PLENTY BULLETIN
Vol. 2, No. 1 ‘ Winter 1986
PLENTY SHIPS FIELD HOSPITAL TO MEXICO TO AID GUATEMALAN REFUGEES
On December 9. 1985. 14 tons of medical equipment and supplies were airlifted from Laredo, Texas to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This gift represents the combined efforts of the City of Bardstown, Kentucky, which donated it to PLENTY, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), which received the shipment on behalf of COMAR, the Mexican Governments refugee agency, which requested it for the Mayan Refugees in Quintana Roo, and numerous individuals and organizations that contributed the funds to move it. We are grateful to everyone who played a part.
The shipment, which contained a complete surgical theater including generator and lights, X—ray unit, cots and bedding, and laboratory materials will be used by a hospital now under construction in the small town of Bacalar, in the Mexican State of Quintana Roo. The hospital to be completed in March, 1986, will serve the nearby Mayan refugee camps as well as local Mexican peasants from the neighboring ‘ejidos’ or work cooperatives.
In April PLENTY Directors will make a project evaluation tour of the hospital and then travel to Mexico City to explore additional joint projects with COMAR.
[Note: Special thanks are also due to International Clinical Laboratories of Nashville and The Farm Clinic of Summertown. TN for their supplemental donations of medical equipment and supplies and to PEMEX for providing the aircraft.]
Top. Donated medical supplies shown being loaded onto the plane supplied by COMAR.
Middle. PLENTY representative Jerry Hutchens discusses the project with Jose Ramirez of COMAR.
Bottom: Airlift pilot poses with Plenty and COMAR representatives before take off.
Photo credits: Jenna Hutchens
SLIM BUTTES COMMUNITY REFORESTATION AND
AGRICULTURE PROJECT (PINE RIDGE) Winter 1986
The Slim Buttes Tiospaye is one of several traditional Oglala l.akota Tiospayes (extended families) actively attempting to revitalize themselves as viable communities on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
As reported in the previous PLENTY Bulletin, Pine Ridge is the second largest and the poorest Native American reservation. Fifty by one hundred miles, with
a population of 18,000 the Reservation is beset by 85% unemployment and a land base which has been decimated by the incursion of out-of-state white ranchers. These ranchers are currently leasing more than half of the total acreage for cattle grazing and paying prices amounting to a few dollars per acre.
Over the last three years, Dutch Elm disease has become a major factor contributing to a rapidly accelerating process of deforestation at Pine Ridge.
American and Chinkota Elm stands, the major tree species in the primary drainage areas of the Reservation, are all dead or dying. These trees were especially thick along the White River, which cuts a 200-mile course through the Reservation, including the Slim Buttes community. The death of this foliage is having
a severe impact on the Pine Ridge environment in terms of soil and water conservation, wildlife, native food, and woodland resources.
It is a bleak picture, and one that reveals, upon closer examination, an epidemic of homicide, suicide, alcoholism and other by-products of despair and isolation. The reservations are America’s versions of South Africa‘s ‘homelands‘
There is another side to this depressing view of reservation life. The Oglala Lakota have a proud and vital social and spiritual heritage. Known for their self- reliance and indomitable spirit, the Oglala are showing signs of taking hold of their destiny anew and making things better for themselves. This positive movement is occurring from a regeneration of the Oglala sense of community, which is being manifested through the lately reactivated Tiospayes.
The Tiospaye that is behind the project at Slim Buttes is largely made up of descendants from the legendary American Horse and Afraid of Bear Oglala clans. Today, the community at Slim Buttes consists of about 80 people, living in 20 households, spread out over a few thousand acres in the southwest corner of the Reservation.
What they have done is take 320 acres, much of it good bottomland, back out of lease for their own use. Plans call for 135 acres to be planted with 8,000 new trees and five acres will be returned to agricultural production this year. One acre will be planted in potatoes, one acre in sweet corn, one in assorted vegetables, one in root crops, and one in soybeans. The harvest from these crops will not be sold for profit but will be consumed by the community or given-away to people in need.
Many of the crops will be stored in root cellars or canned after harvest for use in the winter months. The soybeans will supply a program to introduce the home preparation of soyfoods to residents of the Reservation.
This project, though small in scale, is exactly the kind of effort that the Reservation needs. Pine Ridge, while incredibly poor, is rich in its resources of people and land. As renowned Native American writer and commentator, John Mohawk, has observed, the people are a generation removed from the skills necessary to mobilize their resources for their own economic benefit. All they need is a little practice and a little help getting started.
At this point, the Slim Buttes project has been awarded a $5,000 grant by our friends at the Seva Foundation. Another $2,000 has been promised by the Forestry Division of the B.l.A. (Bureau of Indian Affairs) for the purchase of seedlings. PLENTY USA is attempting to raise an additional $9,000 before spring planting. Next year, the project’s greatly reduced costs will be largely covered through the sale of firewood cut on the land.
Tom Cook and Loretta Afraid of Bear have spearheaded the Slim Buttes Project. Tom is the Project Director, and Loretta is on the Project Management Board.
Atomic Veterans
Albert Bates, Director of PLENTY’s Natural Rights Center writes about the plight of America’s own Atomic Veterans.
The era of atomic tests began with Operation Crossroads in 1946. The War in the Pacific had concluded with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by bombs of terrifying dimensions. For the human species the world would never be the same.
The American Navy, believing that sea power had won the war, wanted to find out if ships at sea could survive The Bomb. For four years Micronesia had been a battleground between empires. Five thousand islanders had lost their lives, as first the Japanese and then the Americans marched across their Pacific Paradise. When Crossroads was announced, the Bikinians were told the testing was necessary ‘for the good of mankind and to end all world wars.’ The helpless islanders were whisked away to a lifeless ocean outpost, given two weeks worth of food, and then forgotten. The lagoon ecosystem that had supported them for millennia was to be ruined essentially forever.
The first test at Crossroads was a 15-kiloton airdrop called Able. Just one day later, repair teams went aboard the target ships. Among the young naval engineers was Mike Stanco. He would remain aboard his radioactive target ship, the USS Nevada, for 24 days, clearing debris, restoring power, repairing and operating the water distilling apparatus, eating, sleeping and working as usual in the radioactive environment. Stanco and others visualized the radiation as little particles they called ‘geigers.’ To men who had seen combat aboard battleships from one end of the Pacific to the other, ‘geigers’ were much less frightening than bombs, torpedoes, and
Kamikaze pilots.
Shot Baker was the first underwater explosion of a nuclear device. When Baker went up, a million tons of radioactive lagoon water rained down on the atoll and everything in it. Aboard the destroyer USS Sumner, 18-year-old Johnny Smitherman was pelted with coral debris and washed with sea mist from the cloud. A few days later, and for the following month, Smitherman would be back in the lagoon, boarding target ships to put out fires, visiting the radioactive beaches, and swimming in the surf. Another Baker participant was pilot-photographer Jim Dugan. Dugan took the original film footage that is often seen today in documentaries about nuclear tests. Between shots, he landed his seaplane in the lagoon and relaxed on the beaches.
Meanwhile, the scientists brought in to monitor the tests began to be disturbed by what they were seeing. They found that ‘contamination of personnel, clothing, hands and even food (could) be demonstrated readily in every ship…in increasing amounts every day.’ Still, it was more than a month before they were able to persuade Admiral Blandy to cancel shot Charlie and pull the 42,000-man fleet back to the United States.
Making calculations of plutonium concentrations aboard ships, Crossroads scientist Herbert Scoville warned the Navy to be cautious when undertaking stateside repairs and maintenance. Scoville calculated that even aboard those observer ships given early radiological clearance, radiation levels were high enough to cause health problems.
By 1980, Mike Stanco had become very sick. He was weakened and bedridden by a blood disease similar to leukemia. He had lung cancer and colon cancer. His first child developed cancer. His second child had debilitating birth defects. The Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) informed the Veterans Adminstration that there was no connection between his medical problems and radiation, so he was denied veterans benefits.
A few weeks after leaving Bikini, John Smitherman noticed black burns on his lower legs. For years after, he was plagued by swelling in his feet, ankles, and calves. In 1976, Smitherman’s legs became so swollen that they were amputated. The disease moved up to his arms. His left hand eventually grew to six times normal size, and although it was extremely painful, he still used it to operate his wheelchair and to steer his van in his many drives around the country organizing atomic veterans. Doctors advised him to have it removed, but he steadfastly refused. In 1983, Smitherman was diagnosed as having terminal colon cancer. It was later learned that he had lung cancer as well. Repeatedly the DNA underestimated Smitherman’s likely radiation dose, and repeatedly he was denied veterans benefits.
Pilot Jim Dugan became a successful artist and managed a large business. Then he started having falls. He lost control of his balance. His speech slurred. Eventually, he became paralyzed and had to be spoon fed. The DNA said that the strange degenerative disorder bore no possible relationship to radiation, so Dugan was denied VA benefits. More than 4,000 atomic veterans have applied for medical benefits. Ninety nine percent have been denied.
John Smitherman died of colon cancer on September 11, 1983. Herbert Scoville died of colon cancer in 1985. Jim Dugan recently married his sweetheart, Grace Stoneman, and still survives with her help. Mike Stanco died of colon cancer on October 26, 1985.
Widows Dorothy Stanco and Rose Smitherman and pilot Jim Dugan are among those who are being assisted by the Natural Rights Center. We have brought litigation, fought for legislation, and pursued administrative appeals. This work is at the forefront of an important human rights struggle. Radiation is a silent killer. It enters the body, does its damage. and leaves without a trace. Its victims die years or decades later of cancer, birth defects, or a host of untraceable diseases. By making public what small doses have done to atomic veterans, we hope to prevent even greater doses from being routinely administered to future people from irradiated food, from nuclear waste dumps, from nuclear power plants, and from the ultimate horror of nuclear battlefields.
DANCING FOR DOLLARS (AND HEALTH CARE)
On December 6, 1985, the Salinas, California Chapter of PLENTY USA held a ‘Dance-a-thon’ to benefit PLENTY’s health care project in Lesotho, southern Africa. Five volunteers, over a two-month period recruited dancers, gift prizes, enlisted a local dee jay, located a hall, and sent out invitations to all of PLENTY’s California supporters. On the Friday night of the event they decorated the hall, prepared the food and beverage tables, and collected tickets.
Dozens of local businesses contributed prizes for the dancers, ranging from AM/FM cassette radios, to free dinners to the ‘whale-watching cruise’ donated by Princess Lines, and a big-screen video projection unit for showing videos of Lesotho as part of the Dance-a-thon light show. The dancers, some seventy in all, went out and solicited pledges for every minute they would be dancing. This imaginative event, for a total investment of about $70 (most of that for the mailing of invitations), raised $7,000 for the project, and everybody had a great time to boot! Now that’s an example of what grassroots fundraising can do. Plans are already in the works to do it again this year.
Some Basotho villagers do a dance of their own in the area to be served by PLENTY’s Health Clinic project.