An Ideographic Analysis of Native American Sovereignty in the State of Utah: Enabling Denotative Dissonance and Constructing Irreconcilable Conflict

Abstract

In 1990, the Office of Nuclear Waste Negotiation under the direction of the federal government sought a community to voluntarily store nuclear waste. The program, known as Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS), would temporarily store 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel within a designated community until a permanent storage location could be determined. In 1992, the Goshute Tribe, located on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in southwest Utah, submitted a grant application and was awarded $100,000 to investigate the benefits and impacts of implementing the MRS program on their reservation. Since then, the Goshute Band has leased land to a private group of electrical utilities for the temporary storage of the spent nuclear fuel. The tribe, along with the out-of-state utility companies, is in the process of transporting the nuclear fuel to the Goshute Reservation. Targeting a Native American tribe to store nuclear waste is not specific to the Goshutes. Tribes in the United States are increasingly p 43 targeted by governments and corporations to consider the economic possibilities of storing nuclear waste on their reservations. The Pine Ridge Sioux, Chippewa, California Campo, Mescalero Apache, Northern Arapaho, Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone, Lower Brule Sioux, Chickasaw, Sac and Fox, Alabama-Quassarta, Ponca, Eastern Shawnee, Caddo, Yakima, and others have either been approached or have applied