Henry Red Cloud of Oglala Lakota Tribe on Native American Anti-Nuclear Activism, Uranium Mining, and the Recession’s Toll on Reservations

Comments: Thanks Dr. Gordan Edwards for the info!

September 30, 2010

The Nuclear-Free Future Awards are being awarded at New York’s historic Cooper Union.

The prize has been described as the most important anti-nuclear award in the world.

We speak to one of this year’s winners, Henry Red Cloud, the great-great grandson of Chief Red Cloud. Henry Red Cloud is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and founder of Lakota Solar Enterprises, one of the nation’s first Native American-owned and–operated renewable energy companies.

Guest:  Henry Red Cloud, member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and proprietor of Lakota Solar Enterprises.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, uranium mining, what does it mean on reservations? What’s happening?

HENRY RED CLOUD: It’s terrible. It’s, first of all, our water situation. You know, water is going to be—it is mni wiconi, the water of life. Everything needs water—things that we eat, our souls, our livelihood—and it’s affecting our water. So water is—it’s terrible.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Affecting the water in terms of contaminating?

HENRY RED CLOUD: Drinking water, yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: When they mine uranium.

HENRY RED CLOUD: Yeah, when they mine.

AMY GOODMAN: And the tailings that—

HENRY RED CLOUD: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Communities are—it’s just, you know, terrible. We need to stop what we’re doing and start looking towards alternative—the natural.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Henry Red Cloud, for coming here. Tonight you will be at Cooper Union. We will be recording that. You will be joining Patti Smith and Winona LaDuke and Jonathan Schell and many others who will be gathered from around the world. Other winners, a nuclear scientist from Russia who lives in a closed city, an activist who has been trying to get compensation from France for testing the atomic bomb in Polynesia, and others. That’s at Cooper Union tonight at 7:00 here in New York City. Henry Red Cloud, thanks so much for being with us, member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, proprietor of Lakota Solar Enterprises.

Read more:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/30/henry_red_cloud_of_oglala_lakota