Environmental genocide: native Americans and toxic waste

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 1998  by Daniel Brook

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Genocide against Native Americans continues in modern times with modern techniques. In the past, buffalo were slaughtered or corn crops were burned, thereby threatening local native populations; now the Earth itself is being strangled, thereby threatening all life. The government and large corporations have created toxic, lethal threats to human health. Yet, because "Native Americans live at the lowest socioeconomic level in the U.S." (Glass, n.d., 3), they are most at risk for toxic exposure. All poor people and people of color are disadvantaged, although "[f]or Indians, these disadvantages are multiplied by dependence on food supplies closely tied to the land and in which [toxic] materials . . . have been shown to accumulate" (ibid.). This essay will discuss the genocide of Native Americans through environmental spoliation and native resistance to it. Although this type of genocide is not (usually) the result of a systematic plan with malicious intent to exterminate Native Americans, it is the consequence of activities that are often carried out on and near the reservations with reckless disregard for the lives of Native Americans.(1)

One very significant toxic threat to Native Americans comes from governmental and commercial hazardous waste sitings. Because of the severe poverty and extraordinary vulnerability of Native American tribes, their lands have been targeted by the U.S. government and the large corporations as permanent areas for much of the poisonous industrial by-products of the dominant society. "Hoping to take advantage of the devastating chronic unemployment, pervasive poverty and sovereign status of Indian Nations", according to Bradley Angel, writing for the international environmental organization Greenpeace, "the waste disposal industry and the U.S. government have embarked on an all-out effort to site incinerators, landfills, nuclear waste storage facilities and similar polluting industries on Tribal land" (Angel 1991, 1).

In fact, so enthusiastic is the United States government to dump its most dangerous waste from "the nation's 110 commercial nuclear power plants" (ibid., 16) on the nation's "565 federally recognized tribes" (Aug 1993, 9) that it "has solicited every Indian Tribe, offering millions of dollars if the tribe would host a nuclear waste facility" (Angel 1991, 15; emphasis added). Given the fact that Native Americans tend to be so materially poor, the money offered by the government or the corporations for this "toxic trade" is often more akin to bribery or blackmail than to payment for services rendered.(2) In this way, the Mescalero Apache tribe in 1991, for example, became the first tribe (or state) to file an application for a U.S. Energy Department grant "to study the feasibility of building a temporary [sic] storage facility for 15,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel" (Akwesasne Notes 1992, 11). Other Indian tribes, including the Sac, Fox, Yakima, Choctaw, Lower Brule Sioux, Eastern Shawnee, Ponca, Caddo, and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute, have since applied for the $100,000 exploratory grants as well (Angel 1991, 16-17).

Indeed, since so many reservations are without major sources of outside revenue, it is not surprising that some tribes have considered proposals to host toxic waste repositories on their reservations. Native Americans, like all other victimized ethnic groups, are not passive populations in the face of destruction from imperialism and paternalism. Rather, they are active agents in the making of their own history. Nearly a century and a half ago, the radical philosopher and political economist Karl Marx realized that people "make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past" (Marx 1978, 595). Therefore, "[t]ribal governments considering or planning waste facilities", asserts Margaret Crow of California Indian Legal Services, "do so for a number of reasons" (Crow 1994, 598). First, lacking exploitable subterranean natural resources, some tribal governments have sought to employ the land itself as a resource in an attempt to fetch a financial return. Second, since many reservations are rural and remote, other lucrative business opportunities are rarely, if ever, available to them. Third, some reservations are sparsely populated and therefore have surplus land for business activities. And fourth, by establishing waste facilities some tribes would be able to resolve their reservations' own waste disposal problems while simultaneously raising much-needed revenue.

As a result, "[a] small number of tribes across the country are actively pursuing commercial hazardous and solid waste facilities"; however, "[t]he risk and benefit analysis performed by most tribes has led to decisions not to engage in commercial waste management" (ibid.). Indeed, Crow reports that by "the end of 1992, there were no commercial waste facilities operating on any Indian reservations" (ibid.), although the example of the Campo Band of Mission Indians provides an interesting and illuminating exception to the trend. The Campo Band undertook a "proactive approach to siting a commercial solid waste landfill and recycling facility near San Diego, California. The Band informed and educated the native community, developed an environmental regulatory infrastructure, solicited companies, required that the applicant company pay for the Band's financial advisors, lawyers, and solid waste industry consultants, and ultimately negotiated a favorable contract" (Haner 1994, 106). Even these extraordinary measures, however, are not enough to protect the tribal land and indigenous people from toxic exposure.