quote:

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WASHINGTON, DC -- A new study by sociologists at Washington State University (WSU) suggests Native Americans and their lands are disproportionately exposed to hazards posed by the U.S. military's explosive and toxic munitions.

The research, conducted by Gregory Hooks, chair of the WSU Department of Sociology, and Chad L. Smith, Texas State University-San Marcos professor and a former WSU graduate student, provides evidence that Native American lands tend to be located in the same county as sites deemed to be extremely dangerous due to the presence of a variety of unexploded military ordnance.

The researchers study, "The Treadmill of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans," appears in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association.

While a body of previous research has determined that Native Americans and other minority populations are often subjected to environmental inequalities as the result of economic and industrial activities, Hooks and Smith said this latest research is the first to systematically examine the role of the military in the uneven distribution of environmental hazards.

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I can't say I'm surprised. Given the crappy situation overall in several Canadian reserves and the similar situation in the USA, I'm not surprised that they also have the least ability to shield themselves from environmentally destructive decisions such as where to store toxic waste and the like.

What makes it even worse is that some reserves in the USA are on large tracts of unoccupied land, so the US military often puts bases on or near such land. For example the Umatilla reserve in Oregon has a military base near it.