Native Community Action Council news release on Entry Into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Native Community Action Council

P.O. Box 46301

Las Vegas, NV 89114

Contact email: nativecommunityactioncouncil@gmail.com

NEWS RELEASE

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

January 22, 2021

The Native Community Action Council is celebrating the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entry into force by gathering in Las Vegas at the Federal Courthouse to hold banners affirming the entry into force of the treaty. The treaty was approved by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on July 7, 2017 by a vote of 122 in favor, the Netherlands opposed, and Singapore abstaining. Five nuclear powers and four other countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — boycotted negotiations and the vote on the treaty, along with many of their allies.

The Shoshone people view the treaty as a positive step leading to relief from over 900 nuclear weapons tests above, and below ground that released radiation upon the homelands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians. “We are all down-winders,” stated Ian Zabarte, Secretary of the Native Community Action Council. Mr. Zabarte has worked for decades to end full-scale nuclear weapons testing conducted in secret and investigate health consequences of radiation exposure on his people and land.  His goal is to end the need for nuclear weapons, mitigate the impacts upon the Shoshone people and land and prevent Yucca Mountain from being developed as a high-level nuclear waste repository. The Native Community Action Council is a party to Yucca Mountain licensing with the only ownership contention. After spending $15 billion dollars the Department of Energy cannot prove ownership to Yucca Mountain even with the Bureau of Land Management Master Title Plats because the Treaty of Ruby Valley is controlling under the US Constitution, Article 6, Section 2, treaty supremacy clause. Shoshone ownership is enduring.

“Our relationship to the land and pure water of the Great Basin is our identity” said Mr. Zabarte. Destructive nuclear weapons testing left vulnerabilities in the land destroying the delicate flora and fauna that allowed noxious and invasive plant species to take hold. Mr. Zabarte was acquitted of rounding up Indian horses the US claims are “wild” under the definition of Congress in the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971. “We acted out of necessity to protect our horses from the destruction of the range caused by nuclear weapons testing.” The US Bureau of Land Management blames the Shoshone livestock for destroying the land.

Shoshone leaders will then travel to the Nevada National Security Site at 2:00 pm to hold banners and create awareness among test site workers that their work is illegal.

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LAKE HURON NUKE DUMP: Property Values, Other Economic Effects

Lake Huron's shorelineLast year, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) officially cancelled its plans to build a "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) for 20 provincial reactors' so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes, less than a mile from Lake Huron (photo, left), at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine. This came after a two-decade struggle, culminating with the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation's veto, an 86% to 14% tribal referendum opposed. However, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), dominated by OPG, is now targeting South Bruce, Ontario, just 25 miles inland, for a national Canadian high-level rad. waste dump. Northwatch and Protect Our Waterways invited Beyond Nuclear to present on radioactive stigma impacts on property values and other economic sectors, as local resistance mounts.

See the recording of the one and a half hour Zoom event, here.

By Far the Worst Thing Trump Did Was Flirt With Nuclear War With North Korea

Trump’s actions on this one issue outweigh everything else, yet it’s received less attention than many of his tweets.

As reported by The Intercept.

The Update: No one person should have the power to launch nuclear weapons

Trump alone, a deranged demagogue, has the power to launch US nuclear weapons. That must change. No one person should have that capacity, least of all a tyrant. But it's also a reminder of the folly of possessing nuclear weapons at all. As the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons enters into force on January 22 we should celebrate. Then we must get back to work to persuade the nuclear pariah states to do the right thing and disarm. 

Western Shoshone elder Carrie Dann passes on to the Spirit World

Carrie Dann on her land in 1993, as posted by the Right Livelihood FoundationA giant, a living legend, of Indigenous rights activism and leadership, has passed on. It is with sad hearts that we share the news that Western Shoshone elder Carrie Dann (1932-2021) passed on to the Spirit World on January 2, 2021.

This Is Reno reported Carrie Dann's passing.

Brenda Norrell has published a tribute, entitled "Carrie Dann in Her Own Words."

Carrie Dann, along with her sister, Mary Dann (1923-2005), helped lead the Western Shoshone Nation's fight to protect their homeland, Newe Sogobia, against many threats, including nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site (now named the Nevada National Security Site), and high-level radioactive waste dumping at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Ian Zabarte, Carrie Dann, and Bob Fulkerson, 2019. Photo by Holly Woodward. Used with permission.Carrie Dann also spoke out against MRS (Monitored Retrievable Storage), now called CIS (Consolidated Interim Storage), whether targeted at Yucca Mountain, or at scores of Native American reservations across the U.S., such as at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah.

(See a 2019 photo of Carrie Dann, with Ian Zabarte and Bob Fulkerson, left. Ian Zabarte is Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, Secretary of the Native Community Action Council (NCAC), and recipient of Beyond Nuclear's 2020 Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud "Unsung Hero" Award; Bob Fulkerson founded Citizen Alert of Nevada, which fostered NCAC, and helped lead the grassroots "Nevada Is Not a [Nuclear] Wasteland" resistance for decades.) READ MORE.