Chief William Burke: Working with Tribal Partners

A banner hanging at the Hanford Reach

Courtesy of Evan Benally Atwood/High Country News

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.

After defeating the Basalt Waste Isolation Project, we began work on the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR). That’s when we got back into it and we began talking epidemiological studies early on. But the big discouragement there was being told, “We can’t do that with the tribes because the tribes don’t have the numbers that we need in order to do a first-class epidemiological study.” And so we were a little put out by that. “Regardless, we are an 'affected Indian tribe' under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and so you’ve got to do something. You can’t just disregard us.” So we continued with that argument and so became a part of the HEDR project. We were looking for how we could be affected, you know, because immediately upon learning about the radiation, the little we knew about radiation we knew that there was some good chance that there might be some possibilities for the causation of cancer. And we were very much concerned. Anyway, those were the major concerns and so the Steering Committee was very instrumental in working on that HEDR project and we got some real good feedback from that.

The tribes have always had some kind of tribal oversight committee going under several names. It soon became clear that some kind of coordination was needed between individual studies and organizations associated with studying the impacts of Hanford. The Yakamas had a representative on the HEDR Technical Steering Committee, and the Nez Perces had Al Slickpoo. The Technical Steering Committee established the Native American Working Group to coordinate efforts between the tribes and agencies working on the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR), the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study (HTDS), tribal and federal medical provider training, and the newly emerged Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN).

When the HHIN came together, they found there were actually eight affected Indian tribes, including the Warm Springs, the Yakimas, the Umatillas, the Nez Perce, the Colvilles, the Spokanes, the Kalispells, and the Coeur d’Alenes. Later, a ninth tribe was added, the Kootenai. All these tribes came together within the Hanford Health Information Network and became the Tribal Advisory Board (TAB). That was a very interesting concept, the HHIN TAB. They looked into a lot of things, raised a lot of questions, and I think just revisited a lot of things. And they took the Department of Energy to task for many of those questions. The tribes have been involved since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and I think they are going to continue to be involved. They’re going to continue to be involved because all of that land where the nuclear reservation is was ceded to the United States government by the Yakamas and the Umatillas, and all the affected tribes have an interest in the Columbia River. We’ll always have an interest in the Columbia River because we’re all fish eaters. So that’s the big thing today. That’s the thing that’s so hard for people to understand: that there are certain rights that were reserved by the tribes in the treaties.

-wetyétmes tılaylá·kapıt (Chief 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.