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Protecting Mother Earth Conference

© Andy Thomason

The Tenth Annual Protecting Mother Earth Conference was held in New Mexico, June 10 through 13. About 2000 people from indigenous tribes around the world attended the three day event. Although other environmental/indigenous issues were discussed, the theme of the conference centered on uranium mining and the effects it has on native peoples. Appropriately enough, the conference took place in the Laguna Pueble, at a native youth camp near the Navajo sacred mountain of Mount Taylor, and near Jackpile Mine, the largest open pit uranium mine in the world and one of the areas most heavily impacted by uranium mining. A reclamation process to restore the land is under way, but 5,000 acres of radioactive open pit and waste piles still remain.

The conference was hosted by Dine' CARE (Citizens Against Ruining the Environment), (http://www.cnetco.com/~dinecare/index.ht... a Navajo based community organization that was founded largely in response to the uranium mining policies of the US government and corporations in the early 1990s, and by Indigenous Environmental Network, (http://oraibi.alphacdc.com/ien/iencover.... ) a coalition founded from about fifty indigenous tribes.

Diné means "the people" in Navajo, and the group works on issues from logging to building coalitions with other indigenous groups. Their effort is much more than environmental. Traditional Navajo culture is inseparable from the land. According to their mission statement, the purpose of Diné CARE is nothing short of the survival of the Navajo people. They also work on decentralized energy production and preservation of subsistence economies as means of preserving traditional Navajo beliefs and social patterns.

Indian reservations and indigenous homelands are ideal target sites for mining, toxic waste sites, and environmental exploitation. Much of the land is rich in minerals, often in remote locations. The populations are small, with poor, undereducated people with weak political strength and cash starved economies that leave them vulnerable to promises of prosperity and unaware of any inherent dangers. Between 1990 and 1993 the hazardous-waste-disposal industry began targeting Indian reservations as dump sites for high- and low-level radioactive waste. Not only are reservations low population centers with low income and high unemployment, they are also exempt from many state and local environmental regulations, making it easier for companies to avoid or circumvent safety and environmental laws enforced in other parts country.

From 1990 to 1994, more than 100 proposals were made by the government and industry to dump waste on Native American land.

Besides the Jackpile mine, the Grants uranium district has more than one hundred other uranium mines and five uranium mills, all on or near Navajo lands. In the state of Arizona alone, more than 1,300 uranium mines have been abandoned and no effort made to restore the land.

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