ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s, the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, a small tribe in a desolate desert in Tooele County, Utah, has antagonized the governor, politicians, and citizens of Utah, environmentalists, and environmental-justice advocates with a proposal to host temporary storage of high-level radioactive waste on the reservation. Having been historically neglected and isolated in what has come to be a toxic desert in northwestern Utah, the Goshute leaders argue that this is the only choice left for the tribe to survive. They emphasize the notion of tribal sovereignty and reject assertions that they are simply the powerless victims of environmental injustice. The current land-use controversy reveals unresolved dilemmas regarding self-determination and environmental justice as they are structured in the capitalist political economy and the history of colonialism.
