“Tribes have been
locked out of the
process of debate,
as well as our
communities and
many of the people
of America.”
Tom Goldtooth,
President of the Indigenous Environmental Network
Navajo Reservation in Dilkon, AZ
Waste-Tech Services, Inc. "Recycling Plant" 1988–1990
In 1988, Waste-Tech Services, Inc. approached the Navajo tribal government of Dilkon, Arizona,
to build a $40 million recycling plant. It was hoped this project could bring 200 jobs to Dilkon;
an area with 75% unemployment
at this time.
Further research conducted by the community revealed that the “recycling plant” would instead
be a toxic waste dump where
medical human waste, including amputated limbs, would also
be burned. The Navajo believe that the dead are to be respected and
this process appeared extremely disrespectful to both the diseased and to the Navajo culture.
To combat the facility, Dilkon residents created the organization Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (CARE), and later
the national Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).
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Deal of a lifetime
It sounded like a great idea to Tribal officials on the small Navajo reservation: a $40 million recycling plant that would bring 200 desperately needed jobs to the isolated Navajo community of Dilkon, Arizona, where unemployment hovered around 75 percent.
Waste-Tech Services promised the community of Dilkon $200,000 a year, with an additional $600,000
a year to be paid to the Navajo Nation in rent and lease funds. Company officials pledged that they would set up a scholarship fund for Navajo students interested in coming back to work as chemists
or technicians at the plant. On the basis of these representations by the company, the Tribal Chair (similar to a state governor of the reservation) approves the plant in August 1988, and Waste-Tech began plans to set up shop in the remote town.
Then local residents heard about the secret Waste-Tech proposal. They formed Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (CARE) and began meeting regularly to figure out what the proposed project was all about.
In Defense of Mother Earth
Excerpts from From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of Environmental Justice
NATIONAL IMPACT
The ”great idea” began to fade as the community discovered more details of the proposed facility.
The “recycling facility” turned out to be a toxic waste incinerator, designed to burn chemicals and industrial solvents from oil fields, lumberyards, and hospitals. Tons of incinerator ash would be left over from
the process.
Waste-Tech had assured the community that the ash would be safe. But CARE’s investigations, and information supplied by Greenpeace, revealed that ash left over from toxic waste incineration is itself toxic. Each previously undisclosed face revealed
by CARE reduced the project’s credibility in Dilkon.
Community outrage rose to a crescendo when residents discovered that incinerator would also
burn medical waste, including human body parts
and amputated limbs.
“That’s what really turned the stomachs of the Leaders,” explained CARE co-founder Abe Plummer. “We have a belief that you respect the dead,
and if you have to cut off a part of the body you put
it in the Earth with respect–with prayers, not just throw it in the trash.”
This type of corporate deal where jobs and financial breaks are offered to underprivileged
communities in exchange for hosting hazardous waste facilities is known as economic blackmail.
GRASSROOTS IMPACT
CARE grew into an eighty-member organization that prepared residents to testify at the upcoming public hearings on the project.
At the end of the hearing, a vote was taken if those residents present: ninety-nine opposed the project and unanimously rescinded the earlier approval. Tribal Elders asked the company, “If it is so safe,
if it is such a good idea, if it makes so much money, why aren’t the white people grabbing at it in L.A.
and San Francisco?”
CARE’s victories over the incinerator and the dump projects would come to have national implications. Dilkon’s grassroots organization, Diné
(the indigenous name for Navajo) CARE connected with other similar groups at national environmental conferences in the year following this case.
A NATIONAL NETWORK
The Indigenous Environmental Network was born
in 1990 from a national gathering of tribal grassroots youth and Indigenous leadership to discuss common experiences regarding environmental assaults
on their lands, waters, communities and villages. However, as IEN identifies in their mission, the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas have lived for over 500 years in confrontation with an immigrant society that holds an opposing worldview.
As a result, they are now facing an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of their tribe and cultural history. The organization currently participates in global climate and environmental summits to advocate for indigenous human rights.
One of the founding members of IEN puts it like this, “Because we’re still here in our original lands, we still have the memory of particular spots, we still have the connection and the relationship to particular places on this land…I think [IEN] is working because people are empowering their own selves–they are becoming their own resources to network out to other groups, and they’re becoming experts in various things.”
" We're still here in our original lands, we still have a memory of particular spots,
we still have the connection and the relationship to particular places on this land."
The IEN has domestic and global outreach initiatives, participates
in climate summits, and influences numerous grassroots protests today, such as those against the Keystone XL Pipeline.
dilkon
Analyzing Trends
Success of the people
Involve entire community
Attend government meetings
Read carefully over legal documentation
Hold company accountable
Harness media attention
Create national activism support system
Vocalize concerns at international summits
Failure of the state
Withhold information
Target a minority community
Offer few hosting benefits
Operate under economic blackmail for jobs
Disrespect local culture and religion
Exclude community from decisions
Disregard promises