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+AC- Native Americans |
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+The USFG hides behind the veil of “respecting tribal sovereignty” to legally deny Native Americans protection from the nuclear waste industry |
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+Kamps 96 |
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+http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/historynativecommunitiesnuclearwaste06142005.pdf |
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+Low-income and minority communities are disproportionately targeted with facilities and wastes that have significant and adverse human health and environmental effects.1 This places the burdens of society on those who are most vulnerable. These communities are at a tremendous economic and political disadvantage over the decision-making process that is dominated by large, wealthy corporations and/or government agencies. Ironically, low income and People of Color communities targeted with hazardous facilities often benefit the least from whatever societal “good” is purported to justify the generation of the hazardous substances in the first place.2 According to the 1990 U.S. Census (the very time period when the U.S. nuclear establishment intensified and accelerated its targeting of Native American communities with high-level radioactive waste dumps, as shown below), over 31 of Native Americans living on reservations had incomes below the federal poverty line.3 After centuries of oppression and domination, stripped of their lands, resources, and traditional governments, these communities lack political power, and desperately need economic development. The “tribal sovereignty” of Native Americans, which makes their lands exempt from state law and many environmental regulations, only increases their attractiveness as targets for facilities unwanted elsewhere. Native Americans have already disproportionately borne the brunt of the impacts from the nuclear fuel chain over the past 60 years.4 In the case of radioactive waste storage and disposal, the nuclear power establishment in industry and government is simply taking advantage of these vulnerable communities, attempting to hide from environmental regulation and widespread public opposition behind the shield of tribal sovereignty |
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+NEXT |
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+Moving nuclear plants and dump sites are not enough to solve the issue, the nuclear industry is dependent on Native American land for labor and mining. Even when industry leaves the area, the impacts continue to ravage the community |
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+Kamp 96 |
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+http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/historynativecommunitiesnuclearwaste06142005.pdf |
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+ The nuclear fuel chain involves the mining and milling of uranium, and the processing, conversion and enrichment of it into fuel for nuclear reactors and atomic weaponry. Most of the uranium in the U.S. is located on Native American lands. Uranium mines were, and continue to be, on Navajo lands throughout the Grants Mineral Belt (Arizona and New Mexico), on Laguna Pueblo land in New Mexico and tribal lands in the Northwest, as well as on and near Sioux Indian lands in western South Dakota. These mines have taken a particularly hard toll on the communities near them. Native Americans miners, most of whom were never informed of the dangers of uranium, were exposed to its particulate and radioactive gases in the mines for decades. They have suffered large numbers of lung cancer fatalities, a disease almost entirely unknown among the Navajos and Pueblos before uranium mining. Mining debris and mill tailings, as milling often takes place near the mines to minimize transport of waste rock, were put into unlined storage ponds or out in the open air, where often they leached into nearby soil and water. Groundwater that entered into the mines, and thus became contaminated, was regularly pumped out into rivers and lakes. Worsening this already poor situation, when mining ceased in the late 1970's (because of the drop in uranium prices), companies abandoned the mines. They did this without sealing the tunnels, filling the pits, or removing the large piles of radioactive and toxic tailings. As a result, Native American families have lived for many decades in very close proximity to the mines, grazed their livestock there, and had children playing in them. Uranium mine tailings have been used in roads, homes, buildings and school |
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+The gratuitous mistreatment of the Native American community by the nuclear industry mirrors the slaughter of Native Americans by European colonists. Therefore the impact is the re-entrenchment of settler colonialism. |
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+Kauanui 16 |
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+http://csalateral.org/wp/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialism-enduring-indigeneity-kauanui/ |
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+As Wolfe noted, because Settler colonialism “destroys to replace”, it is “inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal.”3 He was careful to point out that settler colonialism is not simply a form of genocide, since there are cases of genocide without settler colonialism, and because “elimination refers to more than the summary liquidation of Indigenous peoples, though it includes that.”4 Hence, he suggested that “structural genocide” avoids the question of degree and enables an understanding of the relationships between spatial removal, mass killings, and biocultural assimilation.5 In other words, the logic of elimination of the native is about the elimination of the native as native. And yet, to exclusively focus on the settler colonial without any meaningful engagement with the indigenous—as has been the case in how Wolfe’s work has been cited—can (re)produce another form of “elimination of the native.” Because settler colonialism is a land-centered project entailing permanent settlement, as Wolfe points out in this same essay, “Settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. |
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+I advocate a complete rejection of American colonial energy industry and the USFG – Giving first priority to Native Americans. Decolonization is a first priority for solving. Ward Churchill |
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+https://books.google.com/books?id=nrCWZZJD48MCandpg=PA550andlpg=PA550anddq=from+a+native+son+ward+churchillandsource=blandots=UcjntmjBi8andsig=Ak9QzP9xxYZl8VFXOUlNYF9szcUandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwjb7o6mOPNAhVB0oMKHRkZBSQQ6AEIUTAI#v=onepageandq=from20a20native20son20ward20churchillandf=false |
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+Finally, and one suspects this is the real crux of things from the government/corporate perspective, any such restoration of land and attendant sovereign prerogatives to native nations would result in a truly massive loss of “domestic” resources to the United States, thereby impairing the country’s economic and military capacities (see “Radioactive Colonialism” essay for details). For everyone who queued up to wave flags and tie on yellow ribbons during the United States’ recent imperial adventure in the Persian Gulf, this prospect may induce a certain psychic trauma. But, for progressives at least, it should be precisely the point. When you think about these issues in this way, the great mass of non-Indians in North America really have much to gain and almost nothing to lose, from the success of native people in struggles to reclaim the land which is rightfully ours. The tangible diminishment of US material power which is integral to our victories in this sphere stands to paves the way for realization of most other agendas from anti-imperialism to environmentalism, from African American liberation to feminism, from gay rights to the ending of class privilege – pursued by progressive on this continent. Conversely, succeeding with any or even all of these other agendas would still represent an inherently oppressive situation in their realization is contingent upon an ongoing occupation of Native North America without the consent of Indian people. Any North American revolution which failed to free indigenous territory from non-Indian domination would be simply a continuation of colonialism in another form. Regardless of the angle from which you view the matter, the liberation of Native North America, liberation of the land first and foremost, is the key to fundamental and positive social changes of many other sorts. One thing they say, leads to another. The question has always been, of course, which “thing” is to the first in the sequence. A preliminary formulation for those serious about achieving (rather than endlessly theorizing and debating), radical change in the United States might be “First Priority to First Americans” Put another way this would mean, “US out of Indian Country.” Inevitably, the logic leads to what we’ve all been so desperately seeking: The United States – at least what we’ve come to know it – out of North America altogether. From there it can be permanently banished from the planet. In its stead, surely we can join hands to create something new and infinitely better. That’s our vision of “impossible realism.” Isn’t it time we all went to work on attaining it? |
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+Therefor the Role of the ballot is the method for liberation from settler colonialism. |
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+Other forms of solvency claim to help but do so on stolen land, making all their attempts at reform futile. There is NO topical version of the aff—affirming would reinforce the power of existing colonial structures, re-ifying the violence and erasing the lived experience of Native people. Kauanui 2 http://csalateral.org/wp/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialism-enduring-indigeneity-kauanui/ |
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+Why have few scholars taken up the question of indigeneity when it is something that implicates most aspects of American culture, politics, policy, and society because the United States is a settler colonial state? How can one understand the US Republic without accounting for the violent removal of the original occupants, indigenous peoples—the preexisting sovereign nations? Since attentiveness to indigenous peoples always entails an examination of prior occupancy, sovereignty, and nationhood, many scholars have arguably relegated it to the field of Native American Studies. Certainly, the study of indigenous peoples is foundational to American history, culture, society, and politics. Understanding settler colonialism as a structure exposes the fact that colonialism cannot be relegated to the past, even though the past-present should be historicized. The notion that colonialism is something that ends with the dissolving of the British colonies when the original thirteen became the early US states has its counterpart narrative in the myth that indigenous peoples ended when colonialism ended. Works on local settler history and settler governmentality explain the structure. Jean O’Brien, in Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England, theorizes the persistent myth of the vanishing Indian.11 She argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. O’Brien examined more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the center of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted (often in lamenting tones) that New England’s original inhabitants had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more practical colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. |
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+Underview |
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+1. Colonialism exists as a structure, as its roots function within current institutions that perpetuate its impacts. Therefore mindset shifts are not enough to solve the harms as they do nothing to solve the problem. And, mindset shift alts and criticisms that critique my method or process are insufficient as they don’t do anything about the problem of colonization. Colonization can only be reversed through the aff, only then can we begin to question harmful mindsets. |
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+2. And, the pre and post fiat distinction is incoherent, as even if a debater claims that their advocacy is post fiat it still does not occur. In reality, debate is a comparison of two contrasting performances, your obligation as the negative is to prove why your performance is favorable. Means you can’t preclude the AC through generic theory first claims or pre fiat up-layering through Ks. |
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+3. Policy making is entrenched in a racist and sexist mindset. The decisionmaking paradigm inherent in the traditional forms of political engagement engages in an unconscious exercise of power over the self which regulates discourse and produces for itself legitimate methods for engagement which rarely result in change. Role Playing detaches debaters from real world participation. Reid-Brinkley1 |
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+So, within public discourse, how race is coded rhetorically in public deliberation is of critical importance. Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a “sense of detachment associated with the spectator posture.”115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in debates where they are able to distance themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters can and throw around terms like torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate simulations can only serve to distance the debaters from real world participation in the political contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: …the topic established a relationship through interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters were. The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such. When we blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking, we are not immune to the colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated everyday in our name simply by refusing to acknowledge these implications |
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+4. Debate has become the university with knowledge reproduction and the act of teaching. This is exemplified by the continued exclusion of minority voices in debate. Smith |
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+At every tournament you attend this year look around the cafeteria and take note of which students are not sitting amongst you and your peers. Despite being some of the best and the brightest in the nation, many students are alienated from and choose to not participate in an activity I like to think of as homeplace. In addition to the heavy financial burden associated with national competition, the exclusionary atmosphere of a debate tournament discourages black students from participating. Widespread awareness of the same lack of participation in policy debate has led to a growing movement towards alternative styles and methods of engaging the gatekeepers of the policy community, (Reid-Brinkley 08) while little work has been done to address or even acknowledge the same concern in Lincoln Douglas debate. Unfortunately students of color are not only forced to cope with a reality of structural violence outside of debate, but within an activity they may have joined to escape it in the first place. We are facing more than a simple trend towards marginalization occurring in Lincoln Douglas, but a culture of exclusion that locks minority participants out of the ranks of competition. It will be uncomfortable, it will be hard, and it will require continued effort but the necessary step in fixing this problem, like all problems, is the community as a whole admitting that such a problem with many “socially acceptable” choices exists in the first place. Like all systems of social control, the reality of racism in debate is constituted by the singular choices that institutions, coaches, and students make on a weekly basis. I have watched countless rounds where competitors attempt to win by rushing to abstractions to distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day. One of the students I coached, who has since graduated after leaving debate, had an adult judge write out a ballot that concluded by “hypothetically” defending my student being lynched at the tournament. Another debate concluded with a young man defending that we can kill animals humanely, “just like we did that guy Troy Davis”. Community norms would have competitors do intellectual gymnastics or make up rules to accuse black debaters of breaking to escape hard conversations but as someone who understands that experience, the only constructive strategy is to acknowledge the reality of the oppressed, engage the discussion from the perspective of authors who are black and brown, and then find strategies to deal with the issues at hand. It hurts to see competitive seasons come and go and have high school students and judges spew the same hateful things you expect to hear at a Klan rally. A student should not, when presenting an advocacy that aligns them with the oppressed, have to justify why oppression is bad. Debate is not just a game, but a learning environment with liberatory potential. Even if the form debate gives to a conversation is not the same you would use to discuss race in general conversation with Bayard Rustin or Fannie Lou Hamer, that is not a reason we have to strip that conversation of its connection to a reality that black students cannot escape. |
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+5. The strategy of the AC is a resistance from systems of racism that manifest in debate. Systems of exclusion intensify these skews, calling for their rejection. Vincent 13 |
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+Vincent, Chrism, 2013, Re-Conceptualizing our Performances: Accountability in Lincoln Douglas Debate, VBriefly |
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+Debate should first and foremost be viewed as a performance. Every action taken, every word said, and every speech given reflects a performance of the body. Yet in an age where debate is about how many arguments a student can get on the flow, white students’ performances are consistently allowed to be detached from their bodies, performance by the body, while students of color must always embody their discourse. As a result universal theories are allowed to be viewed as detached from any meaning outside of being just an argument. My argument is three-fold. First, debaters have adopted a “universal principle,” which has allowed them to be detached from the practical implications of what they said. Second, is that we must re-conceptualize the role of speech and the speech act to account for the in round performances of the body. The final part is that judges must begin to view their roles as educators and must be accountable for the discourse they endorse with their ballot. In his chapter on “Non Cartesian Sums,” in Blackness Visible, Charles Mills argues that “white experience is embedded as normative, and the embedding is so deep that its normativity is not even identified as such.” Historically, universal theories never intended to include black bodies into the cannon. Mills argues that in philosophy: “A reconceptualization is necessary because the structuring logic is different. The peculiar features of the African American experience—racial slavery, which linked biological phenotype to social subordination, and which is chronologically located in the modern epoch, ironically coincident with the emergence of liberalism’s proclamation of universal human equality—are not part of the experience represented in the abstractions of European and Euro-American philosophers.” We generate universal theories and assume they can be applied to anyone. These abstractions assume a conception of universality that never intended to account for the African American experience. This drowns out the perspectives of students of color that are historically excluded from the conversation. Normativity becomes a privilege that historically students of color do not get to access because of the way we discuss things. These same philosophical texts have served as a cornerstone in Lincoln Douglas and in turn have been used to justify exclusion. That is why it is easy for a white student to make claims that we do not know whether racism is bad, or even question whether oppression is bad, since after all it is just another argument on the flow. They never have to deal with the practical implications of their discourse. These become manifestations of privilege in the debate space because for many students of color, who have to go back to their communities, they still have to deal with the daily acts of racism and violence inflicted upon their homes, communities, and culture. |
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+This justifies a rejection of normative thought that attempts to pose a universal maxim onto a debate space, as it would only function to exclude those voices that have been restricted from accessing the same form of discourse |