Irradiating FW peoples!

Electromagnetic Warfare Training facilities: US Navy Plan 2014

Construction of electromagnetic warfare facilities, nuclear testing and production sites and other radiation producing projects have been constructed in rural, low population areas such as on and near indigenous peoples’ territories throughout the world. The US Navy is planning a new facility that will directly affect the lives and property of the Quinault Indian Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation. The US government has not taken steps to obtain the free, prior or informed consent of these two nations despite the obvious potential adverse effects of low level radiation on the men, women and children in these indigenous territories–much less the residents of the small towns in which the facilities are planned to be built.

The United States government has systematically engaged in the development of high and low radiation electromagnetic and nuclear facilities that expose America’s indigenous peoples to life threatening illness. The United States Navy announced that it will construct two Electronic Warfare training ranges very near two US Pacific Northwest Indian Reservations (The Quinault Indian Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation). An Environmental Impact Assessment conducted in advance of the military project determined the two “electromagnetic warfare” stations will have “an effective power of 5 million watts” each. The station will be capable of emitting “64 simultaneous beams at frequencies” between 2 and 19 gigahertz. Each station will feature a “house sized” golf ball shaped facility at the US Naval Station at Moclips, Washington (eleven miles from the Quinault Nation’s reservation). Not only are plans made to establish the “golf ball” facility near Quinault, but three mobile, truck mounted 10000 watt antennas operating for 260 days a year for 8 to 16 hours each day will move between 15 different sites in the Olympic National Forest to the east of the Quinault Nation.

Environmental activists are alarmed by the radiation effects in the forests, but virtually nothing has been said about the health of Quinault people and the thirteen bands of Nez Perce, Okanagans, Wenatchis and other peoples at the Colville Reservation. Growing evidence of the adverse effects on human health of low level radiation (electronic and nuclear) demands that Quinaults and Colvilles stop the Navy-sponsored electromagnetic projects.  The Yakama, Nez Perce and Umatilla nations along the Columbia River already know the adverse effects of low level nuclear waste radiation (increased levels of cancer since 1944), and of course the terrifying effects of nuclear bomb testing on Marshall Islanders and people at Bikini Island (armless and legless babies). It seems that nuclear power states are not concerned with the adverse effects of their radiation projects on the world’s indigenous peoples [consider the United States (nuclear tests among Shoshone in Nevada, uranium mining in pueblo and Spokane nation territories and plutonium production in Yakama Nation territory) France (Cook Island peoples), Britain (aboriginals in Australia), Russia (indigenous peoples in Kasakstan, Ukraine) and China (Uyghurs, Mio, Tibetans)].

Many companies and government agencies suggest that electromagnetc facilities are benign and should not worry people.  That is exactly what was said about nuclear power plants, plutonium production facilities (Hanford in Yakama Territory), low level nuclear radiation waste and more. Researchers at the Yakama nation, in Sweden, Norway, (genetic damage, cancers, birth defects)  and elsewhere have determined that low level radiation has greater adverse effects over time on the lives of people, animals and even plants than the developer want people to know. Fourth World governments have a duty to themselves and to the generations to come to intervene and demand that the companies and states’ governments secure their free, prior and informed consent before proceeding to develop dangerous radiation contamination of peoples’ bodies and lands.

The Quinault government and the Colville government must demand that the United States government and its Navy first obtain their free, prior and informed consent before constructing what damages can befall their people and lands–as the Yakama Nation, Umatilla Nation and Nez Perce already know. The Navy has extended its comment period to November 28th. Fourth World governments must intervene now!