nuclear-news

Flooding and nuclear wastes eat away at a tribe’s ancestral home

For decades, chronic flooding and nuclear waste have encroached on the
ancestral lands in southeastern Minnesota that the Prairie Island Indian
Community calls home, whittling them to about a third of their original
size.

Two years after the tribe received federal recognition in 1936, the
Army Corps of Engineers installed a lock-and-dam system just to the south
along the Mississippi River. It repeatedly flooded the tribe’s land,
including burial mounds, leaving members with only 300 livable acres.

Decades later, a stockpile of nuclear waste from a power plant next to the
reservation, which the federal government reneged on a promise to remove in
the 1990s, has tripled in size. It comes within 600 yards of some
residents’ homes. With no room to develop more housing on the
reservation, more than 150 tribal members who are eager to live in their
ancestral home are on a waiting list.

 New York Times 13th Nov 2021

November 15, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, USA