Resource Exploitation in Native North America: A Plague upon the Peoples

by Bruce E. Johansen

Overview

This wide-ranging survey of the environmental damage to Native American lands and peoples in North America—in recent times as well as previous decades—documents the continuing impact on the health, wellness, land, and communities of indigenous peoples.

Beginning in the early 1950s, Native peoples were recruited to mine "yellow dust"—uranium—and then, over decades, died in large numbers of torturous cancers. Uranium-induced cancers have become the deadliest plague unleashed upon Native peoples of North America—one with grave consequences impacting generations of American Indian families. Today, resource-driven projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline continue to put the health and safety of American Indians at risk.

Authored by an expert with 40 years of experience in the subject, this book documents the environmental provocations afflicting Native American peoples in the United States: from the toll of uranium mining on the Navajos to the devastation wrought by dioxin, PCBs, and other pollutants on the agricultural economy of the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation in northernmost New York. The detailed personal stories of human suffering will enable readers to grasp the seriousness of the injustices levied against Native peoples as a result of corporations' and governments' greed for natural resources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440831843
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/11/2016
Series:	Native America: Yesterday and Today
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bruce E. Johansen is Jacob J. Isaacson University Research Professor of Communication and Native American Studies at University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he has been teaching and writing since 1982.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii

Introduction ix

1 Native America's Radioactive Legacy 1

2 Toxic Chemicals: A Plague upon the People 27

3 Canada's Hydroelectric Dreams 59

4 Climate Change and Native Peoples 77

5 Welcome to My Moonscape 109

6 Mining: Mother Earth or Mother Lode? 145

Selected Bibliography 189

Index 215

Editorial Reviews

Compelling. . . . Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, professionals.” —Choice

From the Publisher