Last year we brought you the story of civilian workers at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, who tested the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Today these workers are in their 70s and 80s and suffer from the same diseases that Vietnam veterans have shown were caused by their exposure to the herbicide. While surviving veterans receive disability benefits as a result of their exposure, these civilian workers do not. Earlier this year NPR’s mid-day show, Here & Now, featured our story of…
Non-Federally Recognized Tribes Struggle to Protect Environmental and Cultural Assets By Debra Utacia Krol and Allison Herrera Read more about federally non-recognized tribes. Valentin Lopez was handed a dilemma: how to honor his elders’ admonition to fulfill an ancestral directive to guard and protect the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, a small tribe along California’s Central Coast and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. “In 2006 the tribal elders came to a council meeting,”…
When we imagined a podcast about environmental justice – it was before the Tubbs fire here in Sonoma County – and the deadly fire seasons of 2017 and 2018. Even so, we wouldn’t have thought of Indians and their relationship to fire as a matter of environmental justice. But producers Allison Herrera and Debra Utacia Krol have a different viewpoint. They’re members of a Western tribe – and see the increasingly destructive fires in Northern California as a matter of the Anglo society forgetting…
This is the story of a 15-year conflict over what would be the biggest dam removal ever, a modern cowboys and Indians tale that shows how victories for Native American rights still come with fits of racism and armed conflict, and how rural folks learned to make peace (and collaborate on an 1800-page Congressional bill). It’s a complex story about a fight over shared (and limited) water, with both sides fearing the disappearance of traditional lifestyles. Written and produced by Emrys Eller and…