I hope that one day history in the future will show who the
true primitives are. . . . I will continue to work with you and with
anyone to preserve and protect my culture. It
seems that the true E.T. is Edward Teller. . . . But
in regard to all of this culture on a
world-wide basis, I think it was best said by, or at
least one of the great sayings was by an author,
Peter Farb, who wrote the book "Men's Rise to
Civilization". In there, and I quote: "Man is quick
to prevent cruelty to animals, sometimes to
humans, but there is no counterpart to the
Humane Society or the Sierra Club for the
prevention of cruelty to entire cultures."
We need an independent expertise on an international level. The
scientists from the native population have to be among them. We have
to know how long we still have to live, and the most important thing is,
we have to know the truth -- even the bitter truth -- about the health
of our children. At this international meeting I learned the whole
truth, even the most bitter truth, all the sufferings of the people of
the terrestrial globe. . . .
Scientists! Why do you kill small nations, the aborigines? What bad
things did we do, why did we become guinea-pigs? Scientists! Relinquish
your doctor-knowledge, become people and not
murderers! Authorities! Come to your senses! You ruined
generations. We doctors do not want to harvest the fruits of your
experiments. Stand in the place of the doctors and look in the eyes of
dying people, of suffering mothers, or, even better, resettle there in
these sorrowful corners! Wake up!
. . . the most profound question is: At whose expense and in whose
interest is the mining done in our area? At whose expense are our people
suffering? Is it not because of the German or the British or the USA
citizens? Our people know very little about Rio Tinto. They know it only
as the Palabora Mining Company and they don't know that this is one of the
largest companies in the world which is committing all those
atrocities. Before I came here, I also didn't know about all the dangers
involved in radiation, but because of the knowledge you shared with me,
I'll go back home and tell our people about what is the cause of their
diseases, and from there we are going to take up campaigns in an attempt
to stop uranium mining in our country.
It is well-known that there are three ways to destroy a people's
identity: by fighting against them with weapons, substituting their
language, and by changing radically their nutritional habits. France has
become a real expert in these three methods. . . .
In my native language, the neo-Maohi, they call the earth "fenua". The
placenta nourishing the baby in the womb is called "pu-fenua". In fact,
for my people, the earth is related to the fertility of the mother, which
is the "te pu-fenua", the center of the earth. When a child is born,
the placenta is traditionally buried and a tree is planted on that spot so
that the cycle of life can be restored.
That's the reason why I am a militant of the "Tavini Huiraatiraa", the
Polynesian Liberation Front. I want the independence of my country and
the French nuclear experiments to stop. That's also why I believe in
and I struggle for the creation of a new state with national sovereignty
on the chess-board of the United Nations.
And I told them if they destroy the sky, machines would come
and soon destroy the land.
They didn't listen . . .
This challenge -- it asks of us to evolve a different relationship with
uranium, with plutonium, with the poison fire. . . . more and more
citizens are beholding, seeing, recognizing that this legacy must be
guarded responsibly. Ground level storage on sight, and so we know better
what to do with it, keep it visible with minimal transportation on sight
where it is ecologically feasible. . . It is as if we don't know what
to do with this unless we make it
serve us, and that is exactly what I am beginning to think, that we cannot
ask of the poison fire. If we want to make it serve us, it will kill us,
and perhaps the plutonium is saying to us something like this: Look at
me, just look at me. I cannot be your slave, I cannot serve your ambitions
and your comforts. You cannot use me to fight each other. Just look at
me and if you look at me, guarding me, keeping me out of the biosphere for
the sake of your future generations, then I will become your teacher. And
in the act of beholding me and guarding me, you will awaken to your courage
and to your faithfulness and to your solidarity with each other.
It is not a normal situation when the people who are in charge of the
fate of a whole civilization lie quite openly to the whole world.
We must reiterate for the world records: The nuclear weapon's
production-chain has and continues to endanger the lives and livelihoods
of millions of indigenous people around the world. From the Aborigines
in Australia to the Western Shoshone people in Nevada to the peoples of
the French Pacific, indigenous peoples have witnessed the destruction of
their lands and their children by this diabolical monster. We must unite
beyond our race, religion or class and put an end to this madness! Our
land and its people are the Creator's most precious recources' and we can
no longer act as co-conspirators in this death and destruction through our
own silence. Our voices must drown out the cries and the screams of
Mother Earth, the tears of the mountains, the deserts and the waters must
be replaced with chants, songs, poems and prayers for an end to this
nuclear nightmare. . . .
We know that the scientists say that there is a controversy over the
health effects of low radiation, but I am here to tell you, my friends
-- along with the others -- that low radiation doses is deadly, dangerous
and it causes death. Death through leukemia, death through cancer.
[W]hat we label as a crisis in our environment is equally as much a
crisis within ourselves, a crisis of human consciousness and
values. And there are several dimensions
to this that actually serve as hidden driving forces for the
ecological crisis, and I'll just mention a couple of them. One is
the psychological pollution of continual bombardment of corporate
advertising and the consumer culture, another is the dominance by
an hegemony of the masculine gender and related problems of class
and racial oppression. A third is the epistemological tyranny of
western science and market economics. And finally, the spiritual
bankruptcy of secular technological modernism.
Now, if we ignore these aspects of our current dilemma, then
the solar technologies that I have outlined above could actually, I
think, serve to hasten ecological collapse, because energy would be
removed as a constraint on a forward stampede. However, if we
embrace these deeper dimensions accounting for their physical,
social, cultural and spiritual implications, then solar energy and
renewable sources can provide abundant energy for all human
societies on earth and free us once and forever from the ravages of
fossil fuels and nuclear power.
[T]he effective half-life of this radioactivity is 80,000 years. So
it means in 80,000 years, there
will be half as much radioactivity in these tailings as now. You
know, that dwarfs the entire prehistory of the Salzburg region
which goes way back to ancient, ancient times. Even archeological
remains -- 80,000 years. We don't have any records of human
existence going back that far. That's the half-life of this
material. And as these tailings are left on the surface of the
earth, they blow in the wind, they wash in the rain into the
water systems, and they inevitably spread. Once the mining
companies close down, who is going to look after this material
forever? How do you in fact guard 200 million tons of radioactive
sand safely forever?
Why does [France] have no qualms at all in keeping secret all medical
information about atomic sites of the last 25 years? This information
would help to know about the actual state of health of the island's
communities living in the peripheric zone of Moruroa and of all those
people who had to work out there. Hiding behind the national defense
secret service, France prohibits civil and independent laboratories to
check the radioactivity level referring to samples taken personally
in the atoll of Moruroa and in the forbidden zones.
However marginal, our homeland is what makes us who we are. It identifies
and makes clear our purpose in life. Soon after birth we have a ceremony,
where our umbilical cord is buried in our land to symbolically tie us to
our land and people forever. Just as Christians have principles they
adhere to, we have similar fundamental principles that are taught daily
from childhood on. These teachings instruct us to look after our people,
our land, our animal relatives. The land becomes a part of a person and
of our religion. Therefore, when you separate native people from their
lands it is equivalent to taking away their will to live. It is hard to
convey this concept to a white man who thinks nothing about selling his
home and moving on for better economic opportunities. We don't have that
choice. Accordingly, we cannot entertain the idea that a people could
just move on if, in fact, their lands get contaminated. Our people are
being sacrificed to satisfy America's need for evermore energy. Native
lands are sought for use as burial ground for hazardous and radioactive
waste.
And the third proposal: We are categorically against any proposal of
underground storage. We suggest the surface proposals. Well, everybody
knows that when the cobra is under the glass, in front of the eyes, it
is clear that one can be quiet. And if one puts it into the cellar and
there are also many cracks there then it is nearly impossible to
guarantee safety. We have discovered this thing. Moscow and Leningrad
scientists may maintain that there is not any spreading out, i.e. that
there is no harmfulness there beneath the ground, but we have discovered
it ourselves and far away from the place of the source of the
pollution. That's why we are now looking for a parliamentary way for
only one thing: to solve the main question at the beginning. What is
more important: the rights of the atomic industry -- or the rights of the
population and of nature in the face of such danger from the atomic
industry? All the problems resulting from this depend on the solution of
this question. That is why we believe that the health of the people and
the cleanness of nature should be put first, and only then should the
atomic industry's wishes and needs be looked after.
[The] Japanese government and the nuclear power industry are constructing
comprehensive nuclear fuel plants in Rokkasho Biretsh in Armony
prefectures. This facility, formerly called the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Facilities, will play a vital role in Japanese plutonium's utilization
programs. It will be the largest concentration of radioactive materials
in the world. . . . Also an earthquake entry in this district and two
faults are located right under the facilities. . . . The Japanese
nuclear program poses the threats of ecological catastrophe not only to
Japan but to the entire planet. There are unacceptable risks involved
in every phase of the program from the construction of nuclear
facilities to the transport of radioactive wastes over sea and land. We
must bring plutonium production and transport to an end in Japan and
every country in the world.
But not only the technical catastrophe was a crime . . . . It is also
the deliberate crime of those who did not summon up the courage to
admit frankly: Atomic energy after the 26th April, 1986, is a
crime! . . . This is why Chernobyl changed the character of man. This
is why now there is no justification for those who search for arguments
referring to the scientific expertises to the opinion of specialists and
scientists actually representing the atomic lobby which is guilty of
many crimes, on whose conscience weigh the life and health of millions
of people. And today, now, literally as we are carrying out this
Hearing, those experts continue their criminal activity. They try to
convince the governments of the new states which arose after the crash
of the Soviet Union that with the technical help of western states it
is possible to reconstruct and to build new nuclear power stations
which will serve as a basis for the economic progress of these new
states. We all have to clearly understand what is going on today.
As the country we know, Australia was born of a lie. Gracelyn yesterday
spoke of the principle of
"terra
nullius", the principle of empty land. Now, that was and remains
wrong, it's a lie, it's a fiction and yet, it provided the so-called
legal framework to justify the settlement or the invasion of
Australia. It also provided the premise or the thinking that Australia
is a vast, empty, rich land. And that's a very dangerous series of
assumptions to work on. At the time of the white invasion of Australia,
western Europe and in particular Britain was dominated by a functional
culture, it was a mechanistic view of the world. It saw the world as a
machine and it saw developed peoples as the mechanics, they knew how to
tinker with it to get the most out of it. . . . The spirit of the land
is what we are all trying to protect. I wish us all success in this
and in our struggle to stop this industry which causes so much pain
to so many people in so many places.
So uranium is a part of everyday life, and they do all sorts of different
things with uranium, foundations for houses. . . . It's also being used
as decoration and so on. That is, the people are not informed at all as
to what that means. This uranium in Caétité is highly
radioactive, that is, it's natural. I'm talking about natural
radioactivity, it's very highly radioactive. And the people have no
idea, and they're being told, it isn't bad at all if we do something
here, that is, that no harm will come to us. . . . Germany has promised
to lend Brazil 800 million dollars so that they can finish building Angra
II and III. These are such absurd things that one should know about in
Europe.
And all this is happening in a country where, according to the government
itself, almost 60 percent of the people live in abject poverty. The
other 40 percent is not rich, they're also poor, and a small portion of
them rules. This is happening in a country which is also full of atomic
waste. A few other small numbers in conclusion. We've got 3,400 tons
of atomic waste from the accident at Goiânia alone, and then added
to that is the waste from Angra which is also there, very precariously
located . . .