W.A.R.N. Report 1980

Full downloadable text of the 1980 W.A.R.N. Report, showing massive, widespread problems with Indian health.  The report details high levels of bone cancer, infant mortality and a miscarriage rate seven times the national average.  It points to the immediate need for a systematic study of water quality in Indian country, with specific emphasis on Uranium and its tailing toxins, as well as dioxin, the active element in Agent Orange, used for crop-dusting at nearby Martin, South Dakota.  Tests at Oglala and Manderson were shown to have Uranium rates of 25 & 19 pico curies per litre of water, a rate far in excess of 15, the national limit EPA Limit for Uranium, a standard that is itself considered too high by Joe Wagoner of Public Health Services.  The report also calls for tests to determine the prevalence of chemicals from pesticides such as Malathion & Toxaphane.

Download the full 1980 WARN Report

Table of Contents

I. Background

II. Work Completed by the Health Study

III. Findings

Poor Statistics – Lack of Information

Serious medical Conditions

Radioactivity

Poor Well Maintenance

Possible Chemical Contamination
-Toxaphene
-Agent Orange, Dioxin, 24D, 245T
-’1080′
-Zinc Phosphide
-Malathion
-Sevin, Faradon
-Gunnery Range retained area

Poor Media Coverage

IV. Recommendations for Tribal Government

V. Footnotes

Appendix

W.A.R.N. Health Investigation 1980 – Summary

A copy of the groundbreaking Women’s Health & Water Report detailing high levels of chemicals present in Pine Ridge water such as uranium, dioxin & ’1080′, as well as nuclear waste from a nearby U.S. Air Force Gunnery Range. The report details the effects of these poisons on the people and their concerns for their future health:

PINE RIDGE HEALTH INVESTIGATION: Health Problems Proven

In a one month period in the late 1979, 14 women or 38% of the pregnant women of the Pine Ridge Reservation miscarried. Medical personnel were concerned. The people of the reservation were concerned.

That incident brought to a head health issues that had been developing for some time among the Lakota people. The elders said that cancer was a “white man’s disease” – that it had not existed in previous generations. Yet each family seemed to have had at least one death due to the disease in the present generation. Heart problems and respiratory problems seemed to be on the rise. Birth defects – club feet, heart defects, cleft palate – were noticed increasingly. The rate of complications of pregnancy seemed higher… and miscarriages were forcing the birth rate down.

Women of All Red Nations, a grassroots organization of Indian women, began a health investigation. Random interviews of Pine Ridge families were done and compared with a similar group of families on the Cheyenne River Reservation in northern South Dakota. The Pine Ridge interviews revealed a rate of cancer, heart ailments, and miscarriage far greater than the Cheyenne River group. Water samples from the Cheyenne River and a subsurface source at the Pine Ridge community of Red Shirt, tested at a Rapid City lab revealed a gross alpha radioactivity level of 19 and 15 picocuries, respectively. Federal safety regulations state that a reading greater than 5 picocuries is considered dangerous to life.

These results confirmed fears held by the Lakota people since uranium mining and development had begun in the southern Black Hills, just 75 to 100 miles west of the reservation. Would they suffer from the radioactive wastes and effects of this industry? It is well documented, that on June 11, 1962, 200 tons of radioactive mill tailings at the uranium mill in Edgemont, South Dakota washed into the Cheyenne River and traveled into the Angostora Reservoir. The Cheyenne River flows from the Reservoir down through the Hills and across the reservation. The Cheyenne passes within a few hundred feet of the Red Shirt well where the contaminated water sample was taken. That well supplies water to the community.

Also in question is the purity of the Arikaree and Ogalala aquifers which provide ground water for the reservation and its people. These aquifers, which extend under a large area of south-western South Dakota, may be affected by exploratory drilling being done by energy corporations in the area. Such drilling may expose water supplies to veins of uranium and the emission of radon gas, a radioactive uranium by-product which dissolves easily in water.

Many people on the reservation also believe that the U.S. Gunnery Range, an area of the reservation retained by the U.S. Air Gunnery Range, an Area of the reservation retained by the U.S. Air Force, is being used as a nuclear and chemical waste dump. They question the impact that this might be having on their water, air, and health.

In March, 1980 W.A.R.N. demanded immediate alternative sources of water for the Pine Ridge reservation until the source of these health problems and water contamination could be isolated and averted. The Environmental Protection Agency, Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs all denied their request. The Indian Health Service, responsible by federal statute for protection of Indian health, denied the existence of any health-problem.

W.A.R.N. investigators, however, obtained IHS records and statics under the Freedom of Information Act which revealed rates of miscarriage on Pine Ridge even times the national average and infant mortality rates at more than twice the national rate.

Dr. Jeffrey Olenick, a physician at the Pine Ridge IHS hospital, reported unusual excessive bleeding after miscarriages of Pine Ridge women and called for a comprehensive health study. Ann Corral, Director of Field Health Nursing at the hospital cited high cancer and diabetes rates among the elderly and high rates of reproductive cancer. In an interview with W.A.R.N. attorney Jacqueline Huber, IHS Aberdeen area Acting Director Dr. E.S. Rabeau, mentioned high rates of bone cancer on the reservation. (Experts cite bone marrow and reproductive organ tissue as the most sensitive to develop cancer as a result of contact with radiation).

Preliminary water tests done by IHS using EPA taken water samples revealed gross alpha levels in wells in Oglala and Manderson also above federal maximum safety levels and thus there is no cause for concern. The people remain unconvinced and ask why these health problems exist and what relationship they have too high gross alpha and uranium levels in the water. EPA has responded that it will monitor the water for one year and then determine what action should be taken.

W.A.R.N. investigators have now revealed new causes for concern for water contamination on the reservation. Toxic chemicals 2-4D and 2-4-5T are used widely in the Pine Ridge area. One of the active ingredients, dioxin, has been shown to have caused impotency, respiratory and nerve disorders, and cancer in military veterans exposed to it during the Vietnam War. “1080″, another extremely toxic chemical, has been recommended for prairie dog control on the reservation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Toxaphene, a poison that may bring on brain hemorrhage or cancer of the liver, is rumored to be used as a grasshopper spray on the reservation. Engineers at the Indian Health Service have admitted that many wells on Pine Ridge are improperly capped and that, as a result, any of these surface contaminants could filter down into water supplies or, of course, contaminate surface waters.

In June of 1980, IHS revealed water test results for the Pine Ridge community of Slim Buttes (another western community) which indicate gross alpha levels three times the federal safety maximum IHS has agreed to drill a new well for that community. The sewage system at the town of Pine Ridge has backed up, dumping raw sewage into area streams.

Alternative water supplies have yet not been received and are still being demanded. IHS claims lack of money to provide this water or to establish a preventive health study or program at Pine Ridge. The Aberdeen Area Office, however, admits having turned one million dollars in unused monies back to the U.S. Government in the last fiscal year.

Due to the local dissatisfaction with the response of federal agencies, W.A.R.N. is presently organizing an independent comprehensive investigation by medical and environmental experts into the health problems on Pine Ridge, their causes, and their relationship to environmental contaminants on the reservation. Also in response to local concerns, the reservation tribal government has appointed a tribal water quality investigator and has created a legal project to work toward the return of the Gunnery Range area of the reservation. It is hoped that with or without federal agency support, the people will have answers to their questions and health problems soon.

A Downloadable copy of the 1980 WARN Report on Health Issues:

warn_report_summary_1980

Weekend Update #14: White Justice

Russell Means Discusses the 51-month sentencing of Timothy Hotz, a man convicted for 3 prior DUI offenses who drunkenly killed two 20 year old Indians on Pine Ridge, while an Indian gets 3 years for shooting the radiator of a BIA vehicle.

Ward Churchill Vindicated

On April 2nd, 2009, A jury returned a decision stating that Ward Churchill had been wrongfully fired from his position as a tenured professor at Colorado University. The cause stemmed from the publication of his now infamous essay ‘The Ghosts of 9-1-1: Reflections on History, Justice and Roosting Chickens’. After its initial publication, three years passed until a section of the esay entitled ‘Some People Push Back’ was brought to light by a college newspaper reporter that the essay came under public criticism and caused the circumstances under which Churchill was subsequently fired.

In the full text, Churchill contends that the events of September 11th, 2001 were made inevitable by a foreign policy that puts the rights of corporations inexorably in front of the rights of people, histories or environments, and that the systemic amnesia engendered and perpetuated within the system is its own form of culpability.

Citing the failures of popular movements to cease the sanctions in Iraq during the 1990s, abolish the WTO or its colluding powers at the IMF/World Bank, he charges the left with acquiescing to state powers in deference to that which is comfortable and secure. The phrase, ‘Little Eichmans’ is largely credited for having drawn attention to the essay, a curious objection as the phrase itself was borrowed from a John Zerzan article, published in 1997.

The jury found for Churchill’s suit and held CU liable for the costs of his legal team and an additional one dollar.

The proceedings come at a time of increased scrutinity of college professors. From Norman Finkelstein’s being denied tenure, to Dr. Cornell West’s somewhat fiery departure from Harvard for Princeton, the high halls of academia have held witness to more power struggles than usual of late. The common thread underlying them all though would seem to be a charge of anti-zionism leveled at all the actors involved here. Finkelstein wrote ‘Beyond Ghutspa: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History’ and West chose to leave Harvard after a public row with Larry Summers, a man who equates Anti-Zionism, the refusal of the State of Israel to exist, and Anti-Semitism, the racist bigotry towards a Jewish person. All three, Churchill, Finkelstein and West are all outspoken critics of US Foreign policy, vis-a-vis Palestine. All three have faced massive scrutiny that others in their fields are hardly ever subject to.

The case in point, Churchill was a tenured professor, but was abruptly demonized at the hint of equivalency of complicity of those who oversaw speculative investing and those who who punched tickets for Auschwitz victims. To be sure, there is a very real difference between the two, but what of those who ran the books for the SS? What of those who currently oversee the World Bank funding of dams that have flooded out perhaps 60 million people in India. Tens of thousands of these were farmers who have now committed suicide. What of the one million farmers displaced by US agribusiness in Mexico in the last 8 years who have no choice but to leave their villages and either enter a sweatshop or take the uncertain road north? The US does not send any of these people to be incinerated, but what level of collusion is acceptably equivalent? At what point will the American or even the progressive voices in America cease being voices and become actions in solidarity against such practices? Until Americans, and in particular those Americans who know something is wrong, answer this question, there will continue to be rhetoric, but no response, and the chickens are still out in the field, waiting to come home.

For Churchill, he has been proved triumphant against the school system that fired him. Unrelenting, he is now seeking the school to either reinstate him or award him one million dollars in damages. A Denver District Court Judge will decide within 30 days of the ruling whether additional damages will be awarded.

Weekend Update #12 – Self Esteem

This week Russell talks to us about self-esteem and how important it is that we rebuild a strong sense of self-worth in the Children now growing up on the Reservations. We are given a first-hand glimpse of how the charitable act of one man really made the day for some kids here at the Porcupine School. He also illustrates the two-faced nature of our sicko, wacked-out USA Government by revealing how the fabulous “new school” is just a fascist coverup for what really goes on here on the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation.

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Former Colorado Governor Caught Lying Under Oath – Churchill Trial Update

Churchill v. University of Colorado:

The (Former) Governor
Takes the Stand

by J. Robert Brown

Former Governor Bill Owens was on the stand for a couple of hours. Not long after the 9/11 essay surfaced, the Governor called on CU to fire Churchill.

David Lane’s main point was to show that the Governor, with line item veto authority over the University of Colorado, applied pressure to get the University to fire Ward Churchill.

The jury heard the former president of CU, Betsy Hoffman, describe a conversation with the Governor where she said he told her to fire Ward Churchill “tomorrow,” that his tone was “threatening,” and that if she didn’t he would “unleash his plan.”

Governor Owens did not specifically recall the conversation but doubted that it was not “in that tenor” and that he did not have a “plan.”

Later, when a partial transcript of an interview on the O’Reilly Factor was put up on the screen, Lane pointed to an exchange where Owens denied he had the authority to fire Churchill but then admitted: “I do have some budget authority over the budget.” Owens declined to admit that this was a threat, noting that its a true statement and repeated over and over that he had actually raised the CU budget during his administration.

On recross, Lane asked whether in fact Governor Owens had a “strategy” for CU if Churchill wasn’t fired. He answered in the negative. Lane then pointed to this exchange on the O’Reilly transcript:

• O’REILLY: One more question for you. You have basically a strategy, and I want to get this right. You’re not going to pay him off, so he’s not going to get the big bucks. You’re going to go through the lengthy process to prove that he did something that you can legitimately fire him [for], and then he goes — “See you.”
• OWENS: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. That process is starting. I think it will ultimately result in him being fired.

The quick denial followed by the reference in the O’Reilly Factor caused a slight stir in the courtroom. Governor Owens then repeated that he didn’t have a strategy and that he was merely acknowledging that based on the evidence that he knew, there was sufficient basis to fire Churchill.

Governor Owens did acknowledge in his testimony that he was glad the University had not heeded his advice and fired Churchill immediately after the 9/11 essay surface.

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