Vermont Yankee Truth Tour – The reality behind the “Clean and Green” Façade - Brattleboro

Native Americans show the truth behind the rhetoric

Lorraine Rekmans, of Ojibway-French descent, is from Elliot Lake, Ontario, a former uranium mine boom town. Ian Zabarte, a member of the Western Shoshone Nation, is from Yucca Mountain, the site of America’s proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. They will appear at a series of community forums throughout Vermont including the Firehouse Gallery on May 6th at 7PM, to talk about the impact of the nuclear industry on their communities. Both Rekmans and Zabarte have experienced cancer-related deaths among friends and family, and environmental damage in their communities they claim results from exposure to the nuclear fuel-cycle. With the Vermont Legislature poised to take up the request by Entergy, Vermont Yankee for a 20-year extension of the Vernon nuclear reactor’s license in the next legislative session, a look at the wider impact of this facility’s continued operation is timely. Chris Williams, of Hancock, an organizer of the tour, states that “Vermonters considering the license extension need to hear about and understand that poor, rural, Native Americans and people of color are being subjected to nuclear exploitation through the uranium mining practices and radioactive waste storage practices for which no environmentally sound alternatives exist”

Lorraine Rekmans, was born in Elliot Lake, Ontario, a city which was formerly surrounded by uranium mines in which most of her family worked. “Many of us have been silent for a long time. We have been told to be quiet because we do not know all the details of the scientific information possessed by the experts.”

Since the boom years of uranium mining in the 1970s, tailings from the mines have rendered lake water undrinkable, and contaminated fish and game. Rekmans has had five close friends from the region around Elliot Lake contract brain cancer. “What has happened?” she asks. “The poisons that seep into our water system and the tailings dust in the air around us will kill us slowly and silently.”

Lorraine is a member of the Serpent River First Nation. As the former Executive Director of the National Aboriginal Forestry Association (NAFA), Lorraine worked on national and international forest policy. Lorraine published an aboriginal newspaper in Northern Ontario, and has also worked as a reporter at the Elliot Lake Standard.

Ian Zabarte lives in the Yucca Mountain region of Nevada, where the proposed high-level nuclear waste storage facility has prompted statewide opposition, especially in light of Nevada residents’ health impacts as host to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.

He states, “We are fighting for our lands, which is the essence of who we are. We know these lands, the mountains bear the figures of our greatest chiefs, the valleys contain the foods that have sustained our people for 10,000 years. These lands contain the patterns and lifeways which our people need to carry on our traditions, much like DNA carries the messages of the human body. If these lands are uninhabitably destroyed, we have nowhere to go, no reason to go on. We cannot discover some other land to inhabit. Our culture and tradition dictate that we remain within our traditional homelands as caretakers. This is our responsibility.”

“The U.S. Department of Energy is charged with the investigation of Yucca Mountain as the first site for the United States high-level nuclear waste repository. The scientific criteria dictate that the site must contain the waste for 10,000 years. How can they guarantee that the waste will be contained for 10,000 years? They have only been on the North American continent for 500 years and on Western Shoshone lands for less than 200. We plan to remain on our lands for the next 10,000 years, and we need them to be uncontaminated,” Zabarte said.

The Truth Tour will be visiting Vermont from May 6th through 12th with community forums at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington on Tuesday, May 6th at 7PM, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Montpelier on May 7th at 7 PM and at the GRACE Building in Hardwick on Thursday May 8th also at 7PM. All are most welcome and encouraged to participate in these important presentations. The Truth Tour will also be making other stops including visiting towns in Southern Vermont.

The tour is sponsored by the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance and the Citizens Awareness Network.

For more info - Deb Katz - 413-339-5781