Casey Camp of the Ponca Nation addresses the People's Freedom Caravan
A fine black dust from Continental Carbon Black coats the trees, the wheat, and the wetlands. A city’s landfill sends its detritus on the wind to toss and tumble through the sacred burial ground of the Ponca people. The children are forbidden to swim in the natural springs. The land is incapable of providing organic food for families to eat. After a day of travel Friday on our way to the 2010 United States Social Forum, SWOPistas and companer@s from Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio, Texas were hosted in northeastern Oklahoma by the wonderful, extended Camp family, who are members of the Ponca Nation and leaders in the American Indian and environmental justice movement.
During our visit in Ponca City with the members of the Coyote Creek Center for Environmental Justice, the Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism, and the American Indian Movement, we learned not only about the brutal environmental devastation visited upon the Ponca Nation in the modern era by big corporate polluters, but also about the historic injustice that the state of Oklahoma represents in the United States.
The painful legacy of forced removal and relocation of almost 50 tribes to the state, broken treaties and stolen land, is compounded by a dominant Anglo society that refuses to acknowledge the past or make amends in the present. Instead, environmental racism is on vivid display, with hugely polluting industries located on the Ponca homeland on the south side of the town.
Green grass belies the deep contamination that exists from heavy industrial pollution in Ponca land
Continental Carbon Black, the huge Conoco Phillips Refinery, Ponca Iron and Metal, abandoned heavy industrial plants contaminated with heavy metals…they dot the landscape of the Ponca Nation land. Heavy poisonous metals permeate the air, dust the crops, sink into the groundwater.
His own children live in a radically different natural environment, from the time of his own youthful days growing up on the land, Micasi Camp said as he recounted the impact of the heavy industrial facilities on the land of the Ponca Nation. They can’t swim in the natural springs or eat fish they catch from the river.
“It’s a form of genocide. We can’t live on the land, grow food or drink the water,” he said.
To compound the injustice, Ponca City officials chose to locate the city’s landfill directly across the road from the Ponca tribe’s burial ground, which demonstrates a deeply ingrained disregard for the Ponca tribe’s almost 3000 members.
“When we come up here to put away our loved ones, to have our final ceremony, in this place that was established in 1891, we have to listen to bulldozers,” Casey Camp told caravanistas as we observed the close proximity of the landfill to the sacred site of the Poncas on a hill top overlooking the country side. “When there’s a wind, we find Walmart sacks and other trash.”
In the face of the historic injustice that permeates their present, the Ponca people are resilient and determined. They demand that companies cease their pollution. They insist the city remove its landfill. They retain their culture in the face of constant assimilationist pressures. They work in concert with their brothers and sisters cross country to end the multi-state, multi-national production and movement of community-killing fossil fuels to meet the needs of a society mired in wasteful consumption habits.
They met us in their community with open arms, welcoming us with food, stories and songs. Our meeting embodied what the social forum process is about: a space to share, build relationships, and strengthen our movement for justice.
Many thanks in particular to Casey and Dwain Camp for organizing our visit, and sharing the story of their people.
Just as we did in 2007, when we took a large delegation of New Mexicans to the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, we’re headed to Detroit cross-country in a caravan with a multitude of our friends and allies from across the southwest.
The People’s Freedom Caravan is stopping along the way, to share histories, culture and struggles with communities along the way. First, the Ponca Nation. Next up: St. Louis, Louisville, and Chicago, before heading in to Detroit for the five days of the social forum.
