Sammy Blackbear
Member of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes

Continued...

Verdoia: You've also indicated that money is presently coming to the Skull Valley Band through the agreement with Private Fuel Storage, but it's not ending up in a general tribal fund.

Blackbear: Right. As far as Skull Valley's concerned, the money going to Skull Valley, it should go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs because it is Tribal Trust Land and therefore it should be reported to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they administer that money evenly, equally and fairly. Mr. Bear [Leon Bear, Chairman of the Skull Valley Business Council] and his associates call themselves facilitators for a corporation, and they won't give the name of the corporation and they won't tell us what they're facilitating. Therefore, the money that PFS is giving Skull Valley is going into their account and not being reported to the BIA. And the tribe is saying that's illegal. That's illegal. You can't do that when you're dealing with Tribal Trust Lands.

Verdoia: That last thing in Native American culture is to take your arguments to court and yet you and others felt the time had absolutely come where the courts were your only resort. Why the courts?

Blackbear: Well, you take a look at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the gross negligence of what they've been doing. You look at PFS coming in here and allowing their money to be used as bribery and for corruption. You also look at the federal agencies as a whole, coming to the reservation and condoning this illegal activity. We had no choice but to go to courts because we've also alleged that there's a conspiracy factor here and this would be one surefire way of dismantling a reservation.

Verdoia: Do you think something like this could end the Skull Valley Band as you know it?

Blackbear: Of course, because once one piece of nuclear material comes on Skull Valley, the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, literally takes over Skull Valley. Literally. And they can tell tribal members, "This reservation is now unsafe, you people have to leave." And they'll have to do that because Leon [Bear] sold our sovereignty and the sovereignty is what protects a tribe and protects a reservation. Well, he just sold it, which again is illegal. He can't do that but he did it anyway. And so the NRC can do that. Now what's also a factor is because the Private Fuel Storage is an LLC, Limited Liability Corporation, they can dismantle themselves once the facility in Skull Valley is full. They can dismantle themselves and they don't have to pay Tooele County or Skull Valley. Not one red cent because they're a limited liability corporation. I don't think Mr. Bear and his associates have looked at that, but PFS can do that. And that hasn't been addressed.

Verdoia: For almost 130 years since the first treaty back in the 1860s, the Skull Valley Band has failed to receive much consideration from any level of government. Not just neglected, but ignored as if you did not exist.

Blackbear: If they ignore us, they at least leave us alone, and not make a mess of things, but because we're at the point we are now...no, we can't be ignored anymore. I think, looking at how Utah has helped other reservations, and now they're saying, "Maybe we can find something for Skull Valley." Well, it's unfortunate it takes a nuclear facility to say, "There's a reservation out there. Let's help them out." It's unfortunate it's come to that but that's reality.

Verdoia: The Skull Valley Band has been studying nuclear waste storage for almost ten years. That would seem to offer ample time if the state of Utah was truly interested in heading off the tribe's move to waste storage. What has the state initiated with the Skull Valley Band in those years?

Blackbear: Nothing. They haven't come to the table. And that's what concerns me because the more we accomplish our goals, the state now has to say, "Are we going to help them, or not?" If not, they're going to have a nuclear facility here, and it's unfortunate. I'm not saying that will happen. I, myself and others are looking for economic development. We do have some packages but we've done it all on our own. We've done it all with our own money, our own time, and so it seems we're left to doing it on our own again. I hope the state can help us out.

Verdoia: One wonders what the voice of the Skull Valley Band, as a group, would be on this subject. Do you have any sense of how the tribal members feel?

Blackbear: Well, some of them know what they want to do. Some are just waiting to see what happens. We've narrowed it down to there's a third for this facility because they're being paid. There's a third against it because we know everything that can go wrong, and then there's a third kind of sitting on the fence to see which way it topples. So far we're extremely successful in what we're doing. We're extremely successful in court. Hopefully our strategies up until now have all worked, and that's where we are. Politics in Skull Valley, they happen. They're not good. We hope that people will do the right thing, but when you have a big company like PFS coming to Skull Valley and throwing their money around, it's hard to keep order. It takes more than your own common sense to say no. You've got to just listen to your people, what they want to do, not your own pocket. Not your own bank account.

Verdoia: Among Native American cultures there is a unique tie to the land, especially ancestral lands. Can you describe what your tie is to this land, this valley?

Blackbear: Well, if it wasn't for this land I wouldn't be here today. This is who we are. You know, some people come out here and they don't see much. You know, they see a desert out there, but to us it's everything. We have our medicines out here that we still use. Herbs that we still use. We still hunt deer, rabbit, other things. We still do all of that, and some of us depend on that meat and stuff just to get by today. I still go out and hunt for meat. My kids do that as well. So it means everything to us. The land is who we are, and again it's not ours. We've got to take care of it like our ancestors did; we don't look at something as tomorrow or the next day, we try to look at things as the next seven generations. What's going to effect the next seven generations? I'd say PFS would effect us.