by Brenda Norrell
Indian Country Today
20 December 2004
DUCKWATER, Nev—Beyond genocide, the poisoning of ancestral lands of
the Shoshone, Paiute and Goshute in Nevada and Utah
constitutes ecocide, the death of all life forms, and
punctuates the pivotal point in state-sanctioned
environmental violence toward American Indians.
''The Western
Shoshone are the most bombed nation in the world,'' said
Ian Zabarte, secretary of state for the Western Shoshone
Nation Council. Pointing out that the nuclear test site
is on Western Shoshone ancestral land, Zabarte said
nuclear testing and radiation has taken its toll on his
people, but their land rights remain in tact, secured by
the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863.
''The United
States has violated the very essence of this treaty by
testing its nuclear weapons on our lands and people.''
Nuclear testing
above ground and underground has been centered in the
heart of Shoshone and Paiute lands in Nevada. Goshute in
Utah and Nevada straddle the Dugway chemical warfare
testing site. Nowhere in America has the damage to the
environment and potential for human disease surpassed
this U.S. warfare corridor.
The publication
of new research in the American Sociological Review and
a related review of Department of Defense data by Indian
Country Today exposes the silent nuclear ecocide on
Aboriginal lands and the systematic leasing and seizure
of tribal lands for nuclear and explosives operations of
the U.S. military.
''The Treadmill
of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native
Americans'', by Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith, reviews
the legacy of the military operations on Indian nations
and borderlands to Indian country. A review of DOD
public data reveals a concealed and misleading history
of environmental impacts in Indian country.
Nellis Range,
the single largest gunnery range in the world,
encompassing 3.5 million acres, was absorbed after World
War II into the nuclear weapons complex in Nevada.
Nellis and the nuclear test site, the largest
militarized zone on earth, are the unwanted neighbors of
Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute.
''The impact of
these facilities upon Native Americans is not
inconsequential because the Western Shoshone and
Southern Paiute claim these lands both as a traditional
homeland and as religious grounds,'' wrote Hooks and
Smith in the article.
Although the
U.S. military said this region of Nevada desert could be
bombed into oblivion and no one would notice, Shoshone
and Paiute did notice and continue to protest the
ravaging of their homeland and poisoning of their land,
water and air.
Writing of the
legacy of war and racism, Hooks and Smith said World War
II brought the maturation of chemical warfare and the
birth of nuclear weapons. The result was a lasting
environmental scar on Indian tribes.
When military
sites in New Jersey and Maryland proved too small and
the areas too populated to access large-scale toxicity,
the military chose Dugway Proving Grounds in northwest
Utah, located dead center between the Skull Valley
Goshute in Utah and the Goshute Reservation in Nevada.
Dugway became
the major installation for field-testing chemical
agents. Airplanes sprayed mustard gas and carried out
large scale bombing of phosgene, cyanogens chloride and
hydrogen cyanide bombs to determine the lethal
concentration of gas.
Nationwide,
unexploded ordnances - mines, nerve gases, toxics and
explosive shells - contaminate as much as 50 million
acres and have claimed at least 65 lives.
Most of Hooks
and Smith's research refers to closed military bases.
However, they point out the staggering potential for
health and environmental dangers for American Indians in
the present age of nuclear, chemical and biological
warfare. For Indian country and the remainder of the
nation, the present dangers are concealed for reasons of
national security.
During the 20th
century, the expansion of military bases on and adjacent
to Indian lands was part of a ''deliberate and
systematic assault on Indian peoples,'' and part of the
intellectual warfare of boarding schools, relocation and
assimilation designed to turn Indians into
''Americans,'' Hooks and Smith said.
Describing it
as the ''callous expansion of the Pentagon,'' noxious
military contaminants were placed in close proximity to
American Indians, primarily in remote areas of the arid
West.
The Department
of Defense's own data, public at the DOD Native American
Environmental Tracking Service online, is outdated and
shows a mere fragment of the impacts on Indian tribes in
Nevada and Utah.
For instance,
the report for Death Valley Timbasha Shoshone shows
possible contaminated soil and groundwater and
destruction of cultural artifacts from the China Lake
Weapons Center, an active site, and the Army's Fort
Irwin National Training Center.
However, there
is no DOD report for a large number of Indian tribes in
Nevada and Utah. The DOD states there are no
environmental impact reports for: Ely Shoshone; Las
Vegas Tribe of Paiute; Moapa Band of Paiute; Yerington
Paiute; Washoe Tribe; Te-Moak Bands of Western Shoshone:
Battle Mountain, Elko, South Fork and Wells, all in
Nevada, or the Northwestern Band of Shoshoni (Washakie)
Indian Colony in Utah.
Even though the
Moapa Band of Paiute were close enough for school
children to watch the mushroom cloud of atomic bombs
with unprotected eyes, the DOD has no report of impacts
on Moapa Paiute in the NAETS report.
As a child,
Phil Swain, Moapa Paiute, watched atomic bombs explode
in the desert, 40 to 50 miles from homes of Moapa Paiute.
''They would
tell us in school when there was going to be a blast, we
would go outside and watch it. It looked like a big
mushroom cloud,'' Swain said. There were also
underground nuclear blasts.
''The ground
would settle like a big saucer. They said it never
leaked out, but it did. A lot of our people died from
cancer.''
On the DOD
NAETS site, the environmental hazards include Fort
McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone with possible soil and
groundwater contamination from the U.S. Corps of
Engineers. Fort McDermitt, established in 1865 along the
Quinn River, is the longest active Army fort in Nevada.
In this region
of atomic bombs and chemical and biological warfare
testing, the DOD's reports of undetonated bombs and
plane debris presents a mere fragment of the holocaust
for Shoshone, Paiute and Goshute.
Still, there is
more to come. A nuclear waste storage site is under
construction on Yucca Mountain, which was secured by the
Western Shoshone in the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863.
The nuclear waste would be transported though the
backyards of America, including Indian country, with the
potential of deadly truck or rail accidents for 30
years.
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