Chief William Burke: Working with Federal Partners

The Tri-Party Agreement signing, 1989

Courtesy of Tri-Party Agreement Agencies

wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (Chief William H. Burke) 1930-2025

On June 17, 1999, Bill Burke was interviewed by Michael O’Rourke for the Hanford Health Information Archives. This article contains excerpts from that interview. Edited and compiled by Tamástslikt Institute, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The Hanford Health Effects Subcommittee was part of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). I began talking to ATSDR in 1988 when they said, “We are looking at doing a thyroid disease study.” And I said, “Well, that sounds great to me. We need it. We want to be involved.” So they sent me a protocol for their dealing with tribes and it was a three-ring binder and really well-done. I looked it over and thought it was really great. I was anticipating more good things from ATSDR but that was the only thing that amounted to anything with tribes.

For example, I began going to Hanford Health Effects Subcommittee meetings three years ago. I was finally accepted as a member after having gone for a year and a half and not getting paid. Now we haven’t had meetings because there are no funds to go to because it was being run through CDC and unavailable to ATSDR. It is a mess and great frustration for the Indian Committee on Health Projects. So, we went to a partner’s meeting in Atlanta and we asked Dr. Johnson if there’s any way that the tribes can help. We’ve been in the business for quite a while. We could go to Congress and go to the Department of Energy for funding. We had ins. He wouldn’t accept that. “We’re not going to have any Indian tribes telling us what to do.”

One of the biggest efforts that we had was to try to put together a consultation and cooperation agreement with the Department of Energy. Now, everybody can understand what cooperation is. But consultation on the other hand: what is consultation? Is it a memo? Is it a phone call? Is it a tape? What is it? What is consultation? Let’s see if we can define that. So we probably spent millions of dollars to define consultation. Never did. Never did.

But I think the tribes are being listened to more and more. They have a little more political clout than they used to have. But the big problem is that each couple of years, you’ve got new Congress people, new legislators, and our educational process needs to start over. Once you get one group educated, they’re gone away and replaced by new people, and then you have to do that same thing all over. So you’re continuously telling people what Indian tribes are all about. They think tribal members walk around in war bonnets and live in teepees, and they live out on reservations that the good Uncle Sam gave them. But the truth is that they reserved those lands they live on. They reserved those lands, and they gave the US government those lands that everybody else lives on.

Consultation with tribes means funding. In order to participate, we need the capacity to understand what you’re talking about, we have to have funding. One of the best things that ever happened was when nuclear submarine sections were coming up the Columbia River, going to Hanford. I called up John Antonen at Hanford and said, “John, what in the hell is going on here? These submarine sections are coming right through our fishery in Zone 6. What are you doing?” He says, “Bill, I sent you an EIS a long time ago, and you didn’t respond.” And I said, “John, what is an EIS?” And he was stymied. I said, “We have to be able to understand. We didn’t have the capability to respond to that EIS. So as a result, you’re running these submarine sections up the Columbia River.” That was when our funding increased considerably, and we were able to get people so we’d be able to respond to EIS’s and better understand what those people were doing. That’s probably one of the major things that happened as a result of my involvement and the tribes’ involvement working with the United States government.

-wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (William Burke), 1999

Bibliography

William Burke, Oral History interview by Michael O’Rourke. June 17, 1999, Hanford Health Information Archives collection, AR69-2-0-21, Series 1: Donor Materials, Donor 634. Washington State Archives.