House approves Yucca Mountain

by: Valerie Taliman / Southwest Bureau Chief / Indian Country Today

May 14, 2002 - 1:00pm EST

WASHINGTON -- The Bush Administration’s plan to revive the nuclear industry and store deadly waste on Indian lands will endanger Native communities and their future generations, according to several Native leaders and activists who blasted a May 9 House vote to approve Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.

"For the House of Representatives to support Bush’s plan to dump this country’s nuclear waste on the backs of Native Americans is an insult," said Tom Goldtooth, coordinator of the Indigenous Environmental Network, a grouping of 200 indigenous organizations with national offices in Bemidji, Minn. "This is an extreme act of environmental racism and a travesty against tribe’s rights.

"The nuclear industry has waged an undeclared war against indigenous peoples that has poisoned our communities for 50 years through uranium mining, testing of nuclear weapons, incinerating and burying radioactive waste, and even experiments involving Native peoples. We’ve already made countless sacrifices for this country’s nuclear programs."

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