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Saugeen Ojibway Nation Says It Was Shut Out of Canada’s Nuclear Strategy

The Nation whose territory hosts the Bruce nuclear site says Ottawa never consulted it on a plan for up to 10 new reactors — and that its consent is required.

Miranda Miller, Jul 08, 2026, https://www.owensoundcurrent.com/p/saugeen-ojibway-nation-says-it-was

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation says the federal government wrote Canada’s new Nuclear Energy Strategy without involving the Nation whose territory hosts the country’s largest nuclear facilities.

In a statement released July 7, the SON Joint Chiefs and Councils said they were disappointed and frustrated by the lack of consultation on the Strategy, which Ottawa released June 22.

Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson unveiled the plan, which sets out to build up to 10 new large-scale reactors across Canada — two under construction by 2035, five more planned or under development by 2040 and at least one outside Ontario.

SON says it was not part of developing that Strategy, despite what it calls the significant impacts nuclear development has already had, and stands to have, on its Land, Water and People.

What the Strategy could mean for the Bruce site

The federal plan could include the proposed Bruce C project, an expansion of up to 4,800 megawatts at the existing Bruce Power site in the Municipality of Kincardine, within SON territory.

Bruce Power submitted the project to a federal impact assessment in 2024. The assessment is now in its impact-statement phase and is expected to run to roughly 2028. If built, Bruce C would make the site among the largest nuclear stations in the world.

SON has been taking part in that project-level assessment. Its objection is narrower and specific: that the national Strategy setting the direction for new builds was developed without it.

A letter to a Prime Minister who had no role

SON says its Joint Chiefs and Councils wrote to the Prime Minister before the Strategy’s release to raise concerns about the lack of early engagement.

The Strategy document itself states that Prime Minister Mark Carney was not shown the Strategy and had no role in developing it, which government officials have attributed to the ethics screen he holds over certain assets. Owen Sound Current has not independently reviewed SON’s letter or any federal reply.

SON says its territory already hosts Canada’s largest nuclear facilities and stores most of the country’s nuclear waste, accumulated over decades without the Nation’s consent. It warns that treating nuclear energy as a pillar of national industrial strategy risks repeating a pattern of putting industry priorities ahead of SON’s rights and stewardship responsibilities.

Consultation language versus accountability

The Strategy commits to upholding Indigenous rights and Crown consultation requirements, and states elsewhere that it aims to increase Indigenous equity participation in nuclear projects.

SON says that language does not explain how those rights will be protected in practice, and that commitments without clear actions and accountability are not meaningful.

Chippewas of Nawash Ogimaa Kwe Veronica Smith said Canada and Ontario cannot continue to treat SON territory as “an energy sacrifice zone — an area where the Land, Water and People bear the risks while the benefits flow elsewhere.”

Chippewas of Saugeen Acting Chief Randall Kahgee said SON members are central to decisions on major nuclear development. SON leadership and its Environment Office say they continue to press their position in discussions with Canada and Ontario, and that SON’s consent is required for any new nuclear development in or affecting its territory.

July 14, 2026 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

Ainu land rights in crosshairs as Hokkaido communities debate nuclear waste

Nuclear energy and waste are “a poison,” Kano says, that don’t fit into the philosophy of Ainu people, the Indigenous group which inhabited Hokkaido before it was annexed in 1869 by imperial Japan.

Japan Times, By Chermaine Lee, Jul 6, 2025

Plucking the resonant strings of a tonkori — a broad, sword-shaped instrument that’s been played by the Indigenous Ainu people for generations — Oki Kano, a Japanese musician of Ainu descent transformed a club in Kyoto into a vibrant tapestry of sound, mixing together rock, Ainu folk and dub music as part of a tour earlier this spring.

Refusing to be labeled an activist, Kano has woven his rebellious spirit and a nod to Indigenous rights into his music, which moved anti-nuclear activists following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Perhaps most notably, he made a speech at a United Nations meeting later that year that clued some people into the issue of using Indigenous land for nuclear plants and waste storage.

Nuclear energy and waste are “a poison,” Kano says, that don’t fit into the philosophy of Ainu people, the Indigenous group which inhabited Hokkaido before it was annexed in 1869 by imperial Japan.

These days, Indigenous land rights have added another layer to the division of opinions in Suttsu and Kamoenai, two wind-blown fishing communities in the prefecture, over whether to host a permanent underground repository for Japan’s nuclear waste. Residents of the two municipalities, with fewer than 4,000 people combined, have expressed conflicting views on the prospect after their respective mayors volunteered for a feasibility study on the prospect in a bid to secure all-important subsidies.

‘An Ainu problem’

Kano’s U.N. speech regarding Hokkaido and Japan’s nuclear energy inspired American scholar ann-elise lewallen, a professor at the University of Victoria in British Colombia, specializing in modern Japan studies and Indigenous and environment rights, to start a yearslong research project into how a potential nuclear waste dumping ground in ancestral Ainu land might violate their rights.

Although there are no current Ainu communities in these two villages, the professor told The Japan Times during her research trip in Hokkaido that any energy decisions in the prefecture are “an Ainu problem” because of land rights issues

Vocal opponents like Kano aside, Ainu people have not raised the issue of nuclear waste en masse, with many more focused on salmon fishing rights. Still, lewallen says their consent is essential under United Nations principles to protect Indigenous rights. Without it, Japan is carrying out what she calls “energy colonialism.”

In 2007, Japan was among the 143 countries that voted in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The declaration states that governments shall “take effective measures” to “ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous people without their free, prior and informed consent.”

But the declaration is nonbinding and Japanese law does not currently recognize the Ainu peoples’ rights to Hokkaido’s land, an issue that is currently a focal point in a high-profile court case over salmon fishing rights.

It was only in March when the absence of Ainu consent on the nuclear waste study was mentioned for the first time during a meeting held by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) with Suttsu residents about the site, anti-nuclear activist and Suttsu resident Kazuyuki Tutiya said………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2025/07/06/energy/hokkaido-ainu-nuclear-waste-storage/

July 13, 2026 Posted by | indigenous issues, Japan | Leave a comment

Anishinabek Nation stands united in unequivocal opposition to the transportation of nuclear waste through the entire Anishinabek Nation territory.

ANISHINABEK NATION TERRITORY (July 1, 2026) – The Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief shares a statement as the Nation prepares to celebrate Canada Day.

“We wish you a Happy Canada Day! 

Anishinabek Nation statement on Canada Day

ANISHINABEK NATION TERRITORY (July 1, 2026) – The Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief shares a statement as the Nation prepares to celebrate Canada Day. https://anishinabeknews.ca/2026/07/anishinabek-nation-statement-on-canada-day/

“We wish you a Happy Canada Day!   We celebrate the diversity, cultures, and contributions of this Nation with pride and encourage others to join in celebration. However, we also encourage citizens of this Nation to take the time to understand that this land you have come to know as Canada has a colourful past with a legacy that continues to negatively affect the Original People of this land. While some parts of the country are celebrating, First Nations people are contemplating the Government of Canada’s plans for a toxic nuclear waste dump in a small town in Northwestern Ontario within the Treaty 3 territory.

The Anishinabek Nation stands united in unequivocal opposition to the transportation of nuclear waste through the entire Anishinabek Nation territory from southern Ontario to the proposed burial of nuclear waste in the Township of Ignace, Ontario, and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation. While Prime Minister Carney claims, ‘We are defending and building together, the true North, strong and free’, there is a stark contrast between words and actions, and rightsholders and citizens of this land are taking note. Instead of protecting our homeland, the plan is to pollute it with toxic nuclear waste, far from the populations that utilize and benefit from nuclear energy produced in the south.

The Anishinabek Nation stands united in unequivocal opposition to the transportation of nuclear waste through the entire Anishinabek Nation territory from southern Ontario to the proposed burial of nuclear waste in the Township of Ignace, Ontario, and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation. While Prime Minister Carney claims, ‘We are defending and building together, the true North, strong and free’, there is a stark contrast between words and actions, and rightsholders and citizens of this land are taking note. Instead of protecting our homeland, the plan is to pollute it with toxic nuclear waste, far from the populations that utilize and benefit from nuclear energy produced in the south.

Imagine for a moment that the federal and provincial governments proposed nuclear waste in a DGR in Southern Ontario, the most densely populated heart of the country. Would you be so eager to impose such a dangerous burden on those communities that have no choice but to live with the risk? Would there be silence or dismissiveness? Or would Canadians stand up and demand meaningful engagement, transparency, and respect for their health and environment?

magine for a moment that the federal and provincial governments proposed nuclear waste in a DGR in Southern Ontario, the most densely populated heart of the country. Would you be so eager to impose such a dangerous burden on those communities that have no choice but to live with the risk? Would there be silence or dismissiveness? Or would Canadians stand up and demand meaningful engagement, transparency, and respect for their health and environment?

As stated in Article 29 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous Peoples without their free, prior and informed consent,” and we do not consent to the transportation of this nuclear waste in our territory and member First Nations.

We call on the federal government to reconsider its pursuit of a dangerous, toxic nuclear waste dump that threatens our future generations, and to cease these reckless plans immediately. We ask that you respect the treaty relationship, our inherent rights, and our sovereignty. Listen to our voices and prioritize safe and environmentally sound solutions that do not put any communities or the environment at risk. It is painfully clear that the transportation and disposal of hazardous nuclear waste bring risks, uncertainty, and consequences for all.

July 4, 2026 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, wastes | Leave a comment

Federal appeal court upholds First Nations victory to protect wildlife at planned nuclear waste site

The Globe and Mail, May 29, 2026, Marie Woolf, Ottawa, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-appeal-court-upholds-first-nations-protect-wildlife/

A small Quebec First Nation has won a landmark case in the Federal Court of Appeal over a failure to reduce risks to wildlife – including two types of bat and a yellow throated turtle – in planning the location of a nuclear waste storage site near the Ottawa River.

The Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld a decision last year by the Federal Court that ruled in favour of Kebaowek First Nation and local environment advocates.

The ruling may stall plans to build a storage mound at the Chalk River Laboratories site northwest of Ottawa, designed to hold up to one million cubic metres of radioactive low-level nuclear waste. It could also have implications for future legal challenges to building projects, which could threaten local wildlife.

Kebaowek First Nation and local environmentalists in March last year successfully challenged a 2024 decision by then-environment-minister Steven Guilbeault to issue a permit allowing a nuclear waste mound near the Ottawa river to be built, even though it could impact species at risk

The former environment minister issued the species-at-risk permit, allowing Canadian Nuclear Laboratories to press ahead with its plans for the waste site, in spite of potential harm to two types of bats and a turtle with a bright yellow throat.

The permit authorized incidental harm, harassment or killing of the threatened Blanding’s turtle, the endangered little brown bat and endangered Northern long-eared bat.

The Blanding’s turtle, which can live for 80 years in the wild, is known as the turtle “with a sun under its chin” in some Indigenous legends. Its population has been hit by habitat loss, invasive species and development.

The construction of the nuclear waste mound at Chalk River could lead to such turtles being killed on roads, while the habitat where the bats roost and raise their young could also be threatened, Kebaowek First Nation has warned. It fears the development would also harm black bears with dens there, and other wildlife including rare Eastern wolves.

Ole Hendrickson, conservation committee chair with the non-profit Sierra Club Canada Foundation, an environmental group that mounted the challenge alongside the First Nation, said the ruling “will have implications right across Canada, for other threatened habitat.”

“This should send a strong message to the federal government that placing environmental protection in last place after economic interest is not only unacceptable to Canadians, it will cause them trouble in the courts,” he said in a statement.

The Federal Court of Appeal decision comes amid tension over environmental protection, Indigenous rights and major federally backed projects.

On Wednesday, Mr. Guilbeault, a committed environmentalist, announced his resignation from federal politics. Mr. Guilbeault played a key role in many of the previous Liberal government’s climate initiatives which have been diluted, stalled or reversed by the current government. He plans to resign his seat later this summer.

In the judgment issued on Thursday the Federal Court of Appeal questioned Mr. Guilbeault’s decision that Chalk River was the “best solution” for the storage site. To issue a species of risk permit, the minister needed to be of the view that “all reasonable alternatives” had been considered as locations.

Three judges at the Federal Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that Mr. Guilbeault’s decision to issue a permit was “unreasonable” and in dismissing the appeal by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories said the issue should go back to the current minister for redetermination.

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Julie Dabrusin will now have to reconsider the issuing of a species-at-risk permit, and whether there could be other viable locations for the site with fewer impacts on wildlife. CNL, which plans to build and operate the proposed waste dump, had looked at other locations owned by the Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada, but chose Chalk River.

Chief Lance Haymond of Kebaowek First Nation said “the Federal Court of Appeal has confirmed that Environment Canada must go back and do its job properly.”

Nicholas Pope, the Ottawa lawyer who represented Kebaowek First Nation, said there are alternative sites that could have been considered, including federal land near Chalk River that would have not posed as great a threat to species at risk.

He hoped Ms. Dabrusin in looking again at species at risk would also consider the potential impact on endangered monarch butterflies, and Eastern wolves that roam at the Chalk River site.

In 2024, the federal environment department upgraded the Eastern wolf, found only in Ontario and Quebec, to threatened species status, saying there may be as few as 236 adults in Canada.

Cecelia Parsons, spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said it is reviewing the court of appeal decision “and its implications carefully and will determine next steps as appropriate.”

CNL said it had sought “to obtain clarity in a complex regulatory environment” in going to the Federal Court of Appeal.

“CNL respects the decision of the court and is now taking time to evaluate today’s decision and determine next steps,” it said in a statement. “CNL remains committed to protecting the environment and species at-risk – restoration and protection of the environment is at the core of our work.”

Last year, the federal court partly granted Kebaowek’s application for judicial review of the decision to build the Chalk River waste dump on the grounds that it was not properly consulted. This decision is now before the Federal Court of Appeal. 

May 30, 2026 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, Legal | Leave a comment

Legal Victory for Kebaowek First Nation and Allies vs. Proposed Radioactive Megadump

Federal Court of Appeal Upholds Victory for Kebaowek First Nation and Allies in ”Species at Risk” Case Against Chalk River Nuclear Waste Project

Kebaowek, May 29, 2026 – Kebaowek First Nation, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, theCanadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and Sierra Club Canada Foundation welcome a significantvictory following the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to dismiss Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’(CNL) appeal regarding the Species at Risk Act permit issued for the proposed Near Surface DisposalFacility (NSDF) at Chalk River. The Court upheld the Federal Court’s earlier ruling and ordered Environmentand Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to reconsider its decision to grant the permit.

The permit would have authorized CNL to destroy endangered species and their habitats in order to construct a massive radioactive waste disposal facility less than 1.1 kilometres from the Ottawa River (Kichi Sibi), a watershed that provides drinking water to millions of Canadians.

In its decision, the Federal Court of Appeal concluded that ECCC failed to adequately explain how it determined that all reasonable alternatives had been considered and that the best solution had been selected, as required under the Species at Risk Act. The Court emphasized that the Minister’s reasons lacked sufficient transparency, intelligibility, and justification, and directed ECCC to conduct a new determination. The Court also confirmed that the Federal Court’s interpretation of section 73 of the Species at Risk Act is not binding on ECCC and that the Minister must independently provide a clear and reasonable analysis when reconsidering the permit application.

Furthermore, the Court found that the public notice issued by ECCC failed to provide a meaningful explanation to Canadians about why endangered species would be unharmed in support of the project.

May 30, 2026 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, Legal | Leave a comment

Progress, push back and Indigenous rights

by David Suzuki, April 2, 2026, https://rabble.ca/environment/progress-push-back-and-indigenous-rights/

As seatbelt and smoking regulations — and many other examples — show, people eventually adapt. Uncertainty shouldn’t be used to frustrate progress.

In Canada, progress on social and ecological justice often faces roadblocks………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Corporations and politicians are now trying to get Canada and British Columbia to walk back commitments to uphold Indigenous rights and obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Kebaowek First Nation’s legal challenge against Canadian Nuclear Laboratories over a proposed nuclear waste facility near the Ottawa River illustrates how progress on Indigenous rights often meets resistance. In a landmark ruling, Justice Julie Blackhawk affirmed that Canada’s commitments under the UNDRIP must meaningfully inform federal decision-making. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories appealed the decision, arguing against application of the UN Declaration Act and the requirement to obtain free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous nations.

Uncertainty is also being used by opponents of Indigenous-led marine protected areas. They promote and leverage the fears and uncertainties of concerned small businesses while also opposing the interests of other small-scale operators, including recreational fishers, that support MPAs.

It’s a familiar refrain: Those with established power seek to prevent change, hiding behind the concerns and doubts of community members, but quickly turn on them when it’s in their interest to do so……………………………………………….

Indigenous Peoples lived on these lands before European settlers arrived. Recent efforts to advance co-governance models and uphold Indigenous rights prior to extraction activities are meant to advance social justice and address the colonial legacies embedded in Canada’s history.

A recent joint letter from B.C. unions, academics, doctors and conservation organizations says, “We are deeply troubled by the recent rise in anti-Indigenous rhetoric and fearmongering in this province that has framed the realization of the fundamental human rights of Indigenous peoples as detrimental to economic growth, security, and the interests of others,” adding, “We believe that our futures are intertwined and our collective prosperity is inextricably linked.”

As the Yellowhead Institute states, “Aboriginal rights in Canadian law do not give Indigenous people rights — they merely recognize Crown obligations.” Indigenous people have inherent rights that are fundamental to treaty, human and constitutional rights.

We have a chance to do things right in Canada. Let’s put aside the fearmongering, push back against the pushback and continue our journey forward together.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Boreal Project Manager Rachel Plotkin.

April 5, 2026 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

The hidden health crisis tied to America’s nuclear arsenal: How Native American families suffer the grisly side-effects from uranium mines

The Navajo Nation – a 27,000-square-mile piece of land that overlaps with parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah – has more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that have been identified by the EPA.

‘The government was mining this uranium for the nuclear program, for nuclear weapons, and they put national security and having easy, inexpensive access to uranium ahead of the interests of the health and well-being of the people living there

By JAMES CIRRONE, US NEWS REPORTER, Daily Mail 25th Feb 2026 [Excellent pictures]

Teracita Keyanna’s youngest son was born with a hole in his heart after she spent decades living in a uranium-contaminated Navajo community in New Mexico.

Kravin Keyanna, now 19, spent the first decade of his life dealing with a severely weakened immune system. He constantly got ear infections, his mother said, which led to him having sensitive hearing.

‘We spent a lot of time in the hospital because he was more sickly than most kids,’ Teracita told the Daily Mail. ‘Because of his immune system, they didn’t want to do surgery on him because they were afraid that it was going to cause more harm in the long run.’

After about 11 years, his heart closed up on its own and healed without surgical intervention.

Meanwhile, Teracita’s 11-year-old daughter, Katherine, has continued to develop abnormal tissue growths underneath her top layer of skin near her lymph nodes. 

‘She’s had to have them removed. And so she has gone through four different surgeries in five different locations,’ Teracita said. ‘Her first surgery was when she was 3 years old and the latest one was last year at 10 years old.’

Kravin and Katherine spent years of their childhood living on Red Water Pond Road, a Navajo settlement less than two miles away from the New Mexico border. Their family home was sandwiched between three abandoned uranium mines that remain highly toxic to this day.

These mines were part of a Cold War-era uranium boom that helped build America’s nuclear arsenal. Extraordinarily high levels of radiation from hundreds of long-forgotten sites in the Navajo Nation have exposed generations of Native American families to elevated health risks, including cancer and other unknown ailments.

Teracita was born in 1981 and has spent the majority of her life in the Red Water Pond Road community. Uranium ore extraction continued in the area until 1986 at the two nearby mining sites owned by Quivira Mining.

Mining at the United Nuclear Corporation-owned Northeast Church Rock Mine, immediately south of her ancestral home, lasted until 1982.

‘When I was young, nobody ever told me personally about the dangers of uranium,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that the mines that were near my home were uranium mines. It was like living with a time bomb, and you didn’t even know that it was there.’

Doug Brugge, the chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, said Kravin and Katherine’s conditions cannot be definitively tied to uranium exposure. But he didn’t dismiss the possibility either.

Brugge led a project in the 1990s that interviewed Navajo uranium miners, many of whom developed lung cancer from the radon gas released when cutting into uranium ore.

The effects on them are ‘unequivocally well established,’ Brugge said. The effects on their wives, children and grandchildren are murkier and harder to pin down.

Brugge actually grew up in the Navajo Nation as one of the few white children among his peers. He left with his family when he was 14 and when he returned in his thirties to study the uranium issue, he heard many stories similar to Teracita’s.

‘The thing that has long bothered me is many people told us they didn’t know. They had no idea there was anything hazardous associated with this mining,’ he said. ‘A lot of them didn’t speak English. They had a limited education level. Their access to news and media was fairly limited.’

On top of a lack of communication from authorities about the dangers, Teracita said the mines near her did not have fences or barriers, which meant people and livestock could freely wander into contaminated areas.

n March 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency took soil samples from Church Rock No. 1, the nearest Quivira-owned mine to where Teracita lived.

Exposure to contaminated surface soil at and around the 44-acre site carried an estimated one-in-100 cancer risk — meaning one additional person out of every 100 exposed residents could develop cancer in their lifetime. About 30 families, including Teracita’s, lived near the mine as of 2006, according to the EPA.

Brugge said that level of risk is ‘really high’ and pointed out that the EPA is usually already concerned if it’s at one in 100,000 or one in a million.

Teracita also lived half a mile away from the Church Rock uranium mill, also owned by United Nuclear Corporation. Facilities like this can extract uranium from mined rock to produce a powder called ‘yellowcake’. 

This material can later be converted for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or, at higher enrichment levels, in nuclear weapons. The process is not entirely clean, however, as it also produces sandy-looking radioactive waste called ‘mill tailings’.

In 1979, two years before Teracita was born, the Church Rock uranium mill had a catastrophic spill that sent 1,100 tons of mill tailings and 93 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Navajo Nation via the Puerco River.

There have not been extensive studies on the extent of the damage caused by this disaster, which to this day is considered the largest accidental release of radioactive material in US history.

While it is unknown how many people were possibly exposed and developed health conditions later in life, children who swam in the river or herded sheep across the water were left with serious burns on their skin.

Teracita said many of her neighbors and friends on Red Water Pond Road have mysteriously developed diabetes or cirrhosis of the liver without excessive drinking or smoking.

Teracita lived on Red Water Pond Road with her family until around 2018, when the EPA offered them financial assistance to move away while the agency cleaned up the mines. Prior to that, she had been exploring economically feasible ways to leave.

‘I was already trying to figure out what we could do for our kids in order to safeguard them further, considering that when I was a kid, nobody safeguarded me,’ she said. 

The Department of Energy says there are a total of 4,225 uranium mines across the United States, the vast majority of them abandoned.

The Navajo Nation – a 27,000-square-mile piece of land that overlaps with parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah – has more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that have been identified by the EPA.

This means the Navajo have just over 11 percent of the country’s abandoned mines within their borders, despite making up just 0.8 percent of America’s total landmass.

‘The government was mining this uranium for the nuclear program, for nuclear weapons, and they put national security and having easy, inexpensive access to uranium ahead of the interests of the health and well-being of the people living there” Brugge said.

It is not just the Navajo, who call themselves Diné in their language, who have been disproportionately exposed to the radioactive byproducts of mining operations, most of which ceased in the 1980s.

Although Native American land takes up 5.6 percent of the western US, about 25 percent of uranium mines in this area of the country are located within 6 miles of a reservation, a 2015 study from the Native American Budget & Policy Institute found………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15503365/navajo-kids-health-defects-uranium-exposure-nuclear-weapons.html

March 1, 2026 Posted by | health, indigenous issues, USA | Leave a comment

Navajo lands at risk

  by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/01/11/navajo-lands-at-risk/

New proposal is extraction not remediation, warns the Navajo group, Dooda Disa

More than 500 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) contaminate the Navajo Nation, and genuine cleanup is urgently needed. But cleanup must be grounded in strict environmental oversight, transparency, and full community consultation. A proposal now being advanced by Navajo Nation EPA (NNEPA) Executive Director Stephen Etsitty, in partnership with DISA Technologies, is being marketed as AUM remediation when DISA’s High-Pressure Slurry Ablation (HPSA) system does not clean up Navajo land—it extracts uranium for commercial sale while leaving radioactive waste behind.

Etsitty told the Albuquerque Journal he was “really excited” that the process could “accelerate the cleanup” and said “the Navajo Nation is investing roughly $3 million” in a commercial-scale test —all of which is misleading. Even calling HPSA “remediation” is whitewashing, because the technology is strictly a uranium-extraction process.

On January 6, 2025, he introduced Resolution ENAC-12-2025-049 at the Eastern Navajo Agency Council (6) that asks the Navajo Nation to enter into a commercial partnership with DISA in order to apply for DOE critical-minerals grants—an extraction initiative, not a cleanup program. It provides no site information, no environmental safeguards, and no cost details, yet seeks approval for a commercial partnership structured around uranium extraction rather than cleanup.

The Truth About DISA and HPSA

In 2023, the EPA commissioned Tetra Tech to test HPSA on waste from three Navajo AUM sites: Old Church Rock Mine (OCRM), Quivira Church Rock-1, and the Cove Transfer Station (CTS-2). Over two weeks, small batches of contaminated waste were run through a pilot-scale HPSA unit. The system blasts rock with high-pressure water to create slurry, then separates it into a coarse fraction and a fines fraction. The fines—about 17% of the material—contain 80–95% of the uranium and radium that DISA intends to ship to the White Mesa Mill and sell to Energy Fuels. The coarse fraction is waste that remains radioactive and may be left onsite, buried, or sent to a disposal site that does not exist.

The results are unequivocal: HPSA did not meet Navajo Nation residential cleanup standards because the coarse waste rock left behind is still too radioactive. At each site, the process removed 80–95% of the uranium and concentrated it into the fines fraction (1), but the remaining coarse material still fails cleanup standards. At OCRM, rock that began at 940 mg/kg uranium—milligrams of uranium per kilogram of soil—was reduced only to 47 mg/kg, still far above the Navajo residential cleanup standard of 3.2 mg/kg. The report notes that meeting Navajo standards would require 99.7% uranium removal, which HPSA never achieved. The study shows that HPSA concentrates uranium for extraction but does not produce coarse waste rock clean enough to meet Navajo residential standards. It documents uranium extraction, not cleanup.

Environmental Review, Licensing, and the FONSI

After the field tests, DISA quickly sought federal licensing. On March 28, 2025, the company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a multi-site “service provider” license. NRC issued a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on August 5, 2025, opened a brief comment period, and finalized both documents by September 25, 2025.

This speed was possible only because Trump-era changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) weakened requirements for thorough environmental review. NRC’s FONSI rests on assumptions—not Navajo-specific data—about water use, dust, trucking, and waste left onsite. HPSA has never been tested at commercial scale. NRC ultimately granted DISA a multi-state, non–site-specific generic license requiring only a pilot program and a Pre-Mobilization Notification (PMN) before work at any site. If the assumptions in the FONSI are not met, the PMN could trigger a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), but this is unlikely given the current administration’s broad weakening of environmental oversight.

Water Use, Energy, Waste, and Trucks

The Tetra Tech study relied on municipal water from Gallup because no Navajo source was available. A scaled-up 50-ton-per-hour HPSA system would use about 200,000 gallons of water per month; a 100-ton-per-hour system, roughly 384,000 gallons—requiring two to four water trucks per day. Each operating campaign ends with 32,000–54,000 gallons of contaminated process water that must be disposed of or transported to another AUM site.

For every 100 tons processed, HPSA generates about 17 tons of fines—the uranium-rich concentrate DISA intends to ship to White Mesa—and roughly 83 tons of coarse waste rock, which remains on the land or must be hauled to a disposal site that does not exist.

Energy demand is also heavy. A 100-TPH system requires two 500-kilowatt diesel generators running continuously, ensuring constant deliveries of diesel fuel and the need for onsite fuel storage—none of which were meaningfully evaluated in the EA, FONSI, or license.

In practice, the project would rely on three continuous streams of truck traffic: water trucks, diesel fuel trucks, and haul trucks carrying uranium-laden fines through Navajo lands to the White Mesa Mill in Utah—transport that is prohibited under the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005.

Who Profits—and Who Bears the Risk

Under federal law, all Navajo trust land is held by the United States, which controls the mineral rights. Once uranium is extracted from AUM waste, it becomes “source material” that DISA—not the Navajo Nation—may own, transport, and sell under its NRC license. Uranium recovered from high-grade AUM sites could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars—benefiting DISA and Energy Fuels, not the families who have lived with contamination for generations.

Whatever commercial partnership Etsitty envisions with DISA is not clear. DISA needs the partnership to obtain Navajo consent to access sites and conduct business, but what does the Navajo Nation receive in return? Why should the Nation take on the risk while giving up control over Navajo land? The reality is that DISA, a startup with limited funding, cannot even afford to conduct the required pilot itself. That is why Etsitty is asking the Navajo Nation to finance the pilot for $3 million—so DISA can prove its own extraction technology while keeping the uranium and the long-term profits.

What Happens Next—and What Navajo Nation Can Still Do

The question is not whether AUMs should be cleaned up—they must be. The real question is whether DISA should be entrusted with that work. Should the Navajo Nation pay to enter into a commercial partnership with a high-risk company using an unproven technology under the false banner of “cleanup”? All available evidence—the Tetra Tech study, DISA’s own descriptions of HPSA, and NRC’s licensing structure—shows the same thing: this is a mining project, not a cleanup program.

The bottom line is that the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005 bans uranium mining and processing on Navajo land. Extracting uranium from AUM waste for commercial sale is mining, whether the feedstock is called “ore” or “waste,” and is therefore prohibited.

Dooda Disa is a community-based grassroots group dedicated to providing accurate information, raising awareness, and protecting Navajo lands and communities from renewed uranium extraction disguised as cleanup.

January 16, 2026 Posted by | indigenous issues, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is inherently colonialist and unjust.

Radioactive waste sites are invariably targeted at indigenous or working-class communities, where dire economic need is preyed upon for easy acquiescence.

The argument for a “significant expansion” of nuclear power will deliver soaring electricity prices that condemn underserved communities to unending hardship and poverty, argues LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Morning Star 13th Dec 2025, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nuclear-power-inherently-colonialist-and-unjust

MARK JONES is right to argue in his recent article that corporate-driven energy industries should come under public control.

Regrettably, that is unlikely to happen any time soon, whereas long-lasting jobs and a sustainable energy supply are needed today.

However, whether under private or public ownership, nuclear power can deliver neither. Nor will public ownership undo the technology’s fundamental injustices.

The exploitative colonialism and racism inherent in nuclear power renders it incapable of contributing to the “just transition we all want” that Jones and many of us advocate. That’s because nuclear power relies on the victimisation of indigenous and brown populations in foreign lands to provide its fuel — uranium — all of which is imported to Britain.

A just transition cannot simply ignore the perpetual exploitation of Native American, First Nations, Australian Aboriginal and indigenous African uranium miners and millers, living in poverty without running water and electricity and subjected daily to radiation exposure.

Nor does the victimisation end there. In India, a massive mobilisation of thousands of farmers, fishermen and villagers opposed to a six-reactor Russian nuclear power plant in Kudankulam was met with lethal force. Many landed in jail, some went into hiding and at least one died. A democratic process giving voice to the people was nowhere to be seen. The plant went forward, realising their worst nightmares with the natural environment destroyed, incomes lost and small businesses devastated.

Numerous studies have shown that children living close to operating commercial nuclear power plants have higher rates of leukaemia than those living further away. Radioactive waste sites are invariably targeted at indigenous or working-class communities, where dire economic need is preyed upon for easy acquiescence.

The nuclear industry — even the nationalised version in France — is driven by multinational corporations such as Westinghouse, EDF, Rolls-Royce, Holtec and others, whose only motive is profit.

Britain as an island nation is exceedingly well positioned to deploy renewable rather than nuclear energy on a grand scale. The decision not to maximise expansion of Britain’s abundant offshore wind, wave and tidal power, as well as onshore wind, stream power and solar energy, has been a political, not a technological choice.

Jones’s comment about nuclear waste being “far more straightforward to manage” than the “mountains of unrecyclable turbine blades and solar panels,” is just plain wrong. The waste fuel from nuclear power plants is deadly for tens and, for some of the isotopes it contains, even hundreds of thousands of years.

Whether it fits in a shoebox as Jones writes, or is stacked on a football field — another metaphor used by the industry — is irrelevant given the lethality of the contents. If you opened that box or sat in that stadium, you would be dead from radiation exposure within minutes.

The new proposed small modular reactors, as a Stanford University study has shown, will actually generate greater volumes of radioactive waste than their full-sized predecessors.

Meanwhile, although somewhat complex, wind turbine blades and solar panels are both recyclable and recycled, with advances being made all the time to simplify this process. A similar effort is under way to recycle renewable batteries through the recovery rather than the continued exploitation of metals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, the major downside of renewables.

To dismiss concerns about major nuclear accidents as “catastrophism” is disingenuous and disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of people across the former Soviet Union, much of Europe and now Japan, whose lives and livelihoods have been upended, destroyed and even lost altogether as a result of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.

Many of these people were hardworking families indefinitely displaced, unable to resume their former professions.

The prospect of another meltdown is a very real likelihood, given the ageing of current reactors and the major safety uncertainties about the new designs. These latter are unproven, untested, and some use cooling systems such as liquid sodium that have already demonstrated a propensity to catch fire or explode.

A nuclear disaster on a small island like Britain would leave people with nowhere to run to.

The serious concerns around winter warmth, especially for the elderly that Jones rightly calls out, would be better met with a comprehensive energy efficiency progamme combined with renewables that includes insulation and building retrofits. These measures can reduce consumption, obviate the need for new power sources and drive down energy bills.

The huge costs associated with nuclear power will only send electric bills even higher, worsening fuel poverty.

As an example, the British government awarded EDF a guaranteed strike price that was nearly triple what consumers were already paying, to secure Somerset’s Hinkley Point C two reactor deal.

If the reactors are finished by 2027 as EDF presently claims, they will have taken 17 years to get here, 10 years later than expected.

We have seen similar outcomes in the US where Westinghouse — eager for new reactor contracts in Britain — took 15 years to complete two reactors in Georgia at a cost of £27 billion, almost triple the original £10bn estimated cost. That left consumers with the largest electricity rate increase in Georgia history.

Nuclear power falsely advertises itself as reliable, but reactors must shut down under drought and heatwaves if the cooling water sources are too hot or depleted. They must also power or shut down during extreme weather, given the inherent danger of losing the power essential to cool the reactors and the fuel pools, without which the plant can melt down.

Nuclear plants also have to close down routinely for days at a time or longer for refueling or maintenance.

Nuclear power cannot work well with renewable energy because reactors must be on all the time and therefore their power cannot quickly ramp up and down in response to demand as renewables do.

Nuclear power’s inflexibility effectively shuts out grid access to renewables and, as David Toke of 100% Renewable UK points out, “simply pushes wind and solar off the grid.”

Worse still, waiting for slow and far more expensive new nuclear plants while stifling renewables means continued reliance on fossil fuels. This increases pollution and asthma rates while the planet continues to overheat. The result is that a policy of “significant nuclear expansion” actually makes climate change worse.

Renewable energy stimulates employment all along the supply chain, for example in steel and ports, providing jobs not only to energy workers but to those in many other needed sectors. Its “fuel” is the sun, the wind and the waves which, unlike uranium, will never be depleted.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the founder of Beyond Nuclear and the author of No to Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War, to be published by Pluto Press in March.

December 16, 2025 Posted by | indigenous issues | Leave a comment

The ‘Nuclearity’ of the Marshall Islands, and the Threat of US Testing

By Bea Paduano

ICAN Australia and Bea Paduano, Dec 09, 2025, https://icanaustralia.substack.com/p/the-nuclearity-of-the-marshall-islands?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6291617&post_id=181019673&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This article explores how nuclearity exposes unequal power, why some lives are protected, and others sacrificed, and how these dynamics still matter today as talk of renewed US nuclear testing re-enters global politics. To avoid repeating the devastation imposed on the Marshall Islands, strong international support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is crucial.

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States tested sixty-seven nuclear weapons in the Republic of the Marshall Islands—turning entire atolls into fallout zones and reshaping life for generations. Seen through Gabrielle Hecht’s lens of nuclearity, which asks who decides what counts as “nuclear”, the Marshall Islands become one of the most nuclear places on Earth—yet they’re rarely recognised as such.

What is Nuclearity?

Historian Hecht describes nuclearity as a “technopolitical spectrum that shifts in time and space” that shapes “the degree to which something counts as ‘nuclear’.”1

In simple terms, nuclearity is a lens that reveals who has the power to declare something nuclear—or to deny it—even in the face of clear harm. Nuclearity isn’t only about radiation; it is shaped by history, geography, politics and power, and by the decisions that determine which harms are acknowledged and which are ignored.2

The Marshall Islands: a Nuclear Frontier
Japan seized the Marshall Islands during World War One to secure a strategic position in the Pacific, occupying them until the United States took control in 1944 during World War Two. After the war, the US turned the islands into a nuclear testing ground, beginning with Bikini and Enewetak in 1946. Over the next twelve years, the United States conducted sixty-seven atmospheric, underwater, and airburst tests that vaporised entire atolls, and exposed the whole country to severe radioactive fallout. The Castle Bravo test—the largest in US history—released an explosive yield equivalent to more than seven thousand Hiroshima bombs.

US officials justified these tests as being “for the good of mankind and to end all wars”.3 In other words, the Marshall Islands became a “display case for flexing military muscle” at the expense of the Marshallese people.4

Health, Identity and Culture

The health impacts of nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands were—and remain—catastrophic. Thyroid and other cancers, blood and metabolic disorders, cataracts, stillbirths, miscarriages, and birth defects have all been recorded and continue to affect Marshallese communities.5 The US Atomic Energy Commission’s Health and Safety Laboratory once described the atoll of Utirik as “by far the most contaminated place in the world.”6

Radioactive fallout poisoned staple foods, led to unexpected deaths, and weakened immune systems—patterns still seen in Marshallese communities today. Due to contamination, traditional foods became unsafe, and people were forced to give up practices that carry memory and meaning.

The damage is also cultural. Marshallese identity is deeply tied to land and water. In her poem Tell Them, Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner writes, “we are nothing without our islands.”7 Nuclear testing destroyed homelands and forced many Marshallese into exile, severing connections to land, knowledge, and practices tied to fishing, food, and ceremony.8

Colonialism, “Remoteness,” and Power

Colonialism has long shaped understandings of remoteness, helping powerful states distance themselves from responsibility.9 This is evident in the US nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands, where the construction of “remoteness” positioned the Marshallese at the margins. The US commission concluded that testing should take place overseas and away from US population centres until the health implications could be established.10 The location was chosen by spreading out maps and looking for sites considered remote.11 In his assessment of six nuclear testing sites, Jacobs concludes that it is no coincidence that all sites used were considered “remote.”12

The Marshall Islands were not only seen as geographically distant, but also racially distant, drawing on colonial ideas of eugenics. Eisenbud, Director of the AEC’s Health and Safety Laboratory in New York, justified the testing by claiming the Marshallese people were “more like us than the mice.”13 Their race and classification as “other” helped justify the testing and reveal the colonial underpinnings of the global nuclear order. Those considered racially inferior and physically remote have repeatedly been subjected to the harms of nuclear weapons testing. These colonial legacies maintain power dynamics and legitimise nuclear testing on Marshallese land and people.

The legacy of this history can be seen in the Runit Dome, the concrete cap covering nuclear waste on Enewetak. As the dome cracks and leaks into the sea, it adds to the already devastating implications of climate change for the Marshall Islands. As sea levels rise, the future of the Marshall Islands remains uncertain.

Who Decides What Counts as ‘Nuclear’?

Hecht’s concept of nuclearity helps explain how authorities can declare certain areas “safe” while people continue to live with radiation and illness.14 Nuclearity does not equate to radioactivity; it is constructed, fluid and changeable, and can be made and unmade by those with the power to define it.

The Bravo test is one example. Communities from Bikini and Enewetak were relocated south before the detonation, yet radioactive fallout still hit the newly inhabited islands. Although the US government claimed that the wind unexpectedly changed, research found that they had six hours’ notice.15 Similar patterns are found in French nuclear testing on the Gambier Islands.16 The US government also imposed arbitrary restrictions such as fishing bans in certain areas of the islands—restrictions that, as Jacobs notes, were not respected by the fish.17 This shows the continued construction of what is considered “nuclear” in specific areas and at specific times, despite ongoing radioactivity.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner refers to this denuclearisation in the line: “it’s not radioactive anymore, your illnesses are normal, you’re fine.”18 Despite such claims, the US government restricted visitors from other countries from travelling to the Marshall Islands and restricted the movement of islanders during the tests.19 In this sense, the US government constructed a claim that certain areas would be safe but only for certain individuals, “denuclearising” areas and people despite significant radiation exposure. This draws on Hecht’s concept of nuclearity—that nuclearity “is not the same for everyone, and it is not the same at all moments in time.” 20

Recent US Discussions on Nuclear Testing
These issues are not confined to history. As we watch the current global situation unfold, this article urges us to pay attention to what is considered nuclear and what is not. Donald Trump has suggested that the US should resume nuclear testing to match or surpass other states. Whether this would involve full-scale detonations or ultra-low-yield tests, the political effect is similar: signalling that nuclear threats are back on the table.

Even the discussion of testing changes nuclearity. It designates potential testing sites, shapes perceptions of risk and acceptability, and reinforces harmful colonial power dynamics. Despite no US tests being conducted for decades, and considerable work and commitment to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), this rhetoric threatens the nuclear taboo.

The TPNW, promoted by ICAN, prohibits the testing of nuclear weapons. At the time of writing, seventy-four countries have ratified the treaty. A strong global commitment against testing is needed to confront the harms to health, identity and culture that stretch across past, present and future.

The Marshall Islands illustrate what nuclearity looks like in practice: cancers and contaminated reefs, cracked domes, displaced communities and cultural loss that continues across generations. As talk of renewed nuclear testing returns, we must consider not only where the next “dangerous” place might be, but whose lives will again be treated as expendable.

We cannot allow others to quietly determine what—and who—counts as nuclear.

About the Author

Bea Paduano is a recent graduate of International Relations from the University of Leeds and was a participant in the ICAN-Hiroshima academy 2025 cohort. Her interests include the legacies of social and political injustice, specifically of nuclear testing and migration studies.

References ……………………………………………………………….

December 10, 2025 Posted by | indigenous issues, OCEANIA | Leave a comment

David versus Goliath: the battle of a small indigenous community against a federal radioactive waste dump. 

There are fewer than 500 of them, but they have managed to put a stop to a federal nuclear waste dump project worth several hundred million dollars…

Anne Caroline Desplanques, Journal de Montréal, September 19, 2025, https://tinyurl.com/mwuymkjp

Federal authorities plan to store the remains of the Bécancour nuclear power plant, Gentilly-1, in a dump in Chalk River, on the edge of the drinking water source for millions of Quebecers. 

At a time when the Carney government is promoting nuclear power as one of the ways to make Canada an energy superpower, our investigative team has obtained rare access to this ultra-secure complex, which Ottawa wants to hand over to the Americans. We spoke with citizens and experts who are concerned about the environment and the country’s sovereignty.

There are only 365 Anishinabeg living in the tiny Kebaowek First Nation reserve in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. But through their lawyers, they have succeeded in putting a hold on a multi-million-dollar federal radioactive waste dump project on their traditional territory.

In February, the Federal Court ruled that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had not obtained the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before authorizing the construction of the dump, in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In March, the court determined that the project endangers several species, including the spotted turtle, a threatened species less than 30 centimeters long that lives for about 50 years and reproduces infrequently, as it does not reach sexual maturity until around 20 years of age.

Federal lawyers have appealed both decisions. If they fail to convince the courts, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) will have to go back to the drawing board and resume consultations. In the meantime, the project, called the “near-surface waste management facility,” is on hold.

A geotextile membrane to contain radioactivity

It is intended to be a permanent storage and disposal site for up to one million cubic meters of radioactive waste. The waste will be placed on a layer of clay, sand, and geotextile approximately 1.5 meters thick, and covered with another layer of sand, rock, and a membrane.

This is not enough to protect the environment from PCBs, asbestos, heavy metals, and dozens of radioactive elements that CNSC plans to bury there, fears physicist Ginette Charbonneau of the Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive (Coalition Against Radioactive Pollution).

” Radioactive waste cannot be disposed of, it can only be isolated. For that, you need more than a membrane,” she insists.

CNSC assures that this buried waste will have “low-level” contamination and will therefore no longer pose a danger to the environment and health in 500 years, at the end of the containment cells’ useful life.

A pile of waste

But nuclear chemist Kerry Burns has his doubts. Retired from Atomic Energy of Canada since 2010, he was tasked with analyzing waste from the Chalk River laboratories to determine its radioactive content.

He explains that, in the past, CNL buried tons of waste in the sand, which they now plan to exhume and place in their new landfill. However, there are no records indicating the precise level of contamination, he says, describing a gigantic pile of mixed waste.

The project site has too much risk to leave anything to chance, insists the scientist: the landfill will be only one kilometer from the Ottawa River in sandy, porous soil.

“If the contamination escapes from the cells, it will very quickly find its way into the water, and it will be extremely difficult to measure and stop,” he warns.

Like Ms. Chabonneau, Mr. Burns argues that the materials should be isolated in a deep geological repository far from water sources.

This is the method used by one of the American companies chosen to manage CNL, Amentum: it isolates low-level waste in New Mexico in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which has isolation chambers 660 meters underground.

September 23, 2025 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, Legal, wastes | Leave a comment

First Nations warn of conflict if Ontario proceeds with Bill 5

‘They’re looking for a world of opposition from First Nations in Ontario that are not going to just sit idly by’: First Nations leadership publicly slams proposed bill that would cut ‘red tape’ for economic projects — and potentially erode treaty rights.


Bay Today.ca, James Hopkin, 19 May 25

First Nations leadership is calling on Premier Doug Ford and the Ontario government to put a stop to a newly proposed bill that chiefs say would bulldoze the inherent rights of the Anishinabek and their existing treaty relationships with the Crown. 

Robinson Huron Waawiindamaagewin (RHW) is publicly opposing Bill 5, which the political organization says will give extended powers to the province through the creation of “special economic zones” that would allow for the cabinet to exempt selected proponents and projects from requirements under any provincial law or regulation. 

This includes bylaws of municipalities and local boards that would otherwise apply in that zone — all while repealing the Endangered Species Act. 

RHW spokesperson and Anishinabek Nation Regional Chief Scott McLeod told SooToday that Ford framing Bill 5 as a way of cutting red tape for infrastructure and resource development projects is a “gross understatement,” and that Ontario is essentially gutting environmental checks and balances while undermining the treaty relationship with First Nations in Robinson Huron Treaty territory. 

“He’s undermining the reality that Ontario, under the jurisdiction of Canada, inherited the treaty of 1850 from the British Crown, which laid out our relationship as title owners to the land and our willingness to share those resources,” McLeod said during a telephone interview Wednesday.  

“He simply is moving forward on this as if Ontario owns the resources outright, and has no obligations to the treaties that are within Ontario.”  

The tabling of Bill 5, known as the Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act, has also triggered opposition from the Anishinabek Nation, a political advocate for 39 member First Nations representing approximately 70,000 citizens across the province. 

The organization says the bill “reflects a dangerous and false narrative that presumes the Government of Ontario has unilateral authority to legislate over lands and resources without consultation or consent from the rightful Anishinabek title holders.”  

“To allow lands of economic value that have been cited for development to be exempt from protective checks and balances, such as archaeological assessments and wildlife and ecosystem protections as proposed in this bill will cost First Nations and Ontarians profoundly, exposing and setting back species at risk protection and leading to the destruction of First Nation burial sites and artifacts,” Anishinabek Grand Council Chief Linda Debassige said in a release issued Tuesday.    …………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/first-nations-warn-of-conflict-if-ontario-proceeds-with-bill-5-10673506?utm_source=Email_Share&utm_medium=Email_Share&utm_campaign=Email_Share

May 21, 2025 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

‘Protect our future’: Alaskan Indigenous town fights ‘destructive’ uranium mine project

Aisha Kehoe Down in Elim

This summer, the Canadian mining company Panther
Minerals is set to start exploration for a uranium mine at the headwaters
of the Tubuktulik river, adjacent to Elim’s land. David Hedderly-Smith, a
consultant to Panther and the owner of mining claims for the property, has
said the site could become the “uranium capital of America”.

The people of Elim have opposed the mine since last May, when Panther Minerals
announced its intention to apply for exploration permits. In interviews,
they said they feared for their health, and spoke of the cancer and
contamination that followed uranium mining on Navajo land in the 1960s, 70s
and 80s.

 Guardian 25th March 2025,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/uranium-mine-elim-alaska-trump

March 27, 2025 Posted by | indigenous issues, Uranium | Leave a comment

Federal Court Orders Reconsideration of Nuclear Waste Facility Approval, Citing Inadequate Indigenous Consultation

By NNL Digital News , March 20, 2025, https://www.netnewsledger.com/2025/03/20/federal-court-orders-reconsideration-of-nuclear-waste-facility-approval-citing-inadequate-indigenous-consultation/#google_vignette

OTTAWA – A Federal Court decision has ordered the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to revisit its approval of a Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) at the Chalk River Laboratories site, citing errors in its assessment of Indigenous consultation obligations.

The ruling, issued by the Honourable Madam Justice Blackhawk on February 19, 2025, in the case of Kebaowek First Nation v. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, highlights the importance of adhering to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Canadian law.

The Case at a Glance

The Kebaowek First Nation challenged the CNSC’s decision to grant Canadian Nuclear Laboratories Ltd. (Canadian Nuclear) a license amendment to construct the NSDF, a proposed facility for the permanent storage and disposal of low-level nuclear waste. Kebaowek argued that the CNSC erred by:

  • Failing to apply the UNDRIP and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDA) to its decision-making process regarding the duty to consult and accommodate.
  • Concluding that the Crown had fulfilled its duty to consult and accommodate Kebaowek.
  • Determining that the NSDF is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.

Court’s Findings

Madam Justice Blackhawk’s decision focused on the CNSC’s handling of Indigenous consultation. Key findings included:

  • Jurisdiction to Apply UNDRIP/UNDA: The court found that the CNSC erred in determining it did not have the jurisdiction to consider the application of the UNDRIP and the UNDA to the duty to consult and accommodate.
  • Duty to Consult and Accommodate: The court determined that the CNSC’s assessment of whether the Crown had fulfilled its duty to consult and accommodate Kebaowek was flawed due to the failure to consider the UNDRIP and its principle of “free, prior, and informed consent” (FPIC) as an interpretive lens.
  • Flawed Consultation Process: The court stated that the consultation process was inadequate, and Canadian Nuclear failed to consult in a manner consistent with the UNDRIP and the FPIC standard.

Remedy and Next Steps

The Federal Court has ordered the matter to be remitted back to the CNSC for reconsideration. The CNSC, or a newly struck commission, is directed to:

  • Address the jurisdictional question regarding the application of UNDRIP and the UNDA.
  • Re-assess the Crown’s fulfillment of the duty to consult and accommodate, considering the UNDRIP and the FPIC standard.

Canadian Nuclear and CNSC staff are also directed to resume consultation with Kebaowek, aiming to implement the UNDRIP FPIC standard in a robust manner and work towards achieving an agreement. The court has set a target completion date of September 30, 2026, for this renewed consultation process.

Implications

This decision has significant implications for future development projects in Canada that may affect Indigenous rights and interests. It underscores the importance of:

  • Properly interpreting and applying the UNDRIP and the UNDA.
  • Conducting meaningful and robust consultation with Indigenous communities, consistent with the principles of FPIC.

The ruling emphasizes that consultation processes must be approached from an Indigenous perspective and take into account Indigenous laws, knowledge, and practices.

NetNewsLedger.com will continue to follow this developing story and provide updates.

March 24, 2025 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, Legal | Leave a comment

Uranium fever collides with industry’s dark past in Navajo country

Mining.com, Bloomberg News | January 14, 2025

A few miles south of the Grand Canyon, thousands of tons of uranium ore, reddish-gray, blue and radioactive, are piled up high in a clearing in the forest.

They’ve been there for months, stranded by a standoff between the mining company that dug them deep out of the ground, Energy Fuels Inc., and the leader of the Navajo Nation, Buu Nygren.

Back in the summer, Energy Fuels had triggered an uproar when it loaded some of the ore onto a truck, slapped a “radioactive” sign over the taillights and drove it through the heart of Navajo territory.

Radioactive is an alarming word anywhere, but here in Navajo country, surrounded by hundreds of abandoned uranium mines that powered America’s nuclear arms race with the USSR and spewed toxic waste into the land, it causes terror. Those fears have only grown the past couple years as nuclear power came back in vogue and sparked a uranium rush in mining camps all across the Southwest.

So when the news made it to Nygren that morning, he was furious. No one had sought his consent for the shipment. He quickly ordered dozens of police officers to throw on their sirens, fan out and intercept the truck.

The dragnet turned up nothing in the end — the truck snuck through — but the hard-line response delivered a warning, amplified over social media and ratified days later by the governor of Arizona, to the miners: Stay out of Navajo country.

Cut off from the lone processing mill in the US — all the main routes cut through Navajo territory — executives at Energy Fuels stockpiled it by the entrance of the mine. When the heaps of crushed rock grew too sprawling, they pulled the miners out of the tunnels and turned the drilling machines off…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Animosity towards mining companies runs high on Navajo land. It’s visible everywhere. On huge roadside billboards and small office signs, in fading pinks and yellows and jet blacks, too. They read “Radioactive Pollution Kills” and “Haul No” and, along the main entrance to Cameron, a hard-scrabble village on the territory’s western edge, “No Uranium Mining.”

A few miles down the road, big mounds of sand streaked gray and blue rise, one after the other, high above the vast desert landscape. They are the tailings from some of the uranium mines that were abandoned in the territory last century.

To Ray Yellowfeather, a 50-year-old construction worker, the tailings were always the “blue hills,” just one big playground for him and his childhood friends.

“We would climb up the blue hills and slide back down,” Yellowfeather says. “Nobody told us they were dangerous.”

Years later, they would be cordoned off by the Environmental Protection Agency as it began work to clean up the mines. By then, though, the damage was done. Like many around here, Yellowfeather says he’s lost several family members to stomach cancer. The last of them was his mother in 2022.

Yellowfeather admits he doesn’t know exactly what caused their cancer but, he says, “I have to think it has to do with the piles of radioactive waste all around us.” It’s in the construction material in many of the homes and buildings and in the aquifers, too. To this day, drinking water is shipped into some of the hardest-hit areas.

The US government has recognized the harm its nuclear arms projects have done to communities in the Southwest. In 1990, Congress passed a law to compensate victims who contracted cancer and other diseases. It paid out some $2.5 billion over the ensuing three decades. The EPA, meanwhile, has been in charge of the clean-up of the abandoned mines. Two decades after the program began, though, only a small percentage have been worked on at all.

This is giving mining companies an opportunity to curry favor in tribal communities by offering to take over and expedite the clean-up of some mines.

…………………………………………………………………………..the EPA released a detailed study on Pinyon Plain. In it, the agency found that operations at the mine could contaminate the water supply of the Havasupai, a tribe tucked in such a remote corner of the Grand Canyon that it receives mail by mule. The report emboldened Havasupai leaders to step up their opposition to the mine, adding to Chalmers’s growing list of problems.

For the Navajo, the risks that come from the hauling of uranium through its territory are far smaller — so negligible as to be almost non-existent, according to Chalmers. Nygren is unmoved. The Navajo have heard such reassurances many times before, he says, only to pay dearly in the end.

Nygren grew up near a cluster of old mines right along the territory’s Arizona-Utah border, which makes the whole Energy Fuels affair “incredibly personal,” he says. His voice grows louder now and his tone more emphatic, indignant. To him, the Energy Fuels incursion feels no different than all the abuses committed over the course of decades by the US government and the mining companies that supplied it with a steady stream of uranium.

“We played a big role in the national security of the United States and we played a big part in the Cold War, providing energy for nuclear weapons. We’ve done our part. And now it’s time for the US to do its part by cleaning up these mines and respecting our laws.”  https://www.mining.com/web/uranium-fever-collides-with-industrys-dark-past-in-navajo-country/

March 16, 2025 Posted by | environment, indigenous issues, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

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