US banned pesticides poisoning Indigenous Peoples worldwide

POTAM PUEBLO, Sonora, Mexico – Pesticides banned in the United States are still being exported by US corporations to agricultural fields surrounding Indigenous Peoples’ communities, including those of Yaquis in Sonora, Mexico, resulting in illnesses and deaths.

Yaqui youths exposed to these pesticides and chemicals have died, while young mothers have given birth to “jelly babies," babies born without bones. In American Indian villages in Alaska, banned pesticides are carried by the wind and water and accumulate in the food chain and bodies of humans.

In a move to halt the secrecy behind the US corporate acts, the International Indian Treaty Council presented a resolution to the National Congress of American Indians, which was adopted at NCAI's annual convention in Denver in November.

The United States government was urged to disclose the specific corporations, factories and storage locations for chemicals that are banned for use in the United States, but continue to be produced and exported. The US was also asked to halt the production and reveal the health effects of those chemicals to the public.

The National Congress of American Indians urged the US Senate Indian Affairs Committee to hold oversight hearings on the contamination of subsistence food resources and the health and human rights of Indigenous Peoples, inside and outside the United States.

American Indian communities were urged to restore their traditional agricultural knowledge, practices, seeds and farming methods which are chemical-free. The Agency for International Development was urged to cease funding programs which promote the use of DDT, an internationally-banned pesticide which accumulates and persists in the global food chain and in human bodies.

Instead, NCAI urged US AID to provide funding for safe and effective alternatives for malaria prevention in Africa and elsewhere.

The resolution was created by the International Indian Treaty Council's North-South Indigenous Network against Pesticides in conjunction with NCAI. The resolution is the “Impacts on the Contamination of Subsistence Food Resources, Health, Human Rights and Development of Tribes and Indigenous Communities."

The use of dangerous pesticides in the United States increased 33 times from 1945 to 1995 and pesticides used today are now up to 10 times more toxic. Many pesticides are transferred to developing babies though the placenta, and after their birth through their mother's milk, resulting in birth defects, learning and developmental disabilities.

Pesticide exposure causes a range of severe health problems for people of all ages, including leukemia and other forms of cancer. Programs to start aerial spraying of pesticides and herbicides are currently being proposed in Alaska.

The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health noted that between 1996 and 2000, the United States exported nearly 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides identified as known or suspected carcinogens, an average rate of almost 16 tons per hour.

Further, the production, export and unmonitored use of banned, prohibited and dangerous toxins including pesticides violates a range of human rights for Indigenous Peoples around the world. These include the Rights of the Child, Right to Health, Food Security, Development, Life, Physical Integrity, Free Prior Informed Consent, Cultural Rights, the Right to be Free from all Forms of Racism and Racial Discrimination and the Right of All Peoples not to be Deprived of Their Own Means of Subsistence, the resolution states.