------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
NIKLAK BUTLER PRESENTE! The following are excerpts from a Dec. 30 statement issued by the Indigenous Environmental Network in tribute to Native activist Nilak Butler, who died Dec. 26 at the age of 49 from ovarian cancer. Ms. Butler was a member of the Big Mountain speaking tour in the late 1980s, which linked the struggles for national liberation for the Indigenous peoples and the Black people of South Africa then living under the racist white apartheid regime: Nilak, one of the founders of the Indigenous Environmental Network, dedicated the past 12 years to doing environmental justice work with Indigenous communities. For near 30 years, Nilak dedicated her life to defending the rights of Indigenous peoples, from the Oglala Lakota community in South Dakota to the communities of Big Mountain/Black Mesa in the territories of the Navajo and Hopi Nations, to Inupiat communities in Alaska. When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she was coordinating the IEN Labor Occupational Health Program, a partnership between IEN and the University of California Berkeley program. She helped create a worker health and safety educational training program for tribal employees and tribal grassroots environmental justice organizations. During the 1990s, Nilak was a campaigner with the Greenpeace Nuclear Free Native Lands Campaign. She worked with both Native and Pacific Island communities impacted by radioactive exposure and tribal communities threatened with becoming sites for the dumping of nuclear waste. Her work as a campaign organizer on nuclear issues took her from nuclear weapons testing issues in the Pacific Islands to the Native Village of Point Hope, Alaska, where the U.S. military disposed radioactive waste in the homelands of the Inupiat peoples. She worked with the Western Shoshone and Goshute Shoshone of the Great Basin, where years of U.S. nuclear weapons testing took place, exposing Shoshone and Paiute peoples to radioactive contamination. As a member of the Indigenous Women's Network, Nilak provided leadership and provided us strength to stand strong in protecting the sacredness of our Earth Mother. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
