Skull Valley Goshute

March 23, 2005 In 1492, Christopher Columbus, a lost sailor, found himself stumbling upon the Americas. Believing that he has found a new trade route to India, he misnamed the inhabitants Indians. Decades have past and yet this incorrect name still binds itself to the Native peoples of the Americas. Since the landing of Columbus, Native American tribes have been tortured, enslaved, and many of them extinguished. The solution to the Native American problem was to force each tribe onto a reservation which sometimes was not even in the area of their homeland. After the reservation, came the days of the boarding school where young Native American children were sent to be educated in the how long does weed stay in your system ways of the white man. The goal was, Kill the Indian and save the man. During the seventies, the American Indian Movement took place with the objective of announcing that Native Americans were human beings and deserved to be treated as such. Native Americans have been able to survive since the coming of Christopher Columbus and the rest of the people from the Old World. Today, the United States government has given federally recognized tribes the power to govern themselves, therefore; making them soverign nations. According to the Department of Justice Policy on Indian Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations with Indian Tribes states that:

Though generalizations are difficult, a few basic principles provide important guidance in the field of Indian affairs: 1) the Constitution vests Congress with plenary power over Indian affairs; 2) Indian tribes retain important sovereign powers over "their members and their territory," subject to the plenary power of Congress; and 3) the United States has a trust responsibility to Indian tribes, which guides and limits the Federal Government in dealings with Indian tribes. Thus, federal and tribal law generally have primacy over Indian affairs in Indian country, except where Congress has provided otherwise.

Being a full-blooded Navajo, Native American such as Native American Mascots, Casinos, and others have gotten my attention throughout the years. In 1997, I was a senior in High School in Salt Lake City, Utah when the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes agreed to store high-level uranium on its reservation. To me, this was a non-issue. The Goshutes are a federally recognized tribe thus a sovereign nation which allows them to govern their members and their territory. Furthermore, since the discovery of the Americas, Native people have faced the challenge of having much of their land taken from them, with nothing in return. It is a great financial opportunity for the Goshutes to bring themselves into a stage where they can afford to take care of their members. The Goshutes should be allowed to store nuclear waste on their land.