Concentration on Indigenous Lands

Exxon's interest in Indian lands was first evident in the Southwest. In its original incarnation as Standard Oil Co., it signed an oil lease with five Diné (Navajo) men in 1923. The men later found out that the paper which they had signed was a lease, and that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had recognized them as the first "tribal council" in the U.S. - a decade before other tribal governments were established under federal legislation. (LaDuke, p. 20). By the mid-1960s, Exxon had become the largest acquisitor of coal reserves among the energy companies in the Four Corners region. By the mid-1970s, it had become the largest holder of uranium leases in the region, with claims on 400,000 acres of Navajo Reservation lands, 92,000 acres of Canoncito Navajo lands, 60,000 acres of Laguna Pueblo lands, and 60,000 acres around Mount Taylor (sacred to the Navajo and Pueblo). The land was leased in the context of widespread objections to radioactive poisoning of livestock and humans from other uranium mines, and desecration of sacred sites by uranium companies. Exxon mining plans were cancelled after the price of uranium collapsed in the early 1980s. (Gulliver File, pp. 360-62)

Diné tribal member Ester Yazzie testified to the Commission that her people were unprepared for company leasing procedures, since many Diné did not speak English, have electricity, or a means of survival beyond subsistence sheep herding. She says, "We find that our culture is broken, our livelihood....We are afraid for the future of our children. What is life going to hold for the next generation? We were the keepers of the natural order, but the uranium mines changed all that. We have violence, social disorder, abuse of women and children.....We were a people of five fingers; now some of us have more than five fingers or less than five fingers.... We live in a desert where there is not a lot of water...but now our water is extracted to carry coal on a slurry to a railroad to power a plant that doesn't even service our needs. It goes to LA, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Dallas. All we see are powerlines over our heads."

Exxon's huge coal mine in Colombia, South America, has earned it a place on Survival International's Top Ten list of the corporate violators of Native rights (Survival International 1992). The El Cerrejón mine has brought both environmental and cultural devastation to the Wayuu (Guajiro) Indians, who have lived in the region for over 500 years, and survived the Spanish conquest with a large degree of independence. Wayuu Community leader Armando Valbuena Gouriyú testified that Crandon Mining Co. President Jerry Goodrich managed El Cerrejón on a day-to-day basis as Vice President of Operations.

The Deputy Project Manager at El Cerrejón, Ricardo Plata, admitted the potential impact of the mine when he said in 1981, "Any process of development logically does violence to social structures, and produces in some cases, if not physical ethnocides, certainly cultural ethnocides." (Gutierrez, p. 72)

Gouriyú stated, "When Exxon arrived in our territory, the first thing they did was to make a social and anthropological study of our culture. After this, they made overtures to the Wayuu indigenous leadership. They remade them according to their image. There was a lot of money, and some of the Wayuu leadership took some of that money. But some communities have never taken that money." In fact, the project was delayed when the Wayuu demanded compensation for lands taken by the company without consultation. (Gutierrez, pp. 72-74) Gouiryú added, however, that once the mine began operation, Indians were employed only in the lower service positions, rather than better-paying miner jobs.

Impact on Subsistence Economies

Rio Algom (along with its parent company Rio Tinto Zinc) is also on the Survival International Top Ten list, because of its Elliot Lake uranium mines in Ontario. Serpent River Anishinabe (Ojibwe) band councillor Keith Lewis testified as to Rio Algom's impact on his tribe's fishery, "We have been using the Serpent River for 10,000 years. We have an attachment to the river....The reason that the people travel away from the mouth of the river and the drainage basin is not only because there is little in the way of fish there. There is also little in the way of other animals such as beaver , moose, deer, and muskrat.....But the big reason people don't hunt, fish trap, or pick berries there is because they believe the land is poison so it has caused a big social disruption in our communities...."

Lewis testified that the Serpent River used to be one of the greatest sturgeon producing rivers in the province, but that ancient fish has all but disappeared. He went on to say that the only reason pickerel (walleye) are still present is that the river is stocked for sportsmen. Lewis said to the Mole Lake tribal council in January 1994 that "because of the leachates, mostly heavy metals, that got into the river system, the plant life and biotic systems were changed. The pickerel that once thrived there went elsewhere, or chose not to spawn there. Today, the Serpent River, in my opinion, is dead......Our people won't eat any of the fish from the Serpent River."

Exxon Oil in Subsistence Areas

Many of Exxon's oil operations have also been carried out in Native subsistence areas. In Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spilled oil into the waters of the Chugach and Eyak tribes. The Chugach had sold the port of Valdez to the oil companies in 1969 for one dollar, and a pledge that the environment would be protected. An oil company consortium document at the time stated that "the plan will have a positive effect on the unique environmental conditions of the tribes." (Palast, Chicago Tribune, 9/21/94).

As we know now, the spill two decades later damaged the fishery in a way that commercially hurt white fishermen, and damaged the resource-based cultures of local Native peoples. Eyak tribal member Dune Lankard, a fisherman from nearby Cordova, said, "The Eyak people have lived in the Copper River delta region for 3,500 years. We have a pretty good idea what it would take to survive there another 3,500 years......What's going to sustain us is an economy based on the environment......My subsistence outlet was Prince William Sound. I grew up fishing since I was five years old on the ocean......I thought I had the most incredible way of life in the world and I never believed once that anyone could ever kill the ocean. So when it happened, I was in shock. Most of the Native people and non-Native people in the region were in shock......They leave you with the social impacts - the suicide, the alcohol, the drug abuse, the loss of jobs, the loss of a way of life, the loss of language, the loss of subsistence. How do you add all that up? How do you compensate somebody for taking everything away from you?"

In 1994, Federal U.S. District Court Judge Russell Holland ruled that Natives would not be allowed to sue Exxon for non-economic cultural damages. Yet government studies showed that within a year after the spill, subsistence harvests had declined 77 percent in 15 communities (Sound Truth, p. 45). Lankard pointed out that Natives who relied on the sea for food now have to rely on expensive grocery stores. According to a Department of the Interior study, a community system of sharing through a series of cultural events had been disrupted by the spill. The study added that, "Eyak government leaders complained that after the oil spill Exxon simply refused to recognize their native group. The oil company took the position that Cordova Natives were not adversely affected by the oil spill, and consequently, refused to provide food and services which were provided for Natives elsewhere." (U.S. Dept of Interior, p. 207)

Gwich'in Indian elder Sarah James testified that even in her area of northern Alaska, sandpipers have not returned since the spill. Exxon has also been active around the Alaskan North Slope (Gulliver File, p. 355). James testified that Exxon and other oil companies take 80 percent of the revenues from oil pumped from Native lands, while gas prices in her town of Arctic Village still stand at around $5 a gallon. In northern Alaska, these oil companies have been blocked by an Indian-environmentalist alliance from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). James testified to the Commission that ANWR is a key breeding ground for caribou, which are central to the Gwich'in culture as a traditional food source. Exxon is a partner in the Alyeska consortium, which runs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which recently leaked toxic gases in Gwich'in territory, at Station 6 in Steven Village. Arco and British Petroleum - partners with Exxon in Alyeska - have taken the lead in ANWR exploration.. Exxon representatives testified at length in favor of ANWR drilling to a U.S. House subcommittee, while Gwich'in representatives were given only five minutes at the end of the hearing.

Similarly, in the Amazon region of Ecuador, Exxon has followed the lead of Texaco in drilling for oil over the strong objections of local Huaraoni Indians, who are dependent on aquatic life from area streams and rivers. (Gulliver File, pp. 362-63). In Russia, Exxon itself has taken the lead in oil drilling on the lands of the Khanty-Mansi indigenous people in Western Siberia, who fear a repeat of oil spill disasters in their region's main rivers.

Impacts on Cultural Sites

Another disturbing pattern is the treatment of Native cultural sites, particularly sacred sites and burial sites. From California to Quebec, protection of cemeteries has become a strong concern of Native Peoples. Unfortunately, both Exxon and Rio Algom have at best a track record of insensitivity to these concerns, and at worst a willingness to dispose of priceless ancient sites that may stand in the way of their projects.

In Colombia, the construction of a 95-mile rail and road connection between Exxon's El Cerrejón coal mine and the port of Uribia disturbed the cemeteries of the Wayuu people. Exxon's Intercor subsidiary removed the burials, and initially interred them in large structures without regard for the cohesion of families. The Wayuu, many of whom were relocated for the rail corridor, forced Intercor to rebuild the structures. Gouriyú testified, "Wayuu indigenous territories are ruled by families, it is all based on the bones of the ancestors...The train line destroyed this family unity with the burial ground." According to a report by a Colombian geographical institute, many Wayuu "simply did not accept that the land of their elders where they had their bones....was all of a sudden surrounded by machinery and an obliterated landscape that they had to leave without explanation". (Cultural Survival, pp. 22-24).

Keith Lewis testified that Rio Algom destroyed a spiritual site at a uranium mine at Quirke Lake, Ontario. A large cave used for vision quests was covered over, first by water displaced by a tailings dump, and then by the blasting of a cliff overhead. The tribe asked Rio Algom for compensation but was turned down.

In Alaska, the Exxon Valdez beach clean-up process was criticized by the native Eyak Corporation Board of Directors, for "numerous acts of oil disaster workers being in possession of artifacts, desecration by the same of our historical burial sites, and looting by the same of old sites of native habitation....." The company established the Exxon Valdez Cultural Resource Program (EVCRP), ostensibly to protect burials and cultural sites, but it developed into a large-scale archeological study involving the taking of Native historical artifacts. Exxon's own report also documents some of the instances of illegal vandalism and burial desecration during the clean-up (U.S. Dep't of Interior, pp. 210-11; EVCRP, pp. 133-45).

Areas of concern

The track records of Exxon and Rio Algom have raised serious questions among the tribes potentially impacted by the Crandon mine. For example, human burials at the mine site have become a major issue in recent months, as Mole Lake tribal leaders have reported the disappearance of at least ten burial pits in the area, and have taken the issue to court. Similarly, their concern over their wild rice beds are clearly part of their effort to maintain a centuries-old subsistence base, yet Exxon's environmental impact report admits that "the means of subsistence on the reservation" may be "rendered less than effective." (Exxon Minerals, 1983, p. 316).

It was also disturbingly familiar to hear of Rio Algom pitting an Ontario Indian community downstream from a mine against a white community that would not be directly affected by potential leakage from the mine. As Keith Lewis testified, "In our case, they have given money to the white municipalities which have a larger population. They give in the way of donations for community centers, roads, and buildings. They say to the people of Serpent River who live downstream....you people are crazy." Here in Wisconsin, media reports often counterpose an anti-mining Mole Lake to a pro-mining Crandon, even though a number of local white residents have also expressed opposition to the project.

Exxon has made efforts to display some sensitivity to Native concerns elsewhere in the world, around issues such as royalties, burial sites, and employee cultural training. It has negotiated with Aborigines in western and northern Australia over uranium leases, and with the Dené Nation in Canada's Northwest Territories over oil drilling along the Mackenzie River. (Gulliver File, pp. 363-64) In these areas, indigenous people are a majority, and their concerns are well known to regional and federal leaders. Efforts to assuage Native concerns there may have been based more on a cost-benefit analysis of the potential for Native peoples to disrupt a project, and even to affect national politics. Since Native Americans are a tiny minority in the overall Wisconsin population, we question whether state or company leaders will really take their concerns seriously in the Crandon project, or just offer enough verbal assurances for the project to go forward.

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