Rudolph C. Rÿser, PhD.
A visionary founder of CWIS

Millions of indigenous peoples living in Fourth World territories around the world have been and continue to be exposed to nuclear radiation and toxic chemicals. The United States of America, France, Britain, Russia, China, Israel, Britain, Pakistan, India, and North Korea produce these toxic materials. Other countries with electricity-producing nuclear reactors also contribute to radioactive waste. Nuclear bomb detonations, radioactive waste storage sites and toxic chemical dumps have contaminated the soils, water, air, plants, animals and people for more than 70 years.

Let us stipulate from the very outset that international states own, control and regulate an institution called the United Nations. It is their organization and they can do with it what ever they chose. Fourth World nations are not members of the UN. They sit outside that body. To be a member, as the Palestinians have learned, takes the embrace of the member states. Let us also note that the UN Third Committee accepted the proposal from the State of Bolivia in 2010 to convene the United Nations High-Level Plenary Session of the General Assembly and would call that session of the UN the “World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.” Neither of these facts can be contested.

Despite popular rhetoric to the contrary, there are no fully self-governing Indian nations inside the boundaries of the United States. For two generations, Indian leaders have stressed the paramount importance of Indian nations governing themselves, and U.S. government leaders have increasingly given lip-service to the idea of Indian self-government. Still, it was not until 1987 that any concrete political action was initiated to begin the process of formally instituting Indian self-government as a reality. Ten Indian nations, including the Quinault Indian Nation, Hoop Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and the Lummi Indian Nation took the first cautious step toward formalizing self-government through a self-governance planning process. Agreements to begin this process were negotiated with key U.S. Congressional representatives, and the U.S. government enacted its own laws authorizing the process.

The knowledge traditions of Salish country are neither old fashioned nor out of date. Indeed, this body of knowledge collected in the people, stories, songs, and the land has the most modern application: prevention and treatment of chronic diseases that now afflict growing numbers of native peoples as well as non- natives living in Salish country. We use “Salish country” to identify a region of coastal northwest United States and southwest Canada and parts of their interior where peoples as similar and different as the Wuikinuxv, Wenatchee, Semiamoo, Skagit, Quinault, Clatsop, and Siletz live.

We recently decided at the Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS) to inquire into the affects of elevated greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere on the medicinal and pharmacologic benefits of wild harvested sources for indigenous communities. With 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion indigenous peoples significantly dependent on wild harvested foods and medicines—and virtually none of the current research investigating wild harvests and Indigenous Peoples—we saw this as an important responsibility. This is what we have initially found.