thompson, Alaska, at the Project Chariot site which is thirty- 1957, the United States Army Aeromedical Laboratory four miles from our village of Point Hope. conducted a series of medical experiments on 102 Eskimos and Today we total approximately 700 people, and the majority Indians from the North Slope area and outlying areas. The of our Inupiat people still rely on our subsistance hunting in iodine experiments were designed to study whether Alaska that same Cape Thompson area which Natives had physiological differences was untouched before the AEC disre- that enable them to withstand cold spectfully invaded that land. That area My people want to be assured temperatures better than other people. did and still does provide much for our that there is some kind Of jus- oneex periment involved administering needs: the water that we drink and give tic- for the betrayal they iuHer,the radioactive isotope Iodine-131 in - our children - our future - caribou pill form to test thyroid uptake. Point meat, berries, greens, murre eggs, seals, some taken by Hope area had six male individuals that bearded seals, and walruses which have SOmeOne. The /nupiat people were in this experiment, and to this day been used by the Inupiat people of Point are still waiting for answers, the names of these people have never Hope, Tikigaq, a people who were able been revealed. This makes us think that to survive the harsh climate primarily we haven't been provided with all the through that subsistance hunting. information related to these tests. We have had fifty-four recorded cases of cancer. We find In conclusion, I would like you to ask yourself some this high compared to U.S. statistics. The federal government serious questions and see if you can put yourself in my shoes. I has tried to convince the community that this is all due to our am in the position of understanding that an invasion of personal "life style." In 1988 we had eight individuals who died of freedom and choices was inflicted on my ancestors who did not cancer: our respected leaders, friends, and family members, a realize the truth of what the United States government was loss so severe as to cause chaos and burden to this community capable of doing. I have lived in Point Hope all my life and where pain and grief are suffered by an entire network of eaten the food from the sea and land and drank the water of people, felt for years mentally and physically, and still here Cape Thompson along with all the others. I have to wonder today. about my health, what impacts the poisons in our earth will I myself lost both of my grandparents to cancer. My have through my lifetime - emotionally, physically, and most grandparents had eleven children and four of those died of of all for my children, my grandchildren. My people want to be cancer. My mother last year was diagnosed with cancer, and I assured that there is some kind of justice for the betrayal they had to take her to Seattle, Washington, for medical attention. suffer, some responsibility taken by someone. The Inupiat My grandparents used Cape Thomson as a subsistance area, people are still waiting for answers that make some attempt at along with their children, as did so many others, hunters from human decency. our community of Point Hope. Caroline Cannon's Inupiat name is Nusuqruk. She is the There have been many testimonies regarding miscarriages Coordinator of Project Chariot, working to bring factual and sterilization for both men and women. It has also been information and justice to the Cape ThompsodPoint Hope stated that children were born deformed, and without explana- contaminations, Box 169, Point Hope AK 99766; 907-368- tion in earlier years these children were shipped away, taken 2223. This testimony was presented to the President's Advisory from their parents. Several years ago I had a first cousin who Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in Santa Fe NM, traced his family tree to Point Hope and came back to visit his January 30, 1995. Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 29

An Atomic Bomb Veteran

By William Hodsden planned these exercises so they could gather data, claiming they needed the data to help soldiers during nuclear warfare FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE and "or national defense." Public relations was an unspoken but blatant factor in the Nevada Test Organization program. After test Smoky, ultimately conducted at the Nevada OFFICE OF TEST INFORMATION Test Site on August 31, 1957, the Army told the media that the 1235 South Main Street intent of the test was "to portray to the public the Army at its best. "4 Las Vegas, Nevada Needless to say, thousands of servicemen and civilian August 24, 1957 workers have developed radiation-related health problems, from cancers and leukemias to nervous system disorders and genetic damage. In 1990, after years of political struggling by CAMP DESERT ROCK, NEV . - Can a highly trained atomic veterans and their legal and medical supporters, the soldier think clearly and perform the duties of his fighting landmark Veterans Radiation Exposure Bill was passed to mission efficiently in the shadow of a nuclear bomb's compensate veterans displaying certain designated illnesses. mushroom cloud? Two minutes after a blast with an explo- Yet both the Veterans Administration and the Department of sive force of over 20,000 tons TNT, will his hands tremble Justice have long and devious histories of denying medical as he kneels to field-strip and reassemble his rifle? treatment and financial compensation to servicemen with For the first time since man learned to split the atom, the bomb-related illnesses, and despite the new law and subse- United States Army is prepared to find the answers to these quent additions to it, many obstacles still plague veterans and other unknowns concerning human behavior in nuclear seeking treatment or compensation. warfare, in connection with the shot "Smoky" which will be One third of the military records on GIs - records detonated above Yucca Flat at the Nevada Test Site Wednes- containing documentation critical to veterans seeking federal day, August 28. ' benefits for radiation exposure - were destroyed in a St. Louis fire in 1973. Only 4.5 million folders were salvaged of the 20 The U.S. government began blasting atomic bombs in the million stored in the federal building. U.S. attorneys issued a South Pacific right after World War 11 in what it oficially report documenting that the fire had indeed been set, yet called "atmospheric weapons testing." Between 1946 and charges were never pressed.' 1958, over seventy-jive bombs were exploded into the air - William Hodsden insists that he was present at test Smoky purposefully contaminating American servicemen ordered to in 1957, a forty-eight kiloton atomic bomb four times the size witness the blasts, as well as South Pac$c native islanders and of the bomb that decimated Hiro~hima,~and insists he deserves their homelands. In 1951, most aboveground testing was medical care from the Veterans Administration. The Amy moved to the Nevada Test Site sixty-five miles northeast of Las insists that Hodsden was never exposed to radiation - rather Vegas, where ninety-three nuclear devices were detonated that on August 31,1957, he was locked up in the stockade at directly into the air.2Then in 1962, the Comprehensive Test Fort Lee, Virginia. Hodsden's records are gone. Ban Treaty drove testing underground and caused the govern- -Editor ment to disband its experimentation on military personnel. According to the National Association of Atomic Veterans, during the time of atmospheric testing between 1946 and 1962, t's an awesome sound. About three or four seconds later, more than 400,000 people - U.S. servicemen and contractors Ithe backs of my eyes began to light up. See, I had my to the program - were directly and purposefully exposed to hands covering my eyes and in the back the nervestarted to -radiati~n.~ light up. Then I could feel something - it passed through me. The spoken purpose of these human experiments was to see It stopped my heartbeat. if if troops would be harmed during nuclear warfare. "Stress My knee started to hurt. To bum. I felt a warm sensation in tests" were set up to find out how troops would respond after my knee - a stinging and burning sensation going up inside witnessing a nuclear blast. Would they be able to dismantle a my kneecap. It hurt for me to move. My right hip hurt like hell. r@e? Could they throw a hand grenade? Would they follow Around the rectum it began to feel warm, very warm and a orders? Atomic Energy Commission scientists painstakingly pinprick sensation and around the testes the same sensation. Page 30 Sorino - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment

Then the strangest thing - this is the looking. Then the loudspeaker comes on, I can't move. My neck's hurting, my strangest - when you looked at the and it says: "You have just witnessed heart's palpitating. I guess my eyes were fireball, you'd hear the noise. If you one of the most powerful weapons in the big, too, because I was getting scared. looked up at it-it's weird-a gold world. And it belongs to one of the best So he takes me up to the infirmary. yellowish color, and from the center - damn armies in the world - the United Two or three guys come to the door and it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen - States Army!" look. "Hey what's wrong with you?" the center is like a swirl that's all them The test was over. . . . When they peered out, their damn bright yellows and gold colors in swirls. We went back to Camp Murray - heads were huge, and their eyes had And when I looked up at it, I became and like GIs do, we just hung around the stretched and they were red. This white very aware of the noise. It sounded like barracks, doing nothing. Go to eat, chow dude - he was swollen in the face, and about fifteen freight trains going by. So time, come back, stick around, smoke. his nostrils were big and you see blood we grabbed our ears. When we became My neck was still hurting. running. He said,"Look at this, man! aware of the noise and we felt the My buddy said, "What's wrong?" What's wrong with you?" pressure on our ears, we grabbed our "I can't hardly turn my damn neck. Another black guy came, and he said, heads. And my leg is sore as hell too." "What's wrong?' We stayed there, in that position. I That was Saturday the 3 1st. Sunday I And their faces -I do not think they looked up at the fireball and looked began to stiffen up more. I began getting realized - but their faces looked so down there and see a guy lying uncon- a little nervous. We walked outside the swollen that the cracks had turned red - scious on the ground. I kept checking barracks and sat up on one of the trucks. the eyelids had separated in the comers him, looking at him. I looked back at the and their noses . . . . fireball and kept looking down at him. They put me in another barrack. They Up at the fireball and down at him. had it partitioned off and all the windows Then I felt something on my thigh. A blackened out, and they took all my burning sensation, and I looked down clothes off, set me in the bed with my and saw a piece of dust-it was gray and legs crossed at the ankles. I was all it was on my right thigh. Stuck to it. The naked. A medic used four or five pillows wind was blowing. And that dust particle to prop me up. "Your leg is very stuck there. Then I felt some sort of cut. swollen," he says. "Your hip and your It went into my leg and stopped at the leg is very swollen. We're doing this to back of my thigh and then burned again. keep it from hyperextending." I felt it on the inside. I looked back at my So I'm sitting there naked, and all of leg and the dust particle was gone! a sudden my right leg begins to swell. The strangest damn thing. The Then I start to get nauseous, and then I uniform wasn't burning. There was no was throwing up. I looked down..I was hole down there. If it was a cinder, it secreting - pissing. So he gives me a would've burned a hole and burned the glass of water. skin. But it wasn't that. It was just a "See if you can keep this down." piece of dust - a piece of ash that had Whew! It comes right back up again. cooled off already. And this right leg is swelling. Then it Then I heard someone yelling starts hurting in the groin and all up in William Hodsden as a young man through a loudspeaker: "Goddamn! If the back of my spine, then my neck, and you guys don't get your asses out of I become very weak. them damn trenches, you gonna go to When I got up there, something burned If you ever get sick like that, I swear Leavenworth." me and I went slap! like that. to God you get so weak your mind goes. Then this guy in front kept going "What's wrong with you?" You just go out. Eventually you come back in the trenches and grabbing guys. "I don't know, man." Then I saw a around and you get a little bit of your "Get the hell out of there!" little fluid - a little spot. I pull up my senses back, and you're still pissing, Now when they came out of their pants and look at it. Where I'd hit it, I'd throwing up. You got nausea. trenches, they were about two thousand bust a blister - like the size of a half- One guy would come and hand feet from ground zero. Then they started dollar. He said, "You'd better tell things in from the door. He had some- marching. They marched to the right of somebody about that," he says. "Come thing - a box maybe - and he'd point the tower, turned up toward ground zero, on!" it at me and then go back. and went about one hundred yards We run into the barracks. I remember that every once in a through the ash. Then the guy in the "Hey, sarge, look at this here. He had while a machine was turned on. It front, who's leading them out, saluted. a blister there!" sounded like a camera whining. When- He saluted ground zero. "Don't get excited, don't get ex- ever this happened, the lights would get It's light now. We're still standing, cited!" said the sergeant. a little brighter. During the next four or Race. Poverhr & the Environment -Page 31 five days this went on - the light came bit up in age, and he was a staff sergeant. William Hodsden was hospitalized on, and 1 would hear that whining. This When we was out there in the desert a lot at New York's Harlem Valley State went on one, two, three, four, five days.. of times he'd helped out. Hospital from 1960 to 1965. According Sitting naked. Feet crossed. Swollen. So he said, "Come here. I want to tell to the Army, he is a "schizophrenia-

And blacking out. Getting very weak. you something. You don't have to argue paranoid type." Through the Years he On the eighth or ninth day the pain with them. You know where you been. has ~ufferedfiomtumors of the cervical began to subside - the pain in my You just cool it. 1 thought you had more spine and thigh, blackouts, body pains, groin-and my leg started to go down. I sense than that." and hearing distortions. His children still had the weakness and tiredness, but what he said. ~~~l calm. "1 sufferfiom brain dysfunction, chronic I was gaining more control of myself. thought you had more sense than that." skin sores, red blood disorders, and They let me put my clothes back on. I said, uyou7reright.- soI didn't say anemia. Hodsden has applied to the "All right. You can get up and walk anything more about it. . . . Veterans Administration eight times for around a little bit, but you can't go One day I was called into the Orderly service-connected injuries that, if outside." I remember that. "We can't let Room, and this colonel says, "We've got awarded, would grant him and his you out in the sunlight.". . . a follow-up on you. You've been recorn- childrenfree treatment through the V.A. They let me go back to the barracks mended for a medal, but you can't accept medical care system. Without access to of my company, my buddies. This guy this medal because it would involve his military records, though, he has came into the barracks and said he investigation. This is a top-secret project, been fumed down every time. wanted to talk to me. and if you know what's good for you, The National Association of Atomic "The post commander has said that you'll keep your mouth shut about that Veterans provides support to atomic you are not to say anything once you blister." veterans and their families. They can be leave here - you understand? You are So I didn't get a medal . . . . contdcted at: P.O. Box 4424, Salem MA supposed to keep your mouth shut about I began to get very weak in the legs 019707 508-744-9396. the bum. You could be in a lot of trouble and my muscles would start twitching. ~t This edited version is reprinted from . . .You are to keep your mouth shut." would start in my knees. And the muscles Nuclear Witnesses: Insiders Speak Out, And he mentioned a colonel, and said in my legs got so tired I couldn't stand up. 1981 Leslie J. Freeman, with permis- this colonel was the post commander. I'd have these stupors. Here I was back at sion of the publisher, W.W. Norton & That Monday they put us on trains Fort Lee doing these various duties, but I CO~P~~YJInc. back to Fort Lee. We got to Fort Lee began having these damn stupors. I had to around the middle of September. I sit down. Then I broke out with some remember coming into the company area infections on my right leg. NOTES and some of my black buddies coming Then they got On me. can't 1. Effect of Radiation on Human Health: up to me. nothing. There's something wrong." They Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation. Vol 1. "Hey, man, where you been? didn't say there was something wrong Hearings before the Subcommittee on Heath Well, I wanted to tell them, "Hey, with me. ~h~~ said there was something and the Environment of the Committee on man, you know what happened to me ..." wrong with my personality. "You don't Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the U.S. But the threat was there. Keep your House of Representatives. Serial No. 95-179. want to work' You don't want to do your Washington, D.C.: 24-26 January 1978 and 8, mouth shut. So I got nervous, kind of job. You got a personality disorder." 9, 14,28 February 1978, pp. 62-63. excited. "Man, let me tell you some- The last week of they me 2. Ann Fadiman, "The Downwind People: A thing," I said. "I just witnessed two before a board and saying, "You Thousand Americans Sue for Damage Brought atomic bombs." can't do the job." on by Atomic Fallout," Life, June 1980, p. 32. "Man, why don't you just cut that I said, "Something's wrong with me. I 3. "Story of Nuclear Testing," Atomic Veterms crap out. They don't let black people see can't get settled." Newsletter, September-October 1979, p. 2; no damn atomic bombs!" They gave me a less than honorable Patrick Huyghe and David Konigsberg, rim I said, "That's where I been at." discharge a week later, March 8, 1958 - Legacy of Nuclear Testing," New York Times Magazine, 22 April 1979, p. 70; and John "No, they don't do that. They don't after my full tour of duty ! let nobody see no damn atomic - Berger, "An Atomic Test Case: The Ordeal of I hurt to be Out of hieDuvall," Village Voice, 22 October 1979, specially black people. Man, you crazy?" the army like that. Before I went in I was, ,. 21. One of the guys - he was a big old you I was the in 4, Howard Rosenberg, '

Since the 1950s, with the generation of the first electricity from atomic power, U.S. government officials have been trying to find some way, any way to dispose of the highly irradiated "spent" nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants. In 1991 they thought they'd found the answer: give it to the Indians. This would not be the first time the U.S. government has done its dirty radioactive deeds on indigenous peoples' lands. The Dineh and Pueblo uranium miners, Marshall Islander and Western Shoshone nuclear test down-winders, and the down- stream members of Yakima and Lakota communities among others, suffer death, disease, and destruction of their land as a direct result of U.S. policy. This time around, offering sweet talk and sweeter money deals, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Waste Negotiator David Leroy was able to convince seventeen tribal councils and four non-Indian county governments to take $100,000 grants to study the possibility of becoming a volun- teer host for a Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facility. The Waste Negotiator was fond of quoting the famous Duwarnish leader Sealth (Seattle) and praising Native Ameri- cans as "natural earth stewards." Approaching tribal organiza- tions such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), the DOE sponsored "educational" workshops and gave out millions of dollars in grants. Both NCAI and CERT still depend on DOE funding. Applicants for funding were told the MRS was to be a temporary facility, used for no more than fifty years, until a permanent waste repository could be built. These grants were to be followed with Phase I1 study grants of $250,000 and $1.3 million respectively, culminating in an unspecified (but rumored to be very large) amount to be offered to the govern- mental body brave or foolish enough to take the waste. The non-Indian Phase I grantees were quickly eliminated, "Freedom Burning, " ac~ylicon canvas, 1992 by Andrew Kong due to threats and recall elections from angry constituents, or Knight. The artist writes: "TIie b~r.reof the ri~~ishroor?zcloud governors' vetoes. This left only the Native American tribal represents the destructiorz of the Native Americans ' dream to councils. live peacefully or? tlzeir own land. . . . Tlie Iwo Jimn soldiers The U.S. government was particularly interested in Native [are] ironic, since post- World W~lrII wars have been more American tribal lands for three reasons: they are some of the often about protectirzg the U.S. 's l7osition as a superpower. . . . most isolated in North America; the people living there are at the expense of botlz U.S. nrzd rzorl- U.S. lives. " some of the most impoverished and politically vulnerable; and tribal governments have a claim to national sovereignty, partially recognized by the U.S. courts. It was sovereignty that made the tribal councils most end run around state and local laws. attractive. State governments have, in recent years, fought Given the financial state of much of Indian Country, it is ferociously against any plan for sticking their citizens with the significant that only seventeen tribal governments, out of nation's high-level radioactive waste. Tribal councils, if nearly 560 federally-recognized tribes, decided to apply for the recognized as representing sovereign nations, could provide an money. Also significant was the fact that the tribes accepting Race, Poverty & the Environment S~rina- Summer 1995 Page 33 these grants had virtually no experience dealing with radia- tion. Nuclear Free In January 1992, Grace Native American Nations Thorpe was enjoying a comfort- able retirement volunteering for her tribe, the Sac and Fox NFZ DATE TYPE Nation of Oklahoma, as a health Chickaloon Village (Alaska) Village Council Law commissioner and part-time Devil's Lake Dakota (South Dakota) Tribal Council Law tribal judge, and learning basketry and pottery. She was Flathead (Montana) 7-13-84 Tribal Council Resolution retired, that is, until she discov- Kaw (Oklahoma) 3-13-94 Executive Council Resolution ered that her tribe was one of the Kenaitze (Alaska) 12- 13-93 Tribal Council Resolution seventeen applying for funding through the U.S. government's Kickapoo (Kansas) 11-24-93 Tribal Council Resolution MRS program. She researched Pawnee (Oklahoma) 3-94 Tribal Council Resolution the issue, discovered that her Ponca (Oklahoma) 3-11-94 Business Committee Resolution initial reaction to oppose the Prairie Island Dakota (Minnesota) 8-1 8-94 Tribal Council Resolution program was warranted, and set about successfully challenging Red Cliff Band Lake Superior 1-3-94 Tribal Council Law the grant at a special meeting of Chippewa (Wisconsin) the Sac and Fox Tribe. Tribal Sac and Fox (Oklahoma) 8-28-93 Tribal Council Law members voted 70-5 to return Shoalwater (Washington) 5-6-94 Tribal Meeting Law the $100,000 grant. White Mountain Apache (Arizona) 9-9-93 Tribal Council Law Suddenly she found herself swept up into a new unpaid "career," speaking throughout *U.S. state names for identification purposes only. the country against the U.S. government's MRS scheme. - Thorpe, a daughter of legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, was not unfamiliar with political action. She participated in their reservation on the Mississippi River The Nuclear Free Indian Lands the occupation of Alcatraz during the near Red Wing MN, less than a mile Project has succeeded in encouraging the '70s. As an aide to former Senator James from the tribe's child care center. The formation of twelve new NFZs since that Abourezk (D-SD), she helped shepherd DOE refused to fund the Prairie Island time. The newly-declared Nuclear Free legislation through Congress that allows Dakota in the next round of grants. Nations joined the Flathead Nation of Indian Nations first chance at surplus As the list of tribes receiving MRS Salish and Kootenai, which has been federal lands. money shrank, opponents got more NFZ since1984. In her travels, she discovered that organized. In March of 1993, Thorpe, Even more significantly, Thorpe and Native American activists throughout the Slockish, and Campbell formed a new Margret Carde of Concerned Citizens for country had, like her, awakened to this organization: the National Environmen- Nuclear Safety of Santa Fe NM con- plan for nuclear waste storage. People tal Coalition of Native Americans vinced Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) like Wilbur Slockish, who served time in (NECONA). Joining them on the board to introduce a successful amendment jail for salmon fishing in order to re- were Vivienne Caron-Jake (Paiute), cutting all funding for MRS study grants. establish Columbia River fishing rights, Lance Hughes (Creek), Lila Bird By the beginning of 1994, the MRS understood what a bad deal the MRS (Keres), Phil Harrison (Dink), Virginia program was on the ropes. All but four would be for their tribes. Soon Slockish Sanchez (Western Shoshone), and tribal governements had withdrawn or and others saw to it that the Yakima tribe Rufina Laws (Mescalero Apache). been removed from the MRS list - and returned their MRS money as well. In June of 1993, NECONA made an federal funding was far from certain. Farmer and activist Joseph Campbell alliance with Nuclear Free America to But, as often seems to happen, before of the Prairie Island Dakota Community promote the declaration of Nuclear Free environmental activists could finish off approached the MRS program differ- Zones (NFZs) on Native American the MRS program, it changed form. ently. He and his tribe took the initial lands. At the Indigenous Environmental Northern States Power (NSP) was $100,000 and used it to oppose the Network Conference that same month, desperate. The Minnesota-based utility creation of a "dry-cask storage facility" Native American activists from through- was facing a court-ordered requirement for irradiated fuel at the Prairie Island out the continent unanimously endorsed to move their irradiated fuel or shut Nuclear Power Plant. The plant borders the Nuclear Free Zone proposal. down the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Page 34 Sorino - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

Plant. In March, they announced a private deal they, and a new consortium A Premonition Fuels of over 30 nuclear utilites, were working out with the Mescalero Apache Nation. Under the plan, the Mescaleros would Mescalero Apache Struggle take their high-level radioactive waste at a new, privately-run MRS. (See next By Rufina Marie Laws article: "A Premonition Fuels Mescalero Apache Struggle. ") learn that word?" She answered, "The Some analysts believe the nuclear tribal council said they're going to build industry looked to the private Mescalero a nuclear waste dump." option as a diversion. The real effort will I couldn't believe it! I said, "Mom, be revealed when the nuclear industry no one in the world wants nuclear waste. lobbies the Republican-controlled What on Earth is happening?" She said, Congress to reopen the U.S. Nuclear "That's all we know." Waste Policy Act. The apparent goal is I returned to work and would think to deal with the nuclear waste storage about what I had heard. Then several crisis at Midwest reactors by making the days later I made the connection with the legal changes necessary to begin storing vision and thought, "That's what it irradiated fuel immediately at the Nevada meant!" It was at that point I began Test Site. making plans to come back home to the The Test Site is located next to reservation. I came back because of the DOE'S proposed permanent disposal site vision. In July 1992, the morning I at Yucca Mountain and both facilities stepped out to start the petition drive, I are, once again, on Indian land. thought, "My vision is the only thing The Treaty of Ruby Valley, signed by I had a vision. It was a vision in that's going to keep me going. I don't President Ulysses S. Grant, recognizes technicolor of one of the most beautiful know what the future holds, but I do the Western Shoshone Nation's title to spots on the reservation. Tall, old pine know nothing will ever be the same the core of their traditional lands, Newe and oak trees with high meadow grass. It again." Segobia, a long strip of land extending has a spring that comes out of the I drew up a resolution in opposition from southern Idaho through Nevada and mountain. In my vision the spring water to the nuclear waste dump, which was into southern California. In 1979 the U.S. disappeared, and in its place inidescent, supported by a petition. Two days before government offered the Western contaminated water slowly flowed with I started the petition drive, I showed the Shoshone Tribal Council, and the the inidescent colors mixing and resolution to my Mom. She read it and councils of the several separate reserva- remixing. The liquid material was heavy said, "Don't do this. You don't know tions where Western Shoshone now live, and hot, instantly killing everything in its what kind of trouble you're going to get $21 million as payment for violating path. into. The tribal council wants this, and their treaty and taking their land. The I was panic-stricken. I was trying to not too many people can stop them if money was refused. figure it out and started praying; that's they want something. You're going to Native American and other environ- when I woke myself up because I was put the entire family in jeopardy. Don't mental activists from throughout the praying aloud, I was almost shouting. I do this." country are meeting now to strategize woke up, but the vision continued. I saw I was real disappointed because my how to best support the Western the rest of it - and the rest of it is what I Mom is the most important person in my Shoshone and the non-Indian population am waiting for. life as far as training me in my moral of Nevada. The Western Shoshone, along That occured in July of 1990 while I values and to know that as spiritual and with the State of Nevada, have been was living in another state. I woke as moral as she is, she still couldn't let fighting hard for years to avoid being myself up at 3:30 in the morning. I was me do this with her blessing. I was designated the nation's nuclear dumping shaking and crying hysterically, and I supposed to start the petition drive on ground. thought, "That's so strange. What in the Thursday; instead I spent that day in Chuck Johnson is executive director world does it mean?" thought. I wondered, "Is my Mom really of Nuclear Free America, 2852 High St., I came home for a visit in July, 1991. right? Am I going to do something I'll Salem OR 97302; 503-364-2661. A I was in the kitchen talking with Mom, regret?' I'd heard of things happening to longer version of this article was just happy to be home in the kitchen other people on the reservation who originally published in NFA's quarterly while she was cooking and telling me stood up against the administration, and newsletter, The New Abolitionist (Fall things. That's when she asked me, they are no longer on the reservation. I 1994). "Rufina, what does 'nuclear waste' thought, this is more important to the mean?" said, "Mom! Where did you tribal council than anything they've ever Race, Poverty & the Environment S~rina- Summer 1995 Paoe 35

wanted - and yet it's the most danger- American governments and their syndrome, to name a few, have become ous thing to our tribal history and genetic resources - and legally exclude the will an everyday part of life on our reserva- pool. How can I face that generation in and voice of Native American people. tion. the future who will be paying the price Today Native Americans are left with I've spoken to people in Washington for our inaction to halt the waste, when entrenched power machines. Revisions DC who are pursuing their dreams and that generation asks, "Why?'How will I must be approved by the BIA and the careers on the state or federal level and answer? Later that day I decided to go Department of Interior, and it appears are following their version of the ahead and make my stand, to follow my that the revisions made so far have been "pursuit of happiness." They've said, vision. "We can't touch this. There's nothing we I came back to my Mom five days can do about it. When you get elected later, and I said, "I reserved three spots Many tribes naively come back and see us. We're sorry about on the first page for you, my Dad, and it." my brother." She looked at it and said, accepted that ill-conceived YOU'RE SORRY ABOUT IT! We "If this means that much to you, we'll constitution which allows have people here who are dying as a sign it." petty, greedy, self-serving result of this situation, people who are For two weeks, the resolution and treading water until they give up and are petition were circulated around the politicians a way to gain shattered. I'm saying that this unjust reservation for people to sign. People complete control of Native legallpolitical set-up has shattered untold read it, and if they agreed they were American governments and numbers of people's lives on Native given the opportunity to sign. Many American reservations - and now it is signed. Quite a few people said, "I'm their resources - and legally threatening to bring nuclear waste into glad for what you are doing, and we wish exclude the will and voice of New Mexico. We were elated for the you all the luck in the world, but we're Native American people. Bingaman amendment, but now the not going to sign it." Others explained tribal government is trying to bring in why: 'There's no way I'm going to sign "privatized" nuclear waste. the petition," they said. "If my name This is my home. My ancestors go appears on that petition, I'm going to approved without question and with back centuries before 1492. The lose my job, my wife is going to lose her complete disregard for their debilitiating Mescalero Apache Reservation is a job, and we're going to lose everything impact upon representative tribal living symbol of the entire Southwestern we have." government. This is an example of how lands which my ancestors loved. They The problem here on the reservation Native Americans are viewed as a part of prayed for it. They fought for it. They is that we have an autocratic form of U.S. foreign policy, and historically that died for it. We are commanded by our government. All the power is placed in policy has supported dictatorial power. heritage as Mescalero Apache people to the president. In the final analysis, his The foundation of this government is maintain the purity of our sacred legacy. word is law. The strata on the reservation found in the election code. It allows an It is our duty to protect this precious gift is skewed. The first class is given to the election board made up of eligible voting which has been handed down through tribal president himself. The second class members. The board is appointed by the the ages. is granted to the tribal council. The tribal president. Elections and referen- Nuclear waste, uranium mining, people here on the reservation are third dums are held using ballot sheets, not enriched uranium, the Cold War, class citizens. This is 1995, and 99% of voting machines. Pencils are used to plutonium, nuclear industry, the fuel the Native Americans in America are mark one's choices on the ballot. At the cycle: these things translate into custo- still left without working "representative end of the day, the ballot sheets are dial care for an eternity. democracy !" tallied in complete seclusion by the I feel a great spiritual battle is taking This set-up was established in 1934 board members. Small wonder why we place. I truly believe that if there is by the Indian Reorganization Act in what have retained the same tribal president anything that's going to solve the nuclear I call the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) for over three decades. problem, it will be the inclusion of the "cookie-cutter" approach to tribal This is an unjust legal system that part of humanity that has been ignored government. That form of government is was conceived by the U.S. government since the splitting of the atom. The key is not traditional; it is farcical. When that and introduced and implemented by the to clearly and publicly include the first tribal constitution was presented to BIA. This unjust legal government spiritual side of ourselves, not just the the tribal body and its traditional leaders, which was forced upon the Apache science-and-technology side of our- all of the people's power was placed in people is the main force behind the selves. the proposed tribal Business Committee. destruction of the traditional social fabric Long before this mineral called Many tribes naively accepted that ill- of our Apache culture. In destroying uranium was discovered, the Native conceived constitution which allows most of the traditional culture, problems Americans and Aboriginal people knew petty, greedy, self-serving politicians a like addictions, chronic welfare and the awesome powers held within those way to gain complete control of Native unemployment, alcoholism, fetal alcohol uranium-filled lands. They treated the Paae 36 S~rina- Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

lands and everything surrounding the lands with great respect. Within the life of the community, traditional ceremonies were the way of life; the lives of the people, daily prayers were humbly offered to the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit was placed first and last in everything. The Great Spirit was sought and acknowledged each day for untold generations. Modern civilization never thought twice of sacredness. Have we learned anything from this lesson? Ours is the first generation which will be handing a future to the next generation that bears the gigantic slash of our dependence upon uranium. The solution to the problem will partially be found in using the skills and knowledge available in the fields of science and technology. I believe that an integral portion in the solution also lies within each one of us. Let's not lose this precious opportunity. We must humbly seek, include, and acknowledge the power of the Great Spirit. If we as a species cannot bring ourselves to honor this relationship which has been ignored for so long, then the chance we have left will be null and void. Then what I heard, felt, and NEW MEXICO saw in that terrifying nightmare of a vision in 1990 will become reality. On January 31, 1995, in a historic tribal referendum, the Mescalero Apache people voted 490-362 to refuse the "privatized" nuclear waste of Northern States Power. Proponents of the dump forced a second vote in which the project passed, 593-372. The scheduled opening date is 2002. Opponents are now looking to legal and regulatory strategies to stop it. Rufina Marie Laws (Mescalero Apache) holds a Masters degree in education from Arizona State Univer- sity. She is a long-time activist and ran for President of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in 1993. To learn more about the Mescalero struggle, contact: Humans Against Nuclear Waste Dumps, P.O. Box 2170. Ruidoso NM 88345. This article is based on interviews with Laws by Race, Poverty and the Environment and by Beth Enson, pub- lished in The Workbook,, Southwest Research and Information Center, P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque NM 87106, $12/yr.; Winter, 1993.

0 Miles 40 Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 37 Who Here Will Begin This Story?

By Herman Agoyo I watched my five-year old grandson, Jordan, playing with harmed us by the awful problems of pollution and defilement his friends at the Picuris Pueblo Feast days last week as I began caused in handling and disposing of the radioactive materials to think about what to say to you here this evening. I felt that dumped onto and into Mother Earth. my grandson and your youngest children and grandchildren The most important truth about Los Alamos National hold the key to what we are here for this weekend. I believe Laboratory is that it has always been and still is a secret; a that for us to understand why we are here and what we must do center whose work has always been kept utterly shrouded from is for us to have a heartfelt vision that we can share with our the view of the world; a place with no public memory. What do children - to instill in them a memory and a meaning of this our children know of the Laboratory and what do they care? situation that we have lived through, that will live in them And if they do not know and do not care because it's just forever, and guide their jouney into the future. another "adult problem," that is the more reason for them to be As I watched my grandchild, the memory of my grandfa- indifferent and reject our ways. Then who is left to understand ther came to me. When I was a young boy my grandfather told and care? me, "That place in the mountains is a blessing." I was very familiar with "The Hill" as it was known in those early years, because my aunt and uncle lived and worked there. They This work, which started out to harness an frequently arranged "passes" for family members to visit "The unimaginable power, has in fact harmed Hill." I interpreted grandpa's statement to mean "The Hill" meant jobs, education, and new opportunities. human beings and the planet beyond any It has been nearly fifty years, and as my grandfather and the ca/cu/ation. years have passed, as Los Alamos National Laboratory has carved its place into the people and the land of New Mexico, a different understanding grips us. What shall I tell my grand- son? As grown-ups, our memory of Los Alamos National The promise of jobs and development has not truly ben- Laboratory is embedded in those specific events where we had efited us. Yes, people weren't as hungry as before, some were to act to protect or save our people and our sacred lands from able to buy cars and trucks, but for the most part, the poor the eternal effects of nuclear detonation experiments, deadly people, Indians, and Spanish were and still are at the bottom of wastes, the proposed construction of the 345KV Ojo Line the work ladder where advanced science and the highest Extension, and other ways in which the expansion of the technology positions are rewarded for the very few. The vision Laboratory "science" spilled over into our lives, our communi- of "education" has also been an elusive entitlement. Approxi- ties, our shared destinies. mately 30 percent of our young people do not finish high I speak of this old legacy because it is the way that so many school and the majority who do graduate end up with an 8th of us have grown up, the way we have thought about fixing the grade level education, and consequently they are derailed in so problem. For these fifty years have been a period where many many preventable and cruel ways from the best technical and of our worst human traits - ignorance, racism, unbridled leadership opportunities. Worse, our children are never power, defilement of the land - have dominated our relation- systematically taught the most important and complex truths ships. What is so disturbing is that, in looking backwards, it is about the world they live in, truths that are needed to instill a easy to understand why the government, the scientists, and the sense of clear purpose and decision-making confidence in our community-at-large have battled, each seeking its influences or human society. protection from the other, each not really knowing the whole The "opportunities7' have also turned to ashes. We have picture, the full measure or the consequences of what was slowly realized that this work which started out to harness an being developed or handled, and what was in our common unimaginable power has in fact harmed human beings and the interest. Meeting by meeting, study by study, problem by planet beyond any calculation. It has harmed us all by the problem, conflict by conflict -usually involving only a tiny sickness, death, and destruction that has been the ultimate fraction of the community, often hidden from public view - product of this work. It has harmed us by the nightmare fear we invested years of struggle in our efforts to establish a instilled in the hearts and minds of all the world's peoples human understanding of how to live side by side with our about nuclear war and radiation "accidents." It has violated and different ways. Page 38 Spring - Summer 1995 kace, Poverty & the Environment

What is so striking to me is how few common interest, and love for each other people really appreciate the importance and the planet. My grandson and my grand- of what we have learned over these past Let us make a commitment here, this father count on me. Yours decades. We have begun to talk about a weekend, to mount a sharing of all stories, cleansing here on these grounds, a first to the youth in our communities, and count on you- Let us form cleansing that will last more than then increase the circle of participation the circle fogether. seventy-five years. Who will begin this among all the children in our state and work? Who will be alive to give continu- country. If the children understand what ity as it nears its conclusion? I hope my we have done here, if the children hear grandson will be a guardian and con- our passionate plea for their active tributor to this huge human challenge. participation in all aspects of how we are So the question that I ask is: how shall to move forward together with this land we tell our children the story of Los that belongs to their children's children's Alamos National Laboratory, both the children, we will have begun the most heroic adventures, the genius search into important miracle of all. Memory and the unknown, and all the nightmares that meaning go hand in hand. we now begin to know about, the truth as Who here will begin this storytelling it unfolded, the knowledge of what we with the Indian tribes? Let us call together people, neighbors, and community did our best storytellers, our most passionate about LANL 2000 and beyond? Early teachers, and our most creative media this week, we learned that the Japanese artists to this sustained work as the leadership who were children at the start beginning of the true cleansing that we of World War I1 apologized to the world must perform. for their country's inhumanity. They My grandson and my grandfather learned the truth, faced up to it, and had count on me. Yours count on you. Let us the courage to apologize. form the circle together. What moves me today is the deep Herman Agoyo (Tewa) has served as belief that we are entering a new time, a chair of the All Indian Pueblo Council, new century, and a new understanding. executive director of Eight Northern The epoch of modem war and the Indian Pueblo Council, and tribal national security state is moving into its administrator of Okay Owingeh (Sun Juan late, late afternoon. The world's people Pueblo). This speech received a standing will no longer tolerate, nor can we ovation in 1993 at the "LANL 2000: The afford, the costs of war and rampant Role of the National Laboratory in the inhumanity. Let us not delude ourselves 21st Century" conference in Las Vegas by thinking that the fall of mighty Russia NM. was the result of star wars or our military and scientific superiority. Russia fell because the people were fed up with their form of government, and mind you, modern Russia collapsed without an all- out bloody revolution. We must open our eyes to a way to find a refreshing and energetic solution. This evening, I ask you to look at an opportunity that can bring us all together through our chil- dren. If we turn to our children as the source of memory, the repository of what we know as the truth, as the sources of how we are to gather together to cleanse Mother Earth and join to transcend the experience of the last fifty years, I believe we will have a way to transform ourselves. The old way will be hard to break, change will come slowly. A new generation will have to be taught a new way of harmony, mutual respect, Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 39 The Declaration of Salzburg

THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING the natural world; Having met in Salzburg, Austria, from 13 September to 18 Solemnly declares: September 1992; I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES Having heard testimony concerning the environmental, 1. The natural world, in its richness and complexity, is the cultural, spiritual, physiological, and economic impact of the foundation of all life. use of radioactive substances from all regions of the world; 2. All peoples and individuals have the fundamental right of a Convinced of the inherently destructive nature of all phases safe and healthy environment and the corresponding duty to of the nuclear chain and that nuclear contamination is a threat maintain the integrity of the natural world. to all peoples and environments irrespective of political 3. Each generation bears the obligation of effective stewardship boundaries; for the benefit of future generations of all living beings. Acutely aware that indigenous peoples have suffered particularly devastating consequences from the extraction and 11. THEP ROCESS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT utilization of nuclear substances; Exploitation, Mining and Processing Reaffirming that the survival of indigenous peoples 4. The mining and processing of uranium and other radioactive requires respect for their rights of self-determination and to minerals result in the contamination and degradation of large territorial and environmental integrity; ecosystems. Observing that the spiritual and cultural values of indig- 5. Radioactivity and chemical pollutants contained in tailings enous peoples in their relationship with the natural world offer are spread by the flow of ground and surface waters and by a perspective capable of transforming prevailing destructive wind currents. materialistic attitudes and practices; 6. Inhabitants of affected areas risk immediate and lasting Recalling that the disastrous impact of nuclear weapons health and genetic consequences from exposure to radioactive testing on indigenous and other land-based peoples in such substances. Miners are exposed to particularly intensified places as Nevada, Bikini and Eniwetok, Tahiti, Maralinga, and levels of radiation. Central Asia; Military Uses Deeply moved by the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which marked the opening of the nuclear era; 7. Over time, nuclear weapons testing has produced atmo- Alarmed by the experience of Chernobyl and Three Mile spheric fallout, contamination of land and sea areas, forced Island; removal of peoples, cultural disintegration, and a range of Convinced that there is no completely safe technology for adverse health consequences, in particular, cancer and threats the containment of radioactive substances; to genetic inheritance. Dismayed by distorted economic values and priorities, 8. The development of thermonuclear weapons involves the including inappropriate consumption patterns, which threaten a production of large quantities of fission products and pluto- sustainable future; nium, the most toxic substance known; plutonium persists in Apprehensive of the fate of future generations confronted the environment for up to hundreds of thousands of years. with the intractable consequences of nuclear development; Nuclear Power Generation Determined to end the danger posed by the entire nuclear 9. Nuclear power facilities, whether civilian or military, chain and to ensure an enduring harmonious relationship with produce emissions of radiation and inevitably pose serious and Page 40 S~rina- Summer 1995 Race. Povertv 8 the Environment

unacceptable risks, including transporta- present and future generations. past and existing uses of radioactive tion spills, theft of radioactive materials, 17. Governments, communities, materials; accidents that spread contamination over organizations, and individuals have a 3. To ensure that liability for social and vast regions, and the catastrophic effects duty to ensure that energy is produced environmental damage resulting from the of a reactor core meltdown. and used in a clean, safe, and efficient nuclear chain is jointly born by those 10. No nuclear power plant has ever manner; the global economy cannot controlling all its phases; been safely and completely decommis- support inappropriate energy consump- 4. The lands of indigenous and other sioned. The ultimate environmental and tion patterns. land-based peoples, contaminated by economic costs of decommissioning 18. The view that unlimited economic nuclear development, must immediately remain incalculable. growth can be sustained on a habitable be rehabilitated to as near as practicable Nuclear Waste planet is fallacious and constitutes a to their precontaminate state; 1 1. No safe method for the disposal of significant threat to future generations. 5. To fundamentally alter existing medium- and high-level nuclear wastes 19. Current international policies economic policies to ensure ecological has been devised. Solutions offered can perpetuate unjust economic disparities sustainability; energy development must only provide for storage or dumping, which cause developing countries to shift to the use of safe and renewable which carry an ever-present risk of lethal adopt destructive environmental resources; contamination. The problem is simply practices such as uranium mining, 6. To provide assistance, including thrust onto future generations. nuclear power generation, and the financial resources where necessary, for 12. The territories of indigenous peoples, provision of dumping sites for radioac- the development of alternative energy impoverished developing countries, and tive waste. Sharing safe and efficient programs in countries which utilize the global commons are frequently energy technologies is essential for nuclear power; targeted for storage or dumping of waste, equitable and environmentally sound 7. To ensure that any economic analyses thus compounding international injus- economics in those countries. of the nuclear chain fully account for the tice. 20. The Precautionary Principle, as entire ecological and social impact of 111. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES recognized by the international commu- radioactivity; nity, requires that the safety of poten- 13. Vast quantities of the world's 8. To provide peoples, communities, and tially dangerous activities must be uranium resources are located and individuals with complete information conclusively established prior to taking extracted in the territories of indigenous about the dangers of radioactive sub- any measures their peoples; these territories are often stances in all phases of the nuclear chain; tion. In the case of the nuclear chain, exploited for weapons testing and the 9. To support and promote community any reasonable application of the storage or dumping of nuclear sub- activities aimed at ending the use of Precautionary Principle would require stances. In violation of their right to self- radioactive substances; that uranium and other radioactive determination, indigenous peoples have 10. To promote international and national minerals remain undisturbed in their been victimized by dispossession and natural location. standards, policies, and practices de- forced removals, direct contamination, signed" to ensure that: and the desecration of sacred sites. V. RECOMMENDATIONS a) radioactive minerals are no longer 14. The dispossession of peoples and the The World Uranium Hearing calls exploited; and destruction of the natural ecology that upon governments and, within their b) existing radioactive products of the result from the nuclear chain imperil the respective spheres of responsibility and nuclear chain are dealt with according to social cohesion and cultural, material, competence, transnational and other the safest technology irrespective of and spiritual relationship with the natural corporations, organizations, communi- monetary cost; world upon which indigenous survival ties and individuals: 1 1. To immediately cease production and depends. 1. To recognize and respect the inherent testing of nuclear weapons; the process of 15. In order to defend themselves against right to self-determination of indigenous global nuclear disarmament must the physical and cultural genocide that people, including their right to deter- continue to completion. mine and control, without external results from nuclear development, The World Uranium Hearing took interference, the nuclear process as it indigenous peoples must be able to place in Salzburg, Austria, on September freely exercise their right to determine affects their societies and territo"~;

- p 13-19, 1992. This document was pre- and control, without external interfer- 2. provide for peoples, sent& to the UnitedNations in 1993. It is ence, all matters relating to their societ- communities, and individuals victimized available in a book-transcript ofthe ies and territories. by the mining of radioactive minerals, hearing, poison ~ir~,sacred ~~~~h,f~~~ IV. ECONOMIC POLICY the use of Or the - the World Uranium Society, 39 W. 14th 16. The monetary price of nuclear energy Or waste. St. #206, New Yo&, NY 10011; 212-633- make every conceivable effort to does not reflect the cost of damage to the AM6"" . ". alleviate risks and damage caused by biosphere and the profound risks to Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 4 1

Only Justice Can Stop A Curse By Alice Walker Anti-Nuke Rally betray them and cause them loss of power, of gold and of Grace Cathedral, Sun Francisco CA silver, and that their enemies shall smite them until they beg for March 16, 1982 mercy which shall not be given them. Ipray that their tongues To the Man God: 0 Great One, I have been sorely tried by shall forget how to speak in sweet words, and that it shall be my enemies and have been blasphemed and lied against. My paralyzed and that all about them shall be desolation, pesti- good thoughts and my honest actions have been turned to bad lence and death. 0 Man God, I ask you for all these things actions and dishonest ideas. My home has been ill-treated. My because they have dragged me in the dust and destroyed my dear ones have been backbitten and their virtue questioned. 0 good name; broken my heart and caused me to curse the day Man God, I beg that this that I ask for my enemies shall come that I was born. So be it. to pass: This is a curse-prayer that Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and That the South wind shall scorch their bodies and make anthropologist, collected in the 1920s. And by then it was them wither and shall not be tempered to them. That the North already old. I have often marvelled at it. At the precision of its wind shall freeze their blood and numb their muscles and that anger, the absoluteness of its bitterness. Its utter hatred of the it shall not be tempered to them. That the West wind shall blow enemies it condemns. It is a curse-prayer by a person who away their life's breath and will not leave their hair grow, and would readily, almost happily, commit suicide, if it meant her that theirfingemails shall fall off and their bones shall enemies would also die. Horribly. crumble. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, I am sure it was a woman who first prayed this curse. And I their sight shall fall and their seed dry up so that they shall not see her - Black, Yellow, Brown or Red, "aboriginal" as the multiply. Ancients are called in South Africa and Australia and other I ask that their fathers and mothers from their furthest lands invaded, expropriated and occupied by whites. And I generation will not intercede for them before the great throne, think, with astonishment, that the curse-prayer of this colored and that the wombs of their women shall not bear fruit except woman - starved, enslaved, humiliated and carelessly for strangers, and that they shall become extinct. I pray that trampled to death - over centuries, is coming to pass. Indeed, the children who may come shall be weak of mind andpara- like ancient peoples of color the world over, who have tried to lyzed of limb and that they themselves shall curse them in their tell the white man of the destruction that would inevitably tum for ever tuming the breath of life into their bodies. I pray follow from the uranium mining plunder of their sacred lands, that disease and death shall be forever with them and that their this woman -along with millions and billions of obliterated worldly goods shall not prosper, and that their crops shall not sisters, brothers and children - seems to have put such multiply and that their cows, their sheep, and their hogs and enormous energy into her hope for revenge, that her curse all the living beasts shall die of starvation and thirst. Ipray seems close to bringing it about. And it is this hope for that their house shall be unroofed and that the rain, the revenge, finally, I think, that is at the heart of People of Color's thunder and lightening shall find the innermost recesses of resistence to any anti-nuclear movement. their home and that the foundation shall crumble and the In any case, this has been my own problem. floods tear it asunder. I pray that the sun shall not shed its rays When I have considered the enormity of the white man's on them in benevolence, but instead it shall beat down on them crimes against humainty. Against women. Against every living and bum them and destroy them. Ipray that the moon shall not person of color. Against the poor. Against my mother and my give them peace, but instead shall deride them and decry them father. Against me . . . . When I consider that at this very and cause their minds to shrivel. lpray that their friends shall moment he wishes to take away what little freedom I have died Page 42 Sorino - Summer 1995 Race, Poverty & the Environment

litter not just on the moon, but on every- I think, with astonishment, thing they can reach. With this knowledge it that the curse-prayer of this If we have any true love for the stars, becomes increasingly planets, the rest of Creation, we must do colored woman - starved, everything we can to keep white man difficult to embrace the enslaved, humiliated and away from them. They who have ap- thought of extinction carelessly trampled to death pointed themselves our representatives to purely for the assumed the rest of the universe. They who have - over centuries, is coming never met any new creature without satisfaction of - from the to pass. exploiting, abusing and destroying it. grave -achieving revenge. They who say we poor and colored and female and elderly blight neighborhoods, while they blight worlds. to achieve., through denial of my right to What they have done to the Old, they home - though for centuries white vote . . . . Has already taken away will do to the New. people have tried to covince me I have education, medicine, housing and food. . Under the white man every star would no right to exist, except in the dirtiest, . . That William Shockley is saying at become a South Africa, every planet a darkest corners of the globe. this moment that he will run for the Vietnam. So let me tell you: I intend to Senate of my country to push his theory Fatally irradiating ourselves may in protect my home. Praying - not a that Blacks are genetically inferior and fact be the only way to save others from curse - only the hope that my courage should be sterilized. . . . When I what Earth has already become. And this will not fail my love. But if by some consider that he is, they are, a real and is a consideration that I believe requires miracle, and all our struggle, the earth present threat to my life and the life of some serious thought from every one of is spared, only justice to every living my daughter, my people, I think - in US. thing (and everything alive) will save perfect harmony with my sisters of long However, just as the sun shines on the humankind. ago: Let the earth marinate in poisons. godly and the ungodly alike, so does And we are not saved yet. Let the bombs cover the ground like rain. nuclear radiation. And with this knowl- Only justice can stop a curse. For nothing short of total destruction edge it becomes increasingly difficult to will ever teach them anything. embrace the thought of extinction purely Alice Walker won the American And it would be good, perhaps, to put for the assumed satisfaction of - from Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for an end to the species in any case, rather the grave - achieving revenge. Or even The Color Purple. She has written than let the white man continue to of accepting our demise as a planet as a many books. "Only Justice Can Stop a subjugate it, and continue to let their lust simple and just preventative medicine Curse" is from In Search of Our dominate, exploit and despoil not just administered to the universe. Life is better Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose,. our planet, but the rest of the universe, than death, I believe, if only because it is copyright O 1983 by Alice Walker. which is their clear and oft-stated less boring, and because it has fresh Reprinted by permission of Harcourt intention; leaving their arrogance and peaches in it. In any case, Earth is my Brace & Co.

EDITOR'S NOTES, she was paralyzed. Using medicine ways nuclear development and the suffering continedfrom page 1 of the Okanagan, Armstrong worked of communities of color - and to tirelessly with the woman to resuscitate inspire you to join the Struggle to stop The people she met lived on lands her spirit. "As long as this woman was this source of pain and dislocation decimated by fallout from nuclear locked in despair," she told me, "there before another fifty years pass. testing. The forests were so lifeless and was no hope. Our job as humans is to care charred they resembled Hiroshima. about and commune with Creation. Zfwe Chellis Glendinning Children were being born with genetic do not do our job, Creation doesn't have Chimay6, New Mexico defects. The men of the village were a chance of surviving. " dying at a disproportionate rate - of People of color have borne more than Chellis Glendinning is the author of diseases like leukemia and cancer the lion's share of the toxic effects of My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recov- directly related to contamination, and of nuclear development. And yet, despite the ery from Western Civilization, When those like alcoholism and suicide injustice of the situation, if we do not do Technology Wounds, and Waking Up secondarily related. Armstrong identified our job of caring for and communing with in the Nuclear Age. Special thanks to one woman in the tribe who she sensed our beautiful world, as Armstrong says, Hannah Creighton and Hilario Romero could facilitate healing among her all is lost. In this issue of Race, Poverty for tireless dedication on this 50th people. But this woman was so over- and the Environment, we hope to reveal to anniversary issue. come with desperation and despair that you the tragic connections between Race, Poverty & the Environment Spring - Summer 1995 Page 43 Resources

CITIZEN ALERT National Association of Atomic Rural Alliance for Military P.O. Box 5339 Veterans Accountability Reno NV 98513 P.O. Box 4424 P.O. Box 855 702-827-4200 Salem MA 01970 Questa NM 87556 508-744-9396 505-586-1241 Citizen Soldier 175 Fifth Ave. National Association of Radiation Southwest Indigenous Uranium New York NY 10010 Survivors Forum 2 12-777-3470 P.O. Box 2815 P.O. Box 5058 Weaverville CA 96093 Gallup NM 87301 Citizens Against 1-800-798-5102 505-778-5834 Nuclear Trash P.O. Box 195 Native Americans for a Clean Southwest Network for Economic & Homer LA 7 1040 Environment Environmental Justice 3 18-927-6942 P.O. Box 1671 P.O. Box 7399 Tahlequah OK 74465 Albuquerque NM 87194 Citizens for Environmental Justice 9 18-458-4322 505-242-0416 P.O. Box 1841 Savannah GA 31401 Native American Radiation Health Southwest Organizing Project 9 12-233-0907 Network 211 10th St. SW 747 Main St. Albuquerque NM 87 102 Committee of Atomic Bomb Concord MA 0 1742 505-247-8832 Survivors 508-287-0023 1765 Sutter St. Southwest Research and Information San Francisco CA 941 15 National Environmental Coalition of Center 415-921-5225 Native Americans P.O. Box 4524 2213 West 8th St. Albuquerque NM 87106 Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network Prague OK 74864 505-262-1862 P.O. Box 845 Sabattus ME 04280 Nuclear Free America . Tri-Valley CARES 207-375-8482 325 East 25th St. 5720 East Ave. #I16 Baltimore MD 21218 Livermore CA 94550 Friends of Hibakusha 410-235-3575 5 10-443-7148 1759 Sutter St. and San Francisco CA 941 15 2852 High St. Uranium Radiation Victims 415-567-7599 Salem OR 97302 Committee 503-364-2661 Navajo Nation Humans Against Nuclear Waste P.O. Box 1526 Dumps Paiute Earthkeepers Shiprock NM 87420 P.O. Box 2170 P.O. Box 68 505-368-5688; 505-368-4027 Ruidoso NM 88345 Fredonia AZ 86022 Water Information Indigenous Environmental Network Network President's Advisory Committee on P.O. Box 485 P.O. Box 4524 Human Radiation Experiments Bernidji MN 56601 Albuquerque NM 87 105 1726 M St. NW #600 218-75 1-4967 505-255-4072 Washington DC 20036 Institute for Energy and Environmen- 202-254-3126 Western Shoshone Defense tal Research Crescent Valley NV 89821 Project Chariot 6935 Laurel Ave. 702-468-0230 Takoma MD 20912 P.O. Box 169 301-270-5500 Point Hope AK 99766 World Uranium Hearing 907-368-2223 39 West 14th St. #206 Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe New York NY 10011 Environment Rainbow Serpent 212-633-6646 P.O. Box 100 25 16 San Pablo Ave. Paguate NM 87040 Berkeley CA 94702 505-552-9352 5 10-540-5917 Paae 44 Sorina - Summer 1995 Race. Povertv & the Environment

Ambler, Marjane, Breaking the Iron Grinde, Donald and Bruce Johnson, Pacific War Society,The Day Man Lost: Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Ecocide of Native America: Environmen- Hiroshima, 6 August, 1945, Tokyo: Development, Lawrence KS: University tal Destruction of Indian Lands and Kodanasha International, 1981. of Kansas Press, 1990. People, Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1995. Vyner, Henry, Invisible Trauma: The Ball, Howard, Justice Downwind: Psychosocial Effects of the Invisible America's Atomic Testing Program in Ibuse, Masuji, Black Rain, Tokyo: Environmental Contaminants,Lexington the 1950s, New York: Oxford University Kodanasha International, 1978. MA: Lexington Books, 1988. Press, 1986. Lifton, Robert Jay, Death in Life: Wasserman, Harvey and Norman Bullard, Robert, Unequal Protection: Survivors of Hiroshima, New York: Solomon, Killing Our Own: The Environmental Justice and Communities Basic Books, 1967. Disaster of America's Experience with of Color, San Francisco: Sierra Club Atomic Radiation, New York: Dell, Makhijani, Arjun, From Global Books, 1994. 1982. Capitalism to Economic Justice: An Eichstadt, Peter, If You Poison Us: Inquiry into the Elimination of Systemic World Uranium Hearing, Poison Fire, Uranium and Native Americans, Santa Poverty, Violence and Environmental Sacred Earth: Testimonies, Lectures, Fe NM: Red Crane Books, 1994. Destruction in the World Economy, New Conclusions, Munich: World Uranium York: Apex Press, 1992. Hearing, 1993. Gould, Jay and Benjamin Goldman, Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation, O'Neill, Dan, Firecracker Boys, New Zinn, Howard, Hiroshima: Breaking the High Level Cover Up, New York: Four York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Silence, Westfield, NJ: Open Magazine Walls Eight Windows, 1990. 1995. Open Magazine, Pamphlet Series, P.O. Box 2726, Westfield NJ 07091

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Vol. 1 No. 1: Spring 1990, Earth Day Vol. 1 No. 2: Summer 1990, Cultural Diversity Vol. 1 No. 3: Fall 1990, Youth Vol. 1 No. 4: Winter 1991, Women of Color Vol. 2 No. 1: Spring 1991, Pesticides Vol. 2 No. 2: Summer 1991, Energy Vol. 2 No. 314: Fall 1991fWinter 1992, The Summit Vol. 3 No. 1: Spring 1992, AsianPacific Islanders Vol. 3 No. 2: Summer 1992, Water Vol. 3 No. 3: Fall 1992, Native Nations in 1992 Vol. 3 No. 4Nol. 4 No. 1: WinterISpring 1993, Urban Problems Vol. 4 No. 2: Summer 1993, Population and Immigration Vol. 4 No. 3: Fall 1993, Latinos and the Environment Vol. 4 No. 4Nol. 5. No. 1, Spring 1994, Military Base Conversion Vol. 5 No. 213: Fall 1994fWinter 1995, Environmental Justice and the Law