Ethical+Conundrums_pedlt3

Because this is one of many topics that my project will broach, I am worried about my ability to deal with these issues in a responsible way. One of my classmates from NSSR works on sovereignty issues in South Dakota, and he offered to share his bibliography with me. I hope that this will help to guide my approach to the topic, but given all of difficult politics and diverse work done on these issues and the broad range and limited timeframe for this study, there is a real danger of misrepresentation and perhaps other harms.
 * 1) **Issues of American Indian sovereignty and history**

My sense is, for example, that the Yakama and Nez Perce nations and the Umatilla confederation should not be treated as just another set of stakeholders, given that Hanford is built on trust land that was signed over to the U.S. government by a treaty allowing them to retain certain rights to the land. Yet, not only were these uses disallowed by placing a high security facility at Hanford Reach, but also the ability for these rights to ever be exercised has been compromised by radioactive and toxic contamination. That means that there is a different kind of “stake” that is being held here. It also seems to cast doubt on the kinds of policies about long-term land use that declaring the site “safe” would entail, since land use promises were broken at that very site within a hundred years.

First, I would need to do a lot of reading and talking to relevant actors to figure out whether this line of argument has much merit. But, if it seems to make sense and has any impact it may serve to weaken support for engaging in the stakeholder process, contradict the goals for remediation of the tribal governments, or, if some of these sentiments are echoed by members of these governments, perhaps damage crucial relationships. Furthermore, I should be careful about how I write this history, as it may well be at odds with how members of these nations understand their own history—a history that (at least for American Indians in general and many nations in particular) has be written and rewritten in ways that tend to legitimate very problematic (sometimes even genocidal) U.S. policies.