Community elders from Sivuqaq, or St. Lawrence Island, are asking the United Nations for help in getting the federal government to resolve toxic and human rights issues stemming from decades of failure to clean up former defense sites in the area.
“The injustices against my people by the military have been devastating to our health and well-being,” said Vi Waghiyi, Native Village of Savoogna Tribal citizen, during a news conference on March 12 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Waghiyi, who is also the justice director with Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), was joined by Native Village of Gambell elder Merle Apassingok, U.S. Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights Marco Orellana, and others during the Alaskans’ trip to the nation’s capital to speak with government officials and talk about their complaint to the UN Human Rights Council.
The news conference followed a multi-day visit to D.C. by the Alaska Sivuqaq delegation, who came to meet with officials at the Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Congress. In these meetings, ACAT and leaders of the Native Village of Gambell and Native Village of Savoonga offered firsthand accounts of the harms linked to the contaminated former military sites. ACAT shared studies and data documenting the health harms and persistent pollution on St. Lawrence Island.
“Our community-based research, in partnership with the Tribes of Sivuqaq, has demonstrated the long-term and intergenerational environmental and health harms perpetrated by the U.S. military,” said Pamela Miller, executive director and senior scientist with ACAT. “The burden of proof should not have been put on the communities. However, our collective work and documentation demonstrates that the military must now be held accountable for the damages they have caused and for the responsible cleanup of the formerly used defense sites on Sivuqaq.”
Orellana added: “Around the world, militarization inflicts environmental violence on the lands of Indigenous peoples. Military bases are constructed on Indigenous peoples’ land without their consent and often force their displacement. Once abandoned, these military sites leave a tragic remnant of contamination, filling these lands with hazardous and nuclear wastes affecting Indigenous peoples for generations.”
Claudia Polsky, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at U.C. Berkeley, contends what the government is doing is actually illegal.
“The government’s incomplete cleanup of toxic military wastes on Sivuqaq, and the resulting sickness and premature death that is now common among the Yupik people, is not only morally wrong. It is illegal under U.S. and international law,” Polsky said.
