La fem ir shell

Genocide

Society’s patriarchal frame is responsible for conditions in which radioactive waste from the military can ensure virtual genocide of Native populations

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

Hence, the environmental effects of a war such as the Persian Gulf War threaten the lives and livelihood of those humans least able to escape the immediate effects-women, children, and the poor. A feminist perspective- especially an ecofeminist perspective that focuses on the interrelationships between the treatment of women and other subdominants, on the one hand, and the treatment of the nonhuman natural environment. on the other 8 Hypatia hand-shows how and where such effects will be borne disproportionately by women, children, racial minorities, and the poor.6 Consider chemical sensitivity. Persistent toxic chemicals, largely because of their ability to cross the placenta, to bioaccumulate, and to occur as mixtures, pose disproportionate serious health threats to infants, mothers, and the elderly. In the United States this is a crucial issue, for example, for Native Americans living on reservations, recognized by the federal government as “sovereign nations.’’ Navajo Indians are the primary work force in the mining of uranium in the United States. According to a report, “Toxics and Minority Communities” (Center for Third World Organizing 1986), two million tons of radioactive uranium tailings have been dumped on Native American lands. Cancer of the reproductive organs occurs among Navaho teenagers at a rate seventeen times the national average. Indian reservations of the Kaibab Paiutes (Northern Arizona) and other tribes across the United States are targeted sites for hazardous waste incinerators, disposal and storage facilities. Many tribes, “faced with unemployment rates of eighty percent or higher, are desperate for both jobs and capital” (The Christian Science Monitor 1991). The infamous report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ 1987) identified race as the primary factor in the location of uncontrolled, hazardous waste sites in the United States. Three out of every five African Americans and Hispanic Americans and more than half of all Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites. Native American women face particular health risks. A survey of house- holds and hospitals on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota revealed that in 1979 in one month thirty-eight percent of the pregnant women on the reservation suffered miscarriages, compared to the U.S. population rate of between ten and twenty percent. There were also extremely high rates of cleft palate and other birth defects, as well as hepatitis, jaundice, and serious diarrhea. Health officials confirmed that the Pine Ridge Reservation had higher than average rates of bone and gynecological cancers. What does this have to do with peace? In addition to the obvious point that these toxics maim, harm, and kill their victims, the United States government plays a major role in the proliferation of these wastes. According to Seth Shulman’s The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy ofthe U.S. Military (Shulman 1992), the U.S. military is one of the leading producers of unregu- lated toxic wastes, hidden from public view, control, and knowledge, at military and other installations in every state. For instance, Basin F, a phosphorescent toxic lake on the outskirts of Denver, is believed to be the earth‘s most toxic square mile (Shulman 1992, xi). The liquid filling this 100-acre lagoon contains “nearly 11 million gallons’ worth of wastes, including by-products of the manufacture of nerve gas and mustard gas-chemical weapons whose Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady 9 lethality is normally measured in minute quantities such as milligrams” (xi). While most people associate the problem of toxic wastes with corporate industrial giants like Union Carbide, Exxon, or Du Pont. In fact, the Pentagon’s vast enterprise produces well over a ton of toxic wastes every minute, a yearly output that some contend is greater than that of the top five U.S. chemical companies combined. To make matters considerably worse, the military branch of the federal government has for decades operated almost entirely unrestricted by environmental law. Billions of gallons of toxic wastes-a virtual ocean-have been dumped by the US. military directly into the ground at thou- sands of sites across the country over the past decades. (Shul- man 1992, xiii) According to Shulman, the national military toxic burden is “a figurative minefield. The nationwide military toxic waste problem is monumental-a nightmare of almost overwhelming proportion. And like JPG’s Uefferson Proving Ground in Madison, Indiana] bombs, the military’s toxic legacy is sequestered from public view, waiting, politically at least, to explode” (Shul- man 1992,7). . The Pentagon’s own account ranks it “among the worst violators of hazard- ous waste laws in the country” (Shulman 1992,8). The Pentagon has already identified approximately 20,000 sites of suspected toxic contamination on land currently or formerly owned by the military worldwide; to date only 404 have been cleaned up (Shulman 1992,8). The nearly unthinkable worry is whether a real cleanup of this toxic legacy is technically possible. These empirical examples show fundamental feminism/peace connections, namely, those involving the placement of uranium tailings and other toxic wastes, since the military bears primary responsibility for exposure to toxics in the United States.