Leon Bear
Chairman, Skull Valley Band Tribal Council

Continued...

Verdoia: There are people who intimate to us that you and your Band have been taken advantage of by public utilities. . .that the Skull Valley Band lacks the sophistication to negotiate these very deep waters. How do you respond?

Bear: Well, people are people no matter where you go. Whether they're stupid or not, people need people. How do you think this country was built? Not because of stupidity, same with the reservations. How do you think we survive? Not because of stupidity, so to answer that question, it's kind of irrelevant to answer that question because of that. We're here and we will continue to be here. We're not going anywhere. The Goshute people are here and we're going to be here and we're not going anywhere. No matter how stupid people think we are, we're still here.

Verdoia: Is there racism that enters into this? If this was a white community out in Skull Valley that decided this would be a good idea but because it's a Native American Band?

Bear: It does enter the mind about racism and I have mentioned it a couple of times. There are different types of racisms. One that I've always talked about was environmental racism because of the way the governor speaks about how we're not being good neighbors and we're devaluating the property because of this project and all this stuff. I'm very uncomfortable with that because of what's already out in the West Desert. We have nerve agents, we have biological labs, hazardous and toxic waste depots, low level radioactive waste depots, incinerators but yet this project specifically will devaluate the property which I believe is not true. I'm more scared of nerve agent or biological chemicals then I am of spent fuel, of the radiation.

Verdoia: Many people struggle with the concept of Native American sovereignty. In the treaty of 1863, your people really did not give up your land. You really did not move to different lands. You weren't pushed onto different lands. Help the average person out there understand this notion of your sovereignty, your right as a people to self determent.

Bear: Well, the treaty was signed in 1863 in Tooele Valley and this treaty, this specific treaty, there's others that are designed in this same fashion, but this treaty was designed to take away rights and it did take away rights. It took away our labor rights. It took away our mineral rights. It grounded passage because the pioneers were going out to the California to the gold fields at that time, so this treaty was the one to take away rights and there's some rights that they did not take. One was the right to have the land. The other right was hunting, fishing. The other right was gathering. So we still retain those rights under our treaty, which hasn't been taken away. And as you state these rights, that's what makes the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes a sovereign nation because these rights were not taken away. We still retain those rights as of today.

Verdoia: One thing that you issued in January of 2001 was a "State of the Skull Valley Band" and you deliberately released that on the day that the Governor of the state of Utah, Michael Leavitt, was giving his State of the State address. But you hit the governor's message about how great things are going. That was the message of the governor's State of the State address. And you said that the people of Utah need to know there's another issue in this. The state of my people.

Bear: Well, there's a few points that I tried to make. One was that even though the state of Utah is prospering, the Skull Valley Band is not and our people are suffering because of that. I've said there's environmental issues out there, and our ribe does not receive any benefits from those issues and we have no protection out there to fight against those issues. And this is one of the things that we hope that when we do get the storage facility, it will provide us with money to protect ourselves, to monitor, to help our people, as far as health insurance goes. Because the closest health IHS, Indian Health Service, is 250 miles away. It's east of us here, and if you're sick or you've got a broken leg, you have to go 250 miles. That's a long ways to go for for medical care.

So the issues in that state address that I published, those are some of the issues that we're involved in it. And yeah, the state may be looking good, but the Skull Valley Band and I believe for other tribes in the state, I believe I could speak for them too, that it's not looking so good. I mean, we have a tribe north of us, the Northwestern Band of Shoshones who don't have a land base and if they do it's very small. Then we got the the Northern Utes and the Southern Piutes and Confederate Tribes of Goshutes who all, on their reservations, they're trying to develop economics just as we are and the same, in the same broad sense, but if the state is going to do things like they're doing today how does that look? I mean, I really don't understand how the state can on one hand say we're going to help you economically, and on the other hand try to divert or try to take something away from us.

Verdoia: Let's talk about what the state has recently done, because during the Utah State Legislature several bills were put forward, not all of them passed, but bottom line is the Legislature went on the record to try to do everything it can to block the creation of a temporary storage site for radioactive waste. What's your reaction to the State Legislature and what they tried to do?

Bear: Well I respect them, They're trying to do a job which know this is purely political. It has nothing to do with economics. I has nothing to do with equality, it has nothing to do with anything but politics. I believe that our economic development out in Skull Valley, we're going to keep pushing and we're going to keep going forward with that whether the state wants to be a party to it or not. I mean this is our survival. This is what we have to do because the state's not helping us. Federal government is being cut down. The Bureau of Indian Affairs are being cut and we're a small tribe.

You know, we only have 112 members and so we pretty much have to take care of ourselves out here. According to some of the bills that have been passed, we got some outrageous things going on. As far as the taxation goes, as far as bonding, as far as transportation, as far as economic developments. But the issue that we're looking at today is that we're looking at the state of Utah, they're sending us a signal and a message and we're picking up that message and you know, we hear it. I don't know if it helps but we do hear the message they're trying to send us.

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