Uranium Legacy on Sioux Nation with Charmaine White Face

The Great Sioux Nation is made up of seven sub nations and called itself, Oceti Sakowin.  Yet, because of deceit, greed, and dishonesty by the United States, six of the sub nations almost totally disappeared by the beginning of the 20th Century. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed an Executive Order in secret declaring this four-state region of the country to be a "National Sacrifice Area" for the mining and production of uranium and nuclear energy. In southwestern South Dakota, the southern Black Hills contain many abandoned uranium mines. Nuclear radiation near Edgemont, SD, polluted the underground water of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation according to a study completed in the 1980s by Women of All Red Nations. Our speical guest today is Charmaine White Face, Zumila Wobaga, (66) is Oglala Tituwan Oceti Sakowin (Oglala Lakota from the Great Sioux Nation).  She is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  As the Spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council, established in 1894, she authored a book called Indigenous Nations Rights in the Balance, An Analysis of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples after attending the debates for a number of years at the United Nations. In 2002, she founded and continues to coordinate Defenders of the Black Hills, a non-profit environmental organization which received the international Nuclear Free Future Award for Resistance in 2007, in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. White Face is a Physical Scientist and Biologist.  She taught at the college level prior to becoming a writer.  She has been trying to increase awareness of the radioactive pollution in the Northern Great Plains since 2003. Defenders of the Black Hills website is: http://www.defendblackhills.org/