The construction, operation, and eventual decommissioning of the Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex in eastern Washington, is an ongoing, devastating experience for the people of the Yakama Nation.
Despite the Yakama people’s attempts to stop it, the reactor’s construction forced the Yakama, and three other indigenous nations, off much of their ancestral homeland and damaged the ecosystem of the Columbia River, which had provided the Yakama Nation with food and medicines since time immemorial.
It was a dark time that has grown even darker after the site was decommissioned in 1987. Some 56 million gallons of contaminated water were left behind in giant underground storage tanks that leaked into the Yakama Nation’s water system, causing many to fall ill.
Yakama Councilperson and CWIS founding board member Russell Jim ( 1935-2018) led a 30-year fight to force the clean-up of the site’s nuclear waste. His actions helped secure funds from the U.S. Department of Energy and form the Yakama Nation’s Environmental Restoration/Waste Management (ER/WM) program in the early 1980s, with Jim at the helm.
Today the clean-up efforts continue, still led by the ER/WM program that Jim and others created, and, despite much work that remains to be done, the attempt to restore the region to its former glory is well underway.
This week we bring you two interviews with traditional foods and medicines elder and Russell Jim’s wife, Barbara (Bobbi) Jim, from our film series Pathfinder: The Untold Story of the “Indian Business”, which is currently in production.
Barbara Jim reminisces about her youth, first meeting Russell Jim, and his path to becoming an indigenous leader.
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The library is dedicated to the memory of Secwepemc Chief George Manuel (1921-1989), to the nations of the Fourth World and to the elders and generations to come.
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