![]() I was born in 1964, a year after above-ground testing of nuclear weapons was banned. According to a 2009 study in the Nevada Law Journal, between 19, the tests conducted on our land caused 620 kilotonnes of nuclear fallout. When the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, 13 kilotonnes of nuclear fallout rained down on the Japanese city. Approximately 928 nuclear tests took place on the Shoshone territory – 100 in the atmosphere and more than 800 underground. Over the next 40 years, it became the premier testing location for American nuclear weapons. On January 27, 1951, the first nuclear test took place on our land, when a one-kilotonne bomb was dropped from a plane flying over the site. We suspect that Nazi scientists brought to the US as part of Operation Paperclip – to help the US develop nuclear weapons – were involved. In 1951, in violation of the treaty, the US established the Nevada Proving Grounds (what would later become known as the Nevada Test Site and is now known as the Nevada National Security Site) on Shoshone territory and began testing nuclear weapons – without our consent or knowledge. In the treaty, the Shoshone continued to own the land but we agreed that in exchange for $5,000 a year for 20 years, paid in cattle and other goods, the US could establish military posts on the land, that US mail and telegraph companies could continue to operate telegraph and stage lines on it, that a railway could pass through it, that the US could mine for minerals on it.īut shortly before the end of World War II, we started to be overrun by the US military industrial complex, in ways we are only now beginning to understand. Our relationship to the US is based upon the Treaty of Ruby Valley signed in 1863. We have been on this land for at least 10,000 years. ![]() There are approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Shoshone lineal descendants but the United States places the number much lower based on blood quantum (a percentage of ancestry). Our country is approximately 40,000 square miles (25.6 million acres), from just west of Las Vegas, Nevada all the way to the Snake River in Idaho, including a 350-mile (563km) wide strip in the Great Basin. I am the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians – the most bombed nation on earth. We have seen mental and physical retardation, leukaemia, childhood leukaemia, all sorts of cancers. And then a week later, he found out he has it, too.Ī few months ago, an elder here died from a rare form of brain cancer.Įvery family is affected. At around the same time, one of my cousins told me his mom has cancer. Now his daughter, who is a toddler, has heart problems as well. Last year, my cousin, who is about 50, had a defibrillator put in his chest. They say he had a heart attack, but when your skin falls off, that puts stress on your heart. I watched my uncle suffer from horrible cancer that ate away at his throat and my grandfather die of an auto-immune disease that is known to be caused by exposure to radiation. ![]() You never know what is killing you when it is done in secret. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |