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We Are Poisoning Our Mother Corbin Harney is an elder and spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone indigenous people on whose traditional lands the Nevada Nuclear Test Site is located and the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Geological Repository is being sited. He made these remarks at the Barrick Museum Auditorium at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas on October 3, 2002 as part of the University Forum Lecture Series. The land that we enjoy is a very important part of our life. Without this land, without the things that nature has given us, we cannot survive. I've been around the world talking about all of this to try to put a stop to this nonsense. What we're trying to do is poison our mother. A poison is something that we all understand because we are all seeing what's around us, what's drying up, what's dying. I think some of you people heard me talk about this, 20 some-odd years I've been talking about it. Some of you people have read my book. It's very important that I try to wake up the public and my own people, try to make them understand that we are here to take care of what we've got. That means all of us. Just like nature took care of us, we must take care of our Mommy, our ancestors. We're the ones today that have got to unite together and talk about it.
Let's not tell a lie to each other. We, the native people, have been lied to for 600 years. Now it's your turn. You can either believe the lies, or we're going to have to wake up and say, 'no more of this.' We have many, many years lived through a lie. They've tried to poison us from the beginning, and today some of you people, especially you college students, have read those things in your history. Those are the reasons why we, as a native people, are concerned about Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is something that we enjoyed because it was put there by nature for us to use, for the creatures that roam that part of the country, for them to use that land. Now we the people are concerned about Yucca Mountain. Your scientists and so forth told you, if they put nuclear rods in this tunnel that they built, it is going to hold the water, it isn't going to have the water go into the tunnel at all. But our people still use that clay, we have built houses with it. That clay is supposed to not let that water go into the tunnel, but it's going in there anyway. Why?
Because you know as well as I do, Yucca Mountain is in a fault line of the Earth's movement, and besides that, it's volcanic. Long before we realized, a few thousand years ago, longer than we thought, the volcanos were there below it, only two miles west of Yucca Mountain. It was active at one time. We really don't know when it's going to erupt. Nobody knows what nature's going to do. They are putting a tunnel into this little tiny hill. They call it a mountain. To us, all it is is just a rolling hill. And the rocks, as you know, are not solid. It's crumbly rock. Water going to wash that away. The Earth movement has cracked that caleche, so now it's not tight, airtight. What does it mean for the nuclear radiation to leak out? It'll come through the crevices of these rocks. So they never have told us the truth of it. They keep telling us, 'Oh, it's not that dangerous.' I hear that time and time again from our scientists, the engineers and so forth. But when I ask questions about those things, they don't have any answers for me. How come my people, that are living close by, are dying with cancer? Cancer has taken over the land, not only here but around the world. This is one reason why we as a people, really didn't believe what we were told because we know differently. This is how important it is for us to learn more about it. I've been telling the people throughout the country wherever I travel, don't get it from this mouth here, you get your own information from the nuclear Energy Department office, but now they're getting wise to us. They want to know the number of the book you want. This is how secretive it's getting. Same at the Nevada Test Site. Think about it, the bombs they have tested beneath, within, our Mother, a few thousand feet inside. What is it doing to our water table? I talked about that many years ago. Someday, we're not going to be able to use our water. I think some of us already understand that somewhere the water is not usable. Not too long ago, they kept telling you people to boil your water. Boiling water is not going to do away with radiation.
I've been told by our scientists, radiation and water don't mix. I have asked the people at the Test Site, 'How come you guys are not drinking that water, then?' This is something that we've got to think about. Most of the workers at the Test Site went home, changed clothes, took a shower. I have asked many, many people, 'What do you do with your clothes when you go back home?' First thing they tell me, they take a shower. 'What about your clothes?' 'Oh, I give it to my wife, or whoever.' She picks it up, puts it on her chest, this is where the cancer develops. Many of those people today are not here. Many of the animals are not here. The things that we as a native people survive on, what nature has put here on Mother Earth like the berries, the roots, the medicine that we used for thousands of years, before your ancestors ever came up on this part of the continent. This is something that's really important to all of us. So it's really something that you have to think about. How did we survive? I been asked that question many times. Where did you Indian people go to get your groceries? And I have said to them, one hill carries different kind of food, another hill carries a different kind. This is how nature works for us. Different areas have different kinds of food, of medicine. This is the reason why we were told to take care of what's out there in order to survive, in order to teach the younger people coming onto the land. Now Yucca Mountain is going to provide us with nothing but poison. We're putting poison into the Mother Earth. So this is something that we have to think about, all of us, not just me, or a few of you, especially the younger generation today. You know our life is beginning to be corrupted. When you bring a life onto this Mother Earth, not only a human, they develop something else. I have seen so many of my people, they don't have legs, no arms, no brains, no eyes, not only here in the United States. I really learned those things in Russia, in Kazakhstan, in Germany where they really suffered because at one time Russia and the Chinese were testing their bombs, nuclear weapons. But people got caught, Kazaks got caught between the two. And today their water is no good, they're struggling to get new water, some places, they don't have clean water at all. And this is where we're headed as a people here in the United States. We're really beginning to witness these things. So you are the young today, think about it because you are the ones who are going to bringing life onto the Earth. The life that we're living today is not healthy, not strong. We don't have healthy life any more. This is something that we've got to think about, how can we better this world, have cleaner water, cleaner air, cleaner food that we're going to be surviving on. Our Mother Earth, someday, somewhere, is not going to produce the food for us. We the native people already see that. The animal life that we survive on, our people for thousands and thousands of years, is gone. In my part of the country, the rabbits we survive on, now they're contaminated with something else, they've got all kinds of diseases. Same with the sage hen. So those are the things that are gone.
Choke cherries that we eat, a really important food for us at one time, that protects our liver, our blood, our kidneys, those are the things that are gone off of the face of the Earth today, very few left. In this part of the country my people survived on pine nuts. Pine nuts were a very important food, not only for humans, for all the living things at one time. But they're disappearing throughout the country. This is how important it is that we have to learn about the radiation of a nuclear device that we developed. It's not going to get better unless we as a people think about our grandchildren, our children - if they are going to look at something beautiful out there, then we have to protect those things. If we don't, there'll be nothing, everything's going to be dried up. The only place we're going to come to is a museum like this in order to see what was out there beautiful on the land at one time. How long are we going to do this? Nevada state alone is not big enough to put our nuclear waste into. California is not big enough. We've got so many power plants today throughout the country, every day the waste coming out of those nuclear power plants. And now it's worse because we're going to be transporting the nuclear waste over the highways, in front of your door. Think about how, if anything ever happens on the highway, railroad, the nuclear energy department has warned us from the beginning if anything leaks of the nuclear radiation, it's going to affect the living things within a 450 mile radius. If something leaks out of the canisters, if anything happens, what chance does our young generation have? How can we get the message out there to the people that are developing that poison? The more we put it into Mother Earth, the more it's going to contaminate the land. |
Shoshone elder Corbin Harney 
Yucca Mountain, Nevada (Photo courtesy U.S. Energy Department 
This above ground atmospheric nuclear test was conducted at the Nevada Test Site on May 25, 1953. (Photo courtesy 
Choke cherries (Photo courtesy 