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Tuesday 5th December:

This morning, the discussion on the paragraphs in the treaty that deal with the core issue started, the elimination of POPs (Article D) and will continue later this week. A highlight of today was when representatives from Mossville, Louisiana, and Native Americans made an emotional intervention during the afternoon session to testify the environmental, health and social impacts that POPs are having on their communities. They appealed to the US Government to stop undermining an effective treaty.

Charlotte Caldwel:

My name is Charlotte Caldwell, and I am a member of the Bear Clan of the Menominee Nation of the Great Lakes Region of the United States. I also represent the Indigenous Environmental Network.

I am speaking today to express my concerns regarding the health of my people and other Indigenous Peoples in the Great Lakes. We have a deep cultural and spiritual relationship to the land, our Mother Earth that has sustained us for time immemorial. At one time, our ecosystem was pure and pristine. Our nations could feed our families and communities from the vast variety of native plants and the animals of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Our traditions call for fish, berries, and other traditional foods to sustain us and to nourish our spirits and our bodies. These were the foods given to us by the Creator at the beginning of time.

Many of our people still practice a traditional economy, depending on fishing, hunting, and gathering for their livelihood. Our treaty rights have been upheld by the United States Supreme Court. But what good are fishing and hunting rights when the fish and game are contaminated.

My reservation is located along the Fox River and the dioxin discharges from the pulp and paper mills in the Fox River have led to significant health impacts for our native communities. Higher levels of dioxin exposure have been linked to birth defects, child growth retardation, reduced levels of male reproductive hormones, altered ratios of male to female births, diabetes, and cancer.

Due to the fish advisories, my neighbours, the Oneida People who live on the Fox River, their children no longer remember when fishing was a way of life for the Oneida People.

For the Penobscot People of Maine who live on an island, the dioxin discharges of the paper mills have led to the deletion of fish from their diet, which is a form of cultural genocide for the Penobscot People.

The average American receives 300 to 500 times the acceptable safe dose of dioxin in their daily diet. Breast feeding babies receive 50 times that amount. The Mohawk Women of the Great Lakes have dioxin levels in their breast milk that is seven times the national average.

Many of our tribes in the Great Lakes Region have passed resolutions seeking the total elimination of dioxin and other persistent organic pollutants from the environment. It is imperative that this international conference recognize the urgency of eliminating these dioxin discharges globally. These discharges know no boundaries and are inherently unmanageable. We must discontinue the production, incineration and chlorine-bleaching processes that create these dioxins which are dumped on our unsuspecting communities. I implore you to ensure that the mandate of elimination applies to dioxin. Thank you.

Violet Yeaton:

My name is Violet Yeaton, I am representing the Traditional Village Council of Port Graham in Alaska, a Sovereign federally recognized tribe. I have come on behalf of my tribe, representing our resolution in support of complete elimination of Persistent Organic Pollutants, including the Bi-products such as dioxin. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to express our issues of concern. Our village, as many rural villages in Alaska is heavily dependent on our traditional way of life, which is deeply ingrained in our culture and our very existence. Our lives and culture literally depend on the health of our traditional resources.

Wild food contamination is an emerging concern in rural Alaska, especially for Alaska Natives who consume large amounts of wild food annually. Nowhere in the United States is wild food consumption greater than in Alaska's rural communities. The tribal villages of the Chugach Region are no exception. In 1995 and 1996, the native villages of Port Graham and Nanwalek from the Chugach region joined forces in requesting that our traditional foods be tested for contaminants. What resulted was the EPA study on contaminants of our traditional resources in the Lower Cook Inlet in 1997 & 1998.

This study found evidence of significant levels of PCB's, Pesticides and other Bi-products in many important traditional species utilized by our tribal village residents. The concern here is that when we eat our traditional foods, we do not eat just one chemical, we eat the whole fish with all the chemical contaminants. 80 percent of our peoples diet is made up of our traditional foods. On an average our peoples eat between 12 to 15 fish meals per week.

None of the contaminant work done so far has been easy, in fact it's been far from it.
We realize that there are some very large and complex global pollution sources as well as some natural sources, but any sources that we can identify from Cook Inlet or nearby Alaskan areas, we hope to work towards a major clean up that may take many years but will be worth whatever effort can be generated. Our tribal peoples are trying to take responsibility for cleaning up our back yards but this effort seems meaningless if we are being impacted globally by these contaminants.

We really appreciate your efforts in this important and ongoing battle to eliminate POPs, including bi-products such as dioxins at the international level. We want nothing more than to restore our traditional foods to the truly pristine state they once were for our ancestors before us and for the seven generations to come.

It is with eager anticipation that we look forward to joining much larger regional, state, national and now international efforts to help fight against these dangerous chemicals that are invading our once pristine resources. When we look at what is happening with other tribes further south and in other areas of the world, tribes that can no longer eat their own traditional resources due to contaminant concerns, it becomes crystal clear that we must be extremely proactive and vigilante to address these POPs issues. We are no strangers to struggles and difficult times and we will work hard to join forces in this battle to help insure the future of our children, our culture and for our traditional resources and the environment it depends on.