WILLIAM UNDER BAGGAGE

PART I. Heyoka

John LeKay: Can you please introduce yourself.

William Under Baggage: Today is April 24th, I believe, 2006; I'm sitting here with a friend that does an online website about indigenous issues that is named Heyoka magazine.com. I want to talk about myself a little bit first. My name is William Under Baggage. Literally, translation means carrying the burden. I have an organization called Indigenous Nations Network.  We use this network to advise, inform and educate. First each other - the native peoples of this land. Secondly, to educate the larger population - the Americans - beyond that, the world. So I'm sitting here today, talking about a few issues - but first I want to touch base on what heyoka means. In Lakota, Heyoka is a contrary. In society, certain things that are done require an alternative way of thinking and doing things. Some people call it a clown.  It, he, she  uses humor and addresses issues when things are very serious. Such as in ceremonies when serious things are happening. The heyoka is very active in the ceremonies. Very visible in our society. The heyoka address things that are very pertinent to society; sometimes not in the way that people think about. So we would like to acknowledge that the heyoka is a very powerful entity within our society. The heyoka is a very necessary part of our society because it brings issues in a different manor, rather than going through the traditional "Eyapaha" (the traditional announcers of the community). The heyoka brings up issues that make you look at yourself, the contrary of yourself and the contrary of what the world is doing, and what the world and society has done.  So, the heyoka in itself is very necessary and we believe that through using this magazine, in the sense that we have a friend that is willing to use a voice, as the heyoka, the contrary way of addressing things, but also as a way to address issues.

Racism

John LeKay: We talked a little bit about this earlier, about racism in this country - Racism towards your Lakota culture and various cultures throughout the US. Can you please tell me something about your personal experiences with this; being born and growing up in this county and what this means to you?

William Under Baggage: I want to give a little bit of a background about race, ethnicity (ethnocentrism and cultural centrism). First of all, we have to understand that when the ancestors of the Europeans came to the shores of the United States - what they were feeling was racism towards them as spiritual societies, as religious societies. When they left Europe, Europe was at it's worst time - the dark ages. So when they left Europe they had warfare on their mind already. When they came to the United States to conquer the shores of America, what we call Turtle Island; they came here with the explicit knowledge that they were going to take this land in the name of the Queen. So already, they have an idea that they were exploring. Actually, Christopher Columbus was lost and was looking for India.  So, just in the term itself - "Indian" that they gave us, is very very wrong. We are not "Indians".

Just in the beginning of history of America, race was a very important factor in how they conquered the people that they encountered. So race, racism, they felt that they were better than the indigenous people that lived here.  I use indigenous in the sense that we are from this continent. Most people refer to themselves as Native Americans - " Indian" - is a term that is going out of style. Other people use it today because that is what people have called us for the past two centuries, or more, three centuries. So many people are used to calling themselves Indian. I have never considered myself an Indian. I was raised in the manner to consider myself a Native American, or indigenous. The term Indian itself is race related. Today, race in this country has a connotation of who is better than who. So when Americans use the term Indian, it is not necessarily such a good term. In another society such as Mexico and further south, "Indio" is not such a good term; it is also used in a racist way to belittle someone.  Racism has been very very endemic in this society where people think it's natural to be racist towards other nationalities. As far as Native America was concerned, race was used to oppress us, because we natives have a different color skin, brown considering that the most European ancestry has very light skin, what most people refer to as white. So racism has been prevalent in many many issues across the United States and beyond. Where it's a tool, used to oppress us. Through economic means, through spiritual means. Religions used race in the sense that when the Jesuits were accompanying the armies, the militia, to conquer a nation, the Jesuits were used and usually they were white priests that were used to basically giving the last rights to the people that the military were intending to either massacre or remove. This happened all across the eastern seaboard; the Atlantic coast where a lot of the native people that lived in certain valuable areas were; places that were coveted. So when racism was used in that manner, they would bring in the priests to give the last rites to the people that were being removed or killed. So in that sense, racism began way back then.

 At Some point somebody told me something that sticks in my mind.  They say that "you could of had with love what you took with greed".  And that itself is a statement that very well reflects today's attitude about natural resources, environmental injustice and environmental racism. So when we look at race and how it was used; yes the European cultures consider themselves civilized. They look at us as uncivilized. Racism was used to oppress people, to remove people from their aboriginal homeland. So racism is very prevalent in this society today where laws were enacted to keep races apart. I was very aware of that as a child when we went off the reservation and society around us were mostly white. They did not like us; they did not really allow us into their communities, to go shopping, to go do things; so we were kept away from these communities by just the fact of the color of our skin. By that, also many people were killed because of the color of their skin.

So racism today has a big part in the separation of societies here in this land we call the United States of America.

John LeKay: Do you think it's the educational system is one of the reasons why this is perpetuated?

William Under Baggage: Yes, education was deprived us; education was used in a sense to keep us illiterate - to not understand the laws of this land; to not be able to understand English. Education, as a racist tool was used to keep the indigenous populations very illiterate so they would not understand that the laws were being made against us. So education has a very important factor in that it was used in order to be able to dominate somebody. When I think about education, I myself don't have a secondary education. I graduated from high school, but I was not taught the right process of education so that I could not succeed in post secondary education. I could not succeed in college. Therefore I could not educate myself or become higher than what I am now . I don't have any degrees. I don't have anything that tells me that I am equal to somebody that has two PhDs, MAs or a bachelors or any of that; but that's how education was used as a tool to oppress.

Natural resources

John LeKay: Going back to what you said earlier about racism and natural resources; do you think much of this oppression began with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills?  In terms of racism, it seems to serve a purpose; being that some people benefit from this racism being instilled.

William Under Baggage: Yes, in the sense that most native nations had treaties with the United States government as known in popular culture.  Every treaty was broken. So racism played a very important factor in the extraction of natural resources such as gold, which is very valuable in some societies' minds. When I think of natural resources, I think of mother earth and how mother earth feeds and clothes us, provides us sustenance. Gives us energy to live by. I'm very aware of that when I come to New York City, because New York City does not produce anything. New York City does not produce anything to benefit the world. New York City consumes everything from the world; everything is brought here. So when I look at the electricity, the light switches, the water, the buildings that are made of rock and gravel and concrete and steel. I look at the fact that Manhattan was here and it was a very sacred place to the tribes that were here. So in the sense of natural resources, it meant that we got to live on mother earth in peace and harmony.

In the latter century - as far as when gold was discovered here on this continent; not only gold but other natural resources from our mother earth; such as uranium, plutonium, zinc, silver, copper, molybdenum.  All these components of mother earth that are now called chemicals have been used to oppress peoples, even more, because of economics. When the European nations came here, they did not have anything. It was mostly the Native American people that were producing items of sustenance, such as the furs which the Europeans needed to live and to survive.  Also the corn and the squash and all the natural things that they needed to live and to survive. But, it went one step further when they started exploiting, when they started digging holes in the ground. To create concrete, to create bricks, to create things that were supposedly more durable and that could sustain in a long term such as homes made of brick and steel.  So, natural resources to us have a very different connotation as far as the usage of it.  So when gold was discovered again it was a tool to be used for race enhancement. The European decedents of these people that came from other countries saw that this land was for the taking, as they thought, because Native Americans were not utilizing it to its fullest.  So they thought that natives were not productive members of society and therefore these materials such as gold were used to enhance their selves; to make a better life for themselves and gold had a monetary value. When we think of how that was used, money was used as a tool to oppress people also in the sense that most people, native peoples that lived on the lands, usually had some sort of natural resource under it (coal, gold, or silver) and these people were actually removed and replaced with descendents of Europeans.

Dams and electricity

John LeKay: Were there other natural resources?

William Under Baggage:  A very good example of other natural resources being exploited to its fullest extent is the rivers that are dammed to extract electricity. When rivers are dammed, natural things that live in them like the fish can no longer run up these rivers, so natural resources in the sense, to us, were something to protect, something to cherish.  I recently came back from the north west; the Columbia River Gorge where three major dams, two of them produce power, electricity as I video taped and understood how water was used.

In the late 1800s, the depopulations of the west, where the indigenous people lived started with the process of removing these people off the land. To populate and also to rapidly populate with pilgrims, with pioneers, with farmers.  Literally the land was fertile and lush - it could grow anything. So when this population happened these farmers had to be given water. So lakes and dams were confiscated to give the farmers a way to rapidly populate, which meant they were having children at a fast rate and outnumbered the native Americans.  So water was used as a tool of warfare; where it was taken away from us and given to the farmers that were populating the west. To this day, I see how they use water.  Electricity is one of the most highly subsidized entities; energy, is subsidized by the federal government. Again I'm going to use a couple of terms which may not be correct and I can research this. But, the Bonneville Power Authority is heavily subsidized and the water that comes from there is natural, so to them its basically free energy.  So greed in that sense has taken over that. There are a certain few executives in these power authorities that are now very highly compensated when they didn't actually own this land; so they are literally making money that they did not have before.

Reservations

Where did these people go that used to live there, the tribes that lived there? Normally, what they did was they rounded us up like animals and contained us. The reservation is just another word for a concentration camp.  When they created these concentration camps to hold these native peoples, usually they were in what most Americans considered, unusable land. Badlands for instance is land that could not be utilized to produce something. So they housed us in these very oppressive conditions and that's where they put these native peoples on these reservations, on what I call concentration camps, where diseases were rampant. Then you put that many people close together in something they don't understand; given rancid beef, given flour that had bugs in it. All these things people had to survive on such as animal fat, lard, white sugar, coffee. Everything that was bad was given to us and our people are still suffering today because of it.

 

PART III. Uranium and the national sacrifice area

John LeKay:  What about the mining of uranium?

William Under Baggage: Plutonium in its natural form is still dangerous, when it's extracted and mined and purified; like uranium. The natural process of mother earth is changed and today uranium is used in the sense that it is a tool of maculation, a tool of oppression.  I think directly to Iraq and what's happening there now with Afghanistan; where they are supposedly using these bombs called bunker busters. To me that has an horrific image of these bombs that are dropped on these people that are hiding out underground. Because these bombs can actually kill without damaging a lot of the land, damaging a lot of the buildings. These bunker busters are made mostly out of fissure material; uranium, plutonium.  The United  States is falsely telling people it's depleted. Uranium will never deplete. Its half life is probably 500,000 years. I'm not sure of that but I one time heard a person by the name of Helen Caldicott, speaking one time at a place in the Black Hills, where many people gathered, a year ago in the late 70s to discuss something known as the national sacrifice area. Western South Dakota was considered a national sacrifice area and that didn't come from us, that came from the energy corporations that wanted to develop nuclear energy and nuclear bombs and of course we all know what happens when nuclear bombs are used on a society such as the Japanese that the bombs were dropped on and how it obliterated whole cities, communities and families. So natural resources in the extraction of uranium is very dangerous. By dangerous, I mean its not only dangerous for the miner extracting it, because there are many diseases that come out of the poisoning and toxic material that people inhale.  The miners were inhaling this and later became very affected by this.

Iraq and depleted uranium

John LeKay: What about the national sacrifice area?

William Under Baggage: This term called national sacrifice area, it wasn't us that created it. We would never sacrifice ourselves or our mother earth for the enrichment of a few people such as Kerr McGee; the executives of Kerr McGee and other organizations that have extracted and exploited natural resources. These people didn't have this money to begin with and now these people are filthy rich just from the fact that they stole this material called nuclear uranium and plutonium. So I think about that and I look at how its being used today, and how these children are going to be suffering, not just the children, but the subsequent generations of these people the United States is dropping these bombs on made of depleted uranium. These bullets that they are firing are at Iraqi children, Iraqi citizens, have something that is called depleted uranium inside these ammunition, and who authorized that, who actually told them they could use these things in warfare.

I believe that there is enough depleted uranium that they call nuclear waste in  this society; there is nowhere to put it - we can't send it off into space, it will pollute space forever.  So in a false sense, they used this thing called depleted uranium on a society of people that are going to suffer the next who knows how many generations. Uranium and plutonium actually does one thing that is actually devastating to the human body - it alters the DNA. It alters the makeup of our bodies therefore affecting future generations

So when they turned this place into a national sacrifice area, not only are they sacrificing the lands but they are sacrificing generations to come. Because these people will suffer. Also that the fact that this will not affect the general population of the United States which is Americans, which is white Americans, its not going to them, but it will affect the people that are living on the lands near them.

Nuclear waste dumping and reservation shopping

One good instance of that is happening today and is something that the United States government and the nuclear regulatory agency and all these power authorities that use nuclear energy - that create the waste. There was something the United States government and a few of these agencies were doing a few years back. 10 years ago I believe or somewhere round there; they were wanting a place to dump this nuclear waste and the national sacrifice area was one of them and many people came to protest that. We actually stopped that process for a while, I know they are going to be bringing that up again. Because they could not put it there, they had to go shopping for someone who would accept this nuclear waste and of course they will never bring it to Washington DC and put it in the Mall and I think they should because that's the most secure place in the world. There's 24 hour guards there with very big open space, and nobody lives there so it would not affect anybody. So I think they should bring this waste to Washington DC and bury it under the Washington monument. Also when I think about that it angers me because I know the fact that some people accepted the fact that the United States government went reservation shopping. To actually offer these tribes that are very destitute, very poverty stricken; when you are put on a land that doesn't produce any viable means of sustenance, food. These people are very desperate and hungry and so when they went reservation shopping for a place to dump this nuclear waste; they went across the United States and approached every tribe and offered them financial rewards millions of dollars. And of the course, the money isn't theirs to begin with so they don't care how they spend it. So they went reservation shopping to dump this nuclear waste, in the false image that Native Americans care about the land. Therefore, we can dump this nuclear waste on them and they will take care of it. I think that is horrific. That's environmental racism.

Once again race also comes into this factor . Why did they not go to Pennsylvania, why did they not ask the Quakers and the Catholics to actually host this nuclear waste. Why did they not ask every wealthy community around Harvard and Yale and Stanford to accept this nuclear waste and that is racism. So when I think about how these subsequent generations of people that are going to be affected; one of the tribes that actually accepted it is out in Nevada called Sculls Valley.  Again, nuclear energy companies are looking for how to get rid of their waste. It's not just trash that you can recycle. Not just trash you can take and bury and in a few years it will disintegrate. Nuclear waste will last forever. Nuclear waste will damage the water around it. Nuclear waste will damage the people around it. When one of the tribes accepted millions of dollars to host something called the monitored nuclear waste retrieval and deposit; which is very false. They just want to store it there and never retrieve it nor redeposit it elsewhere.

What's happening now across the United States is nuclear energy companies are trucking very dangerous nuclear waste across America on our federal highway systems. We do not know what these trucks look like. They wont tell us. they wont show us what these trucks look like. Imagine a train hitting one of these trucks, busting apart one of these containers that transport this nuclear waste. What's going to happen to this community. Because they are going right through these big cities in the United States. When I think about nuclear waste, to me it's not a sense that it came out of the land.

Navajo and mining and birth deformities

One good example is where they took it from. The corporations went to what is supposedly unusable land. Un-arable land.  For instance, they went to one of the nations that they attacked, the Navajo. Commonly known amongst the indigenous peoples as the De nee. They went out there to extract, mine uranium out from under their land. Therefore they took a huge amount of land away from them and also when you mine, it requires a huge amount of water.  So that water is now contaminated by nuclear waste. But what happens to the people; the miners. The people that mined this were not necessarily people of European descent. But mostly indigenous peoples that lived around there that had, through economic hardship, had to take the nearest job available. A lot of these people die horrible deaths. Leukemia, cancers, and with other diseases which are man made. These things did not come from the environment. They came from man made materials. So the disease some of these people walked with, altered their DNA and of course when the DNA is altered these children come out deformed. So a high rate of deformations of babies came out from around these areas that are mined.

So when I think of a genocide of a people, this is supposedly one of the easiest ways to exterminate somebody, which is to use the natural resources. Of course you don't have to use militias to exterminate somebody, you can use uranium to exterminate a whole race of people. So that's what's been happening across this land is being dumped back upon the native societies that cherish mother earth; in this false image of indigenous people being care takers of the lands. Makes me angry that somebody could actually think like that.

So again uranium.  Where is it mined?  How is it used and how is it deposited after it's usefulness?

Corporate media and ignorance

John LeKay: What do you believe are the reasons for us not hearing about these serious, dangerous issues in the mainstream media?

William Under Baggage: Mainstream media. First of all, the mainstream media as we know it are controlled by a very few people. Very wealthy families that made their  wealth exploiting natural resources. Initially, some of these families exploited the trees to make newspapers and they inserted their opinions about what news should be. So when some of these families got wealthy exploiting natural resources such as trees, they became extremely wealthy.  Then they could control the dissemination of information, so of course when people are greedy and they do not want anyone else to have that same pot of gold. they are going to lie to people, they are going to misinform people. So this is how the American people are misinformed and uneducated about issues. Basically, controlling the minds of many many people and this is called population control. When you can control the information that is given to a society at large and manipulate that information, you can actually uneducate somebody. Keep them ignorant, keep them to the point where racism is still very much a part of this. When you keep a population uneducated, ignorant - they will do anything they are manipulated to.  As a tool, the mainstream media is still used as such. To keep people ignorant so they only want to cover issues such as movies, mover stars. Mainstream media will not cover itself.  They will not cover ideas that they are spreading misinformation. I see that today with this Iraq war, we don't see the actual pictures of the bombs being dropped on children.  They wont show us that but they'll show us a picture of president Bush standing on a ship saying mission accomplished. I say mission unaccomplished.  I say nothing has been accomplished. All that's been accomplished is nothing but genocide.

So mainstream media will not pay attention to the issues of society, because they are deceiving us.

Information highway

John LeKay: Do you think that we are finally at a time where the ugly truth the mainstream media has been suppressing and all these things we have talked about, will start to reveal itself through this information highway and the use of the internet?

William Under Baggage: I do believe that because it is an alternative way of disseminating information. This inter-highway that many of us travel, we no longer pick up newspapers and these mass media, what I call these weapons of mass deception really deceive the American public . So I believe the internet can actually awaken people and educate people, that in the past were not able to access information. Of course this information is not going to reach the poor population because they don't have access to the internet. They don't even have laptops or they don't even have a PC in their homes.

So it's not going to reach them but in the sense it can educate the masses of the population, that we can actually turn things around, such as my voice being heard across the world.  We look at the networks of people that are being created, just by educating each other, in our own communities by using the internet to educate each other about issues that affect each of our communities. 

In the sense that these networks have been created, we are much more educated as a society, about indigenous America, native America, or as in popular culture known as Indians.  When we think about using the internet to disseminate more information,  we are able to share information on a more rapid basis. We turn on the internet and have many forms of information coming at us immediately. Today many people use the internet as a sole means of educating themselves as far as issues concerning America and beyond that, the globe.

Poverty and removal

John LeKay: How would you describe some of the living conditions and the poverty in some of these reservations; such as Pine Ridge for example?

William Under Baggage: Yes, its horrific.  We are still living in a third world country where access to clean water is not available and abject poverty, where people, have to eat whatever they can find. In contrast to 100 miles away from Pine Ridge was one of the hugest gold mines in the world, in the western hemisphere, controlled by an organization called Homestake mines; which is a subsidiary of a larger multi-national corporation that is actually doing that across the world. Still extracting gold. Huge amounts of it and not giving it back. The Black Hills were confiscated after a treaty with the United States government was signed in 1868, where it left a huge amount of land to the Lakota nation, but also we've got to remember the other nations. Not just the Lakota used the Black Hills as a spiritual area. People did not just go there to extract gold. People came there to pay respects to the creator. They came to a very spiritual sacred place, where people only came to hunt, to fish or to practice their spiritual rituals, to be able to communicate with God, the creator. So when that was confiscated, not only did it affect my people the Lakota, but it affected many plains tribes across that region.

The whole region people came there and the false sense that a lot of these tribes did not get along was manipulated again. It was a lie that was perpetrated. To confiscate that land.  Yes, we all got along and yes there was also some tribal warfare, but I don't think it was on the scale that is perpetrated now that most plains tribes were enemies. I don't believe that, because today you can see that. I have Crow brothers, I have Owbibwy brothers and sisters that consider themselves relatives. We know that was in effect before this divide and conquer tactic worked. When I look at the land that most of my people live on, again it was very usable land but beneath that land lie natural resources, such as uranium and now they are looking at something that is called zeolite.  Zeolie is one of the very few compounds that is known to disable uranium.  This is the compound they use to lien nuclear beds with, what they sit on. It's called zeolite. So that's another new mineral that's being mined and of course it's very abundant under Pine Ridge.

So when they discover very shortly, how valuable these minerals are, where are we going to go next. Are they going to move us to New York City. Are they going to move us to San Francisco, or Chicago, where the masses of the immigrants come to because they have nowhere else to go to. They have no homeland, they have no land in Virginia , Pennsylvania; they have no summer homes in Colorado. Native peoples have been refuges in our own homeland. When they remove us from our aboriginal homelands that we consider a sacred place, a sacred land. When we're disconnected from that and when we're removed, we no longer have that within us so again, people are removed all the time; they're re-moved such as what happened across the east coast where they removed a lot of the populations and moved them out to middle America, to Oklahoma where other tribes that were already existing there were brought and forced upon these lands; and to this day we see poverty; to this day we see racism against those people because of the fact that this land is coveted; again as farmland, as something to mine, or just land in itself that this population explosion that is happening in the United States, people are constantly looking for new land to move to.  I had a real estate agent tell me one day - they are not making any more dirt, buy as much as you can now. 

So again, people are going to be removed and indigenous people have a right to be here, a God given right - inherent right to occupy the land they live on; and of course Native people always look at themselves as guardians of mother earth; so we'll always have clean water; we'll always have clean shelter, but that's not happening as when toxic materials are being dumped on these lands; as in Pine Ridge in the past where test wells were drilled to look for what's under that land and those wells were never capped; they were looking for uranium, they were looking for oil, they were looking for natural gas; and instead of drilling and capping these wells they left them open; and therefore when the seepage of these wells goes through different levels of terrain, the aquifers; the water tables underneath the ground.  Right under South Dakota lies one of the hugest underground oceans  called the Ogallala aquifer which supplies most of the western states with water underground and you can tap into the ground and get up water within 20 feet in some places; so when these exploration companies - these energy companies drilled these exploration wells - they didn't cap them so these things are seeping back into the water, and when uranium is dumped onto the land - it seeps back into the water -  and of course, many people are uneducated about the affects of uranium and what it does to the DNA.

Lakota at the United Nations

John LeKay:  Has the UN been helpful with the situation of what's going on with the uranium - do you know if they are aware of what's going on?

William Under Baggage:  I think they're aware of what's going on - but as far as the UN and the body in itself; I think they are quite helpless; because one of the biggest, richest, most powerful nations - the United States - the UN Headquarters sits on the land of the United States - so we think about power.  The United States has a lot of  power and the fact that it's a military power - it's a way to control populations.  The United Nations has been helpful in the sense that we can network there and get the word out amongst people's in the world that these things are not right and when the United Nations sits down - of course - they are trying to find a way to get along better in the world - and when I think about the UN and has it been helpful - I think it has been helpful in a sense that we can network, we can advise each other, we can inform each other, we can educate the general population of the world as to the conditions confronting the indigenous peoples. 

Right now at the UN - there is a body under the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations - there is a body called the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues - and again a lot of these issues that confront us today go back to the issue of exploitation where the World Bank and a lot of these governing bodies - these controlling bodies have a big say in how development affects these countries.  And I believe that there is no form of sustainable development  - there is no development that is sustainable to the world because of course it is going to extract more natural resources to develop whatever is being planned such as these huge damns that are taking up a huge amount of land that indigenous peoples live on and mines of course have a big effect on how indigenous societies can survive.  So yes, the UN has been effective in that sense, but I don't think that as a policing agent it can't do anything because we know that the United States has the ultimate say in military force; so as an indigenous person I feel helpless sometimes going to the UN because all we are is a voice and maybe if we scream loud enough at the top of our lungs maybe that voice will be heard beyond just within the walls of the UN and again when I think about the United Nations; we are a fractured world, we are not united in any form and we are just trying to address each other's concerns so yes, the United Nations has been helpful in a sense that it gave us a voice but, we still have no legal recourse within the United Nations.