A remote tribe reels from widespread illness, cancer as they wait for promised investigation
OWYHEE, Nev. — The family placed flowers by a pair of weathered cowboy boots, as people quietly gathered for the memorial of the soft-spoken tribal chair who mentored teens in the boxing ring and teased his grandkids on tractor rides.
Left unsaid, and what troubled Marvin Cota’s family deep down, was that his story ended like so many others on the remote Duck Valley Indian Reservation. He was healthy for decades. They found the cancer too late.
In the area, toxins are embedded in the soil and petroleum is in the groundwater — but no one can say for sure what has caused such widespread illness. Until recently, a now-razed U.S. maintenance building where fuel and herbicides were stored — and where Cota worked — was thought to be the main culprit. But the discovery of a decades-old document with a passing mention of Agent Orange chemicals suggests the government may have been more involved in contaminating the land.
“I don’t know if I’m more mad than I am hurt,” Terri Ann Cota said after her father’s service. “Because if this is the case, it took a lot of good men away from us.”
Owyhee is the sole town on the reservation, where snow-capped mountains loom over a valley of scattered homes and ranches, nearly 100 miles from any stoplights. The area is bookended by deep Nevada canyons and flat Idaho plains. For generations, the legacy and livelihoods of the Shoshone-Paiute tribes have centered around raising cattle yearround. And many still use the same medicinal plants and practice the same ceremonies as their relatives buried there.
HERBICIDE SPRAYS
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs was an integral part of everyday life in Owyhee. The agency, which oversaw the maintenance building and irrigation shop, told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in February that it found a revelatory document from 1997.
In it, a BIA employee recalled clearing foliage in the irrigation canals at least 20 years earlier, when he sprayed at least one of the herbicides — but possibly both — that make up Agent Orange. The EPA banned one of those chemicals in 1979 because of its cancer risks.
A BIA official told the EPA and tribal leaders that it was long believed the herbicides were used for weed control along certain roads — not the canals — before rediscovering the document.
The tribes’ current leaders said they were unaware of either scenario. What alarms them, they say, is that the canal system has greater reach than the two-lane highway that runs through town.
Word cascaded down to tribal members, most of whom live along the canals, swam in them, used the water to farm on the edges, and gathered branches from surrounding willow trees to fashion cradleboards and roast marshmallows.
But they know little else.
PROMISED INVESTIGATION
Hundreds of pages of emails, memos and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show federal agencies have promised the tribes that an investigation is coming. Still, the details are scarce because the BIA redacted or withheld most of the contents of the records.
The BIA declined interview requests from the AP but said it’s evaluating the extent that Agent Orange components might have been used on the reservation.
Officials from the BIA and the EPA visited Duck Valley as recently as Aug. 7 to talk about the process of hiring a contractor to clean up contamination from the federal buildings, tribal leaders said. The presentation noted gaps in data analysis, including for the storage and use of herbicides.
Action can’t come soon enough for tribal members who say the federal government’s prior cleanup attempts have lacked urgency and direction. They fear inaction could lead to further sickness and death.
While tribal Chair Brian Mason presses federal officials for answers, tribal members are being urged to get annual medical exams and an environmental team is tasked with digging up historical documents.
“People are dying. And I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” Mason said.