MISSION: Southwest Research and Information Center is a multi-cultural organization working to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and secure environmental and social justice now and for future generations

So today (in) Indian country, these last slivers of land are the places where there is still oil, where there are still natural gas, where there is still coal methane, where there is still pockets of uranium, where there are still forests, where there is still water. That is the frontier that is left because it is not yet been exploited.

Every Indian Reservation in this country is the least electrified, the least spent on health, the least spent on education, the least spent on infrastructure. And so tribes are desperate to find some way to generate income for their communities.

Every day a woman like Gail Small wakes up and wonders who is coming after them today. You know, you win, you go to sleep. And you wake up the next morning and the Bush administration has leased something else. Or some new evil is coming towards yourcommunity. One of my friends, she's a psychologist and social worker for Indian communities, she calls it Ethno-Stress. You wake up in the morning, you're still Indian.

You have Alaska native corporations who benefit and are set up specifically for the purpose of exploiting the resources of the land there. You have communities that have been forced to transform into an appendage to American culture. The Gwich'in are some people that have said no. They have said we're going to keep our traditional systems, we're going to keep this way of life, and this is worth everything to us.The Gwich'in have been key in the struggle to protect ANWR. You cannot overstate the significance of people who can struggle against these, the largest corporations in the world for 30 years, and how amazing that resilience is that wellspring of spirituality wellspring of their ancestors working with them, just that wellspring of power.

A native person harvesting in an eco-system, whether it is caribou, whether it is fish, whether it is deer, or whether it is a Makah whale, is something which totally rankles a lot of environmentalists. Because there is this unreconciled relationship between a settler society and an indigenous society or a native society. The Gwich'in are part of redefining that, saying we are people that live here. We rely on this caribou herd and yes, we are carnivores. We're eating these caribou because we worked out our relationship with them a long time ago.

In a consuming culture, which consumes a third of the world's resources, it requires constant intervention into other people's territories, and constant violations of other people's human rights. That is the reality if you consume more than you need, and more than you can produce in any semblance of a relationship that is not only equitable but sustainable.

We are communities that still retain our relationship to land. We eat our fish that the creator gave us to eat. We eat our wild rice. We eat our medicines. You bring in the Dioxin of a pulp and paper mill and then you tell me how we as people are supposed to continue as who we are. It is impossible. It is very simply a human rights struggle.

There is an ethical set of arguments and a moral set of arguments about how we are going to be able to live here. That is the question that Barry Dana and the Penobscots are asking and demanding an answer to. And in reality an American question that must be asked. You have a hundred thousand chemicals in the environment right now. We have no idea of the combined impact of those chemicals, our body burden, We're all carrying well over our recommended daily allowance of Dioxin right now. At what point will American industries and the American public say we've had enough Dioxin. And it's not just in the Penobscots, it's in us: We got the technology, so you cut your profit margin, and you do the right thing.

We may seem far away and distant and we never permeate the American media. We don't exist. But in our reality is also your reality.

We can stand up, the Gwich'in can stand up, and the Penobscots can stand up, the Northern Cheyenne can stand up, the Capitans (Navajos) can stand up, but their survival is contingent upon America changing. In the end, everyone's survival is contingent upon that.