© Kevin Lamarque / ReutersU.S. President Barack Obama smiles as he is honored in a blanketing ceremony before speaking at the White House Tribal Nations Conference in Washington September 26, 2016.
Washington will pay 17 Native American tribes a total of $492.8 million to settle long-standing disputes over mismanagement of tribal lands by the Department of the Interior. The settlement comes amid ongoing protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Federal authorities manage almost 100,000 leases on nearly 56 million acres of trust lands on behalf of Native American tribes, including oil and gas extraction rights, timber harvesting, grazing, farming and housing. Additionally, the government manages about 2,500 trust accounts for more than 250 tribes. More than 100 tribes have sued the government, claiming the government mismanaged their lands and money.
"This is an important achievement that will end, honorably and fairly, decades of contention that not only sapped valuable resources but also strained relationships," said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates,
addressing the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference in Washington, DC on Monday.
Since 2009, the Obama administration has settledthe claims of 90 federally recognized tribes and is looking to settle 11 more tribal claims for a grand total of $3.3 billion, Yates added.Among the affected tribes are Gila River, Colorado River and San Carlos Apache in Arizona; the White Earth Nation in Minnesota; and the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla people in Oregon.
President Barack Obama made a promise during his electoral campaign in 2008 that he would host an annual summit with tribal leaders to ensure that Native Americans could participate in important decisions affecting their communities.
"We haven't solved every issue. We haven't righted every wrong. But together, we've made significant progress in almost every area,"
Obama told the eighth annual Tribal Nations Conference on Monday.
No mention was made of the ongoing protests of thousands of Native American activists against the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP), which the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in South Dakota says would threaten the tribe's water supply and sacred burial grounds.Earlier this month, a
federal judge in Washington, DC rejected the motion by the Standing Rock Nation to halt the construction on the DAP. However, the Obama administration instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to pause construction work near Lake Oahe until the government could reexamine its previous decisions on the matter.Protesters continue to clash with security contractors working for Energy Transfer Partners, the private company behind the DAP that intends to proceed with construction. If completed, the 1,172-mile pipeline would traverse four states and is expected to carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil a day from North Dakota's Bakken oil fields to an existing pipeline in Illinois.
Comment: History of uranium pollution:
- In December 1995 and January 1996, U.S. Marine Corps Harrier aircraft training near Okinawa, Japan fired about 1,520 DU - depleted uranium - rounds. The Japanese government was not notified for almost a year.
- In February 1999, two U.S. Marine Corps Aircraft expended 263 DU rounds at the U.S. Navy firing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which is not licensed for DU munitions. This "accidental" release was only discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Military Toxics Project.
- In January 2003, the Navy admitted routinely firing DU from its Phalanx guns in prime fishing waters off the coast of Washington state since 1977.
The people of Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1994-1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2003),
Libya (2011) and
Syria (2013) experienced uranium exposure first-hand:
Immediate battlefield exposures of combat and cleanup personnel to "depleted" uranium are only the tip of the toxic and radioactive iceberg. Continuing environmental exposures present a much longer-term danger to civilians in post-conflict areas. The Royal Society (the British national academy of sciences) recently concluded that because DU may move into the environment - especially water sources - over many decades, "contaminated land might be a concern for hundreds of years" and
"contamination of water supplies or other sensitive components of the environment... might only become apparent after a number of years or more likely decades."Firing of DU munitions
can immediately contaminate air, soil, and water with ingestible particles of toxic and radioactive "depleted" uranium.(Read more in the
original publication: "
The depleted uranium fact sheet".)
See also:
- Navajo Nation sues EPA over toxic gold mine spill which turned Animas River yellow
Comment: History of uranium pollution:
Immediate battlefield exposures of combat and cleanup personnel to "depleted" uranium are only the tip of the toxic and radioactive iceberg. Continuing environmental exposures present a much longer-term danger to civilians in post-conflict areas. The Royal Society (the British national academy of sciences) recently concluded that because DU may move into the environment - especially water sources - over many decades, "contaminated land might be a concern for hundreds of years" and "contamination of water supplies or other sensitive components of the environment... might only become apparent after a number of years or more likely decades."
Firing of DU munitions can immediately contaminate air, soil, and water with ingestible particles of toxic and radioactive "depleted" uranium.(Read more in the original publication: "The depleted uranium fact sheet".)
See also: