The making of ''Trespassing''

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C Indian Country Today
May 10, 2006.
All Rights Reserved


NEEDLES, Calif. - When filmmaker Carlos DeMenezes filmed the Colorado River Indian Tribes and Fort Mojave Tribe's successful fight to halt the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, another reality was revealed: the cruel legacy of how American Indians were targeted by the nuclear industry.

The filmmaker's journey began when he left his native Brazil and came to Los Angeles to study film in 1982.

After gaining his degree and experience as a filmmaker, he searched for meaning in the industry: ''I did not want to only make money; I wanted to make something that means something.''

DeMenezes began researching the nuclear industry in books and film and soon found his way to Ward Valley, where American Indians and environmentalists joined together to fight the proposed nuclear waste dump.

Steve Lopez, Mojave; David Harper, of the Colorado River Indian Tribes; Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney; and the Arizona chapter of the American Indian Movement are among those who risked arrest and continued ceremonies at Ward Valley to protect the Mojave Desert, tribal sacred places and home of the desert tortoise.

At the proposed nuclear dump site, Lopez spoke of Avi Kwa Me, also known as Newberry Mountain. ''We did not migrate over the Bering Strait. Our people came from right there.'' American Indians united with environmental groups and lobbied in
Washington against the storage of nuclear waste in unlined trenches that threatened the water supply of more than 1 million people along the Colorado River on the border of California and Arizona.

Ward Valley served a greater purpose for the filmmaker, revealing a reality far more than just the transportation of nuclear waste to ancestral Indian lands.

''We went to Ward Valley and realized that this was just the tip of the iceberg. It wasn't about transportation anymore. It was about all the consequences of the Cold War and its impacts on Indian people,'' DeMenezes told Indian Country Today.

''Trespassing'' shows Japanese and global peace advocates at the Nevada Test Site, including the Alliance for Atomic Veterans' military veterans of nuclear testing. Japanese radiation survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki speak of global healing and forgiveness. The film shows the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, aboriginal Western Shoshone land, and reveals in chilling detail the Cold War atomic bomb blasts and the ongoing Western Shoshone protests and arrests.

For those who knew Dorothy Purley, of Laguna Pueblo, N.M., the film holds a poignant legacy. Purley was a former uranium miner who became an outspoken activist against the uranium industry on Indian lands. She died of cancer during the making of the film.

Filmed at the Indigenous Environmental Network's gathering on Laguna Pueblo, Purley described how Laguna and Acoma Pueblo miners and their families at home were saturated with radioactive dust from the mines.

''When they used to blast, all that yellow stuff would come towards the village. You know, we Native Indians have the things like drying food out in the sun, and our meats and stuff. And yet, we breathed it and ate it. And, you know, we weren't aware of it,'' Purley said.

''I feel betrayed because we weren't really told. We weren't really made aware of what we were getting ourselves into. I think if the mine hadn't opened, I don't think any of our lives would have been in jeopardy at all.''

In the Four Corners area, Navajos tell how they worked in the uranium mines without protective clothing long after the nuclear industry knew of the high rate of lung cancer for miners.

Paul Belin, Navajo veteran and uranium miner from Red Valley, Ariz., said uranium dust was all over Navajos as they worked, in their clothing and in their food. Red Valley and nearby Cove have one of the highest mortality rates from cancer and lung diseases from uranium mines. ''We didn't even know that this was dangerous. They never told us,'' Belin said.

A U.S. Senate committee revealed that as early as 1950, the Atomic Energy Commission knew that uranium miners had a high rate of lung cancer but it did nothing. Then, a former public health official testified that the cancer rate for uranium miners is 400 percent higher than the national average, the film reveals.

''Trespassing'' points out that the United States is the only country that has used the atomic bomb on civilians, innocent women and children.

Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior Deprtment, speaks in the film of the profound effect that the truth of the nuclear industry has had on him. He also speaks of the need for honesty.

''I think that's the way our country works best; and I think that the people are entitled to know, and that if there isn't openness, our country is betrayed. I think that's one of the great lessons that I learned out of this is, if secrecy is more important than honesty and openness, the country's going to suffer and people are going to suffer.''

In an interview, DeMenezes reflected on what Navajos and their neighbors to the north, the Dineh in Canada, have often pointed out: they were used as guinea pigs in the uranium mines during the Cold War.

''It was inhumane,'' DeMenezes told ICT.

He said that by outsourcing, contracting out the work of mining uranium, the U.S. government was able to insulate itself from much of the blame for what happened to Pueblos, Navajos and other Native miners during the Cold War. All were victims at a time when the majority of tribal members did not speak English. They were never told of the dangers.

DeMenezes said outsourcing is what the U.S. government is doing now in Iraq.

During the screening of the film at the Arizona International Film Festival, the arrest of Western Shoshone brought tears from the audience in Tucson.

When this was pointed out to DeMenezes after the screening, he said, ''I cry all the time.''

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