Half Lives of Reagan's Indian Policy: Marketing Nuclear Waste to American Indians

Abstract

annual meeting, David Leroy, recently appointed director of the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator, appeared before the National Congress of American Indians in San Francisco to offer all federally recognized Indian tribes a new deal for economic development: tribes could negotiate with his quasi-private offshoot of the Department of Energy to store highly radioactive spent fuel rods from the commercial nuclear industry on their reservation lands. Citing the famous Duwamish Chief Seattle on stewardship of the earth, Leroy offered tribes a no-strings-attached bid to consider this storage, suggesting they could negotiate for nearly anything they needed: all agreements would be on tribal terms. As he put it, "No one wishes to buy your land, no one wishes to mortgage your future. Instead, the Negotiator process [for storing nuclear waste] is the embodiment of a New Federalism. . . . [It] recognizes and emphasizes Indian