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Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto too!
By Philip M. Klasky, Wonder Valley
I don’t know why people always associate the desert with high temperatures. Winter can be really cold in the Mojave, bone-chilling cold, and what
can feel like the absolute absence of heat as if the night sky with its magnificent firmament is somehow drawing all warmth into its infinite mass. Your breath is plundered by the cold and your clothing,
rather than protecting you as promised, will conspire to steal your body warmth.
My respect for desert flora and fauna increases with every degree of temperature that drops precipitously as the winter nights lengthen, and as I
reflect upon the range of tolerance from warm days to freezing nights I marvel at the miracle of adaptation.
The desert tortoises in their burrows breathe ever more slowly until they reach close to a state of suspended life. Rabbits construct their winter homes to the exact dimension so that when all their oxygen is depleted they will awaken to the promise of spring. Cacti huddle against freezing and wait out the season in optimistic anticipation of sun and rain. I read somewhere that the cold is more dangerous to desert life than the heat, and I believe it.
On a frigid December evening at Silyaye Ahease, Mojave for “The Gathering Place of Screwbean Mesquite and Sand,” referred to as “Ward
Valley” on most maps, I joined a group of activists fighting the proposal for a nuclear waste dump. Plans were to bury radioactive waste from nuclear power plants in shallow unlined trenches, above an
aquifer connected to the Colorado River and in critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii).
Silyaye Ahease is also an historic gathering place for the Mojave people and a sacred site for the indigenous inhabitants of the region including the Mojave/Mohave, Chemehuevi, Cocopah and Quechan peoples. The company chosen by the state of California to build the dump, U.S. Ecology, has left a trail of leaking dumps and litigation throughout the country, and the government’s attempts at dumping on the native peoples of the area was a continuation of 500 years of genocide. All of the tribes along the Colorado River united with environmental justice groups in their efforts to stop the dump. We were fighting against both the state and federal governments and some of the most powerful corporations in America.
The radioactive wastes from the inferno of nuclear power reactors remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. The absolutely worst
(and cheapest) way to deal with the waste is to bury it in the ground, relegating the poisonous effects of our failed experiment with nuclear power to future generations.
All commercial radioactive waste dumps in the country are currently leaking toxic plumes of cancer-causing agents into the surrounding soil and ground water. Native American lands, as well as minority communities, have been targeted to become the repositories for toxic wastes since they are considered to be the “paths of least resistance.” Indian tribes do not often have the political clout to fight these proposals which is why you don’t find toxic waste dumps in wealthy enclaves or in the nation’s capitol. Out of approximately 700 Indian nations, over 300 are experiencing some form of toxic colonialism perpetrated by corporate and government collusion.
We gathered at Silyaye Ahease to strategize about how we were going to stop a proposal that endangered our beautiful desert and future generations. We held meetings all day and into the evening considering legal and political approaches to protecting the land. Our meetings always began with a prayer offered by native elders and our gatherings were blessed with traditional songs that were offered to honor and defend the sacred. Seated in a circle on that winter evening was an inter-tribal pow-wow drum with singers representing indigenous nations from the West Coast to the Plains offering the steady beat and lifting voices that helped to keep the cold at bay and enliven our spirits. Four singers sat around a large drum and sang with the strike of their wands. The songs had been solemn and strong like the determination that held us all together.
Many of us were gathered around a huge bonfire turning like barbeque in a rotisserie. The bed of coals pulsed with a hypnotic glow and the
huge logs of mesquite fired off excited explosions as the wood succumbed to the flames. We scorched our frontsides as we faced the fire, careful to prevent our clothing from igniting, and then
turned when the fire burned our faces. When our backsides got too hot, we turned to roast the front again--a crude system of cold weather triage.
In the dark night the Milky Way showed itself in glorious clarity that never ceases to amaze.
In the high-pitched voice indicative of Northern Plains pow-wow chants, the words to the songs began to slowly transform as they worked their way from vocables to names and phrases that were oddly familiar.
A friend came up to me while my backside was smoking and asked me excitedly, “Did you hear what they are singing?”
I listened more closely. Earlier in the evening the songs provided a backdrop of power and presence for a gathering of a diverse group of people united in our tenacious commitment to a piece of earth-- ground zero in the fight against nuclear insanity. Many of the activists had been attracted to the Ward Valley fight because of the absolute dedication of the native people who were rooted in a spiritual connection to the land. This was not a campaign, but survival, not another environmental issue, but defense of the homeland.
A few more of the people around the fire directed their attention to the song drifting above the camp. More words began to materialize to the
steady beat.
“Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto too, are movie stars at Disneyland.”
We leaned toward the singers and listened more carefully with a combination of curiosity and surprise.
“Are they singing about Mickey Mouse?” someone asked.
“What’s up with Minnie Mouse?” asked another face flickering in the firelight.
The singer’s voices soared at the next push-up with vocables that wailed into the night. And then again, the steady beat of the drum was
accompanied by a sober rendition of “Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto too, are movie stars at Disneyland.”
I walked over to my Mojave friend, Steve Lopez, who was sipping hot coffee while huddled under a pile of blankets.
“Hey Steve, are those guys really singing about Mickey Mouse?” I asked.
He chuckled into his cup and answered, “Oh yea, they do that for fun and to see if you guys are listening. You should hear the one about John
Wayne’s teeth--are they wooden, are they steel, are they plastic, are they real?”
Philip M. Klasky is the director of The Storyscape Project of The Cultural Conservancy, a non-profit indigenous rights organization. He
also teaches at San Francisco State University in the Department of American Indian Studies and divides his time between San Francisco and Wonder Valley, CA.
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