Coming from a reservation in
South Dakota, with a bare minimal understanding of
environmental regulation and nuclear science, and foolishly
thinking that there is a honest, unbiased, non-ethnocentric
perspective, shared by many people, in protecting the future
generations from our "avarice" and wanton wastefulness
today; what a rude awakening! Not only was I wrong about the
Internet as being a great place to seek more public support
for our challenges against the 88 toxic abandoned uranium
mines in the Custer National Forest (http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/custer/),
the in situ leach uranium mining by PowerTech Uranium (http://www.powertechuranium.com/s/Home.asp)
and other uranium mining companies, and the Black Hills
National Forest abandoned uranium mines; I was totally
incorrect in believing that the environmental and Native
American groups would help us, the Defenders of the Black
Hills (http://www.defendblackhills.org),
in our challenge against their genocide against our tribes.
Maybe I am not educated enough to know the difference
between what is right and wrong, or maybe I just don't have
the words to explain our challenge properly.
But again, hope dawned, giving me solace that at least one
person on the Internet would help us in our challenge who
established the following website, the
Silkwood Project and featured many of our stories in
Heyoka Magazine. Educating people about the dangers of
uranium poisoning has proven to be an extreme challenge but
not one that will prove to be impossible, for instance, on
MySpace I established a group for the
Defenders of the Black Hills
since there are millions of members that also
have the environmental consciousness; this too increases
awareness of our genocide. And after a short time, we also
attracted the assistance of the
Western Mining Action Network,
Southwest Research and Information Center and
Indigenous Environmental Network who provided us with
valuable technical advice and supported our Uranium Summit
which was held in Rapid City in March 2007.
Many nights I have felt sorrow, knowing that most people in
my community of Rock Creek, SD (Bullhead, SD) on the
Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation face the possibility
of getting cancer and other uranium-induced illnesses. What
saddens me is that it seems like the endangered species
affected by uranium mining have more rights than we do even
though we are becoming just as extinct.
The truth is that most regulatory authorities established
for environmental protection are pro-mining, not pro-earth,
and even seem, at times, anti-people! More importantly after
reading through many different environmental activists
websites, I see that they are actually in league with the
mining, energy and logging companies, holding the same view
that if they follow certain mandated regulations purportedly
enacted to protect the environment, the water and human
health, then the ecological unbalancing should be allowed or
permitted under certain specified conditions. But what
bothers me most about evil synergy between the
"environmentalists" and the "exploiters" is that they think
that paying reclamation bonds, creating economic and
employment opportunities, and mitigating sacred site issues
gives them suitable justification to destroy our earth!
But to truly understand this self-destructiveness, we must
understand that each of us also indirectly or directly
contributes to this profane endeavor through our consumption
of electricity, gasoline, heating, air conditioning,
agriculture and livestock products and the other plethora of
commercial products! The conundrum of the commons at its
finest hour, debuting us as its woe-begotten audience,
captivating us by its magical taste of invincibility while
knowing we are also causing the desolation of our
lebensraum-what a bad taste that must be and of course,
perhaps many reconcile this eventuality with their own lust
of power or powerlessness and sense of futility.
Then, from an economic and survivability standpoint, given
the demand for a scarce natural resource, the supply must at
least equal this demand for it to remain economically
viable; if not, its demand rises to point of near fanatical
rush to exploit this resource through whatever means
necessary; this, to me, resembles a blood thirsty vampire
seeking new prey. What is even more puzzling is: if a
natural resource in its natural state is relatively
harmless, then at that point where we alter it, making it
highly toxic to the environment and to people, does this
decrease its demand: I think not?
From my perspective, with respect to in situ leach (ISL)/in
situ recovery (ISR) uranium mining, it seems in this
instance that all concern goes out the window and in its
place is this extreme thirst for profit from exploiting of
these toxic uranium poisons: all in the name of being
environmentally friendly and solving the GLOBAL WARMING
craze. At $113 per pound with input/investment costs at
around $1, greed is forcing people to forget that they also
drink water and their children and children's children must
also drink water; the question is then whether that water
will be safe or pure enough for them to drink at all and
whether that $112 profit mined today is worth the lives of
their children. This occurs regardless of the proven facts
that ISL/ISR uranium mining does in fact poison the
groundwater as it did in Texas (see for example, "If
Only We'd Known," and "Uranium
Mining Polluting near the King Ranch").
There are only a few of us that are ardently opposing this
sickness in our state, and even fewer realize that once they
inject their poisons into our sacred Grandmother Earth, they
will also kill those of us living on her surface, all of us,
Tetuwan (Seven Council Fires) and white.