Ethnogrophy Review
By
Crystal Vergin
Dr. A. CERON
ANTH 215
11/14/12
Crystal Vergin
Dr. A. CERON
ANTH 215
11/14/12
Ethnogrophy Review:The Rongelap Report: Consequential Damages of Nuclear War (2011)
On March 1,1954 the Castle Bravo bomb was detonated on
Bikini atoll, Bravo was a 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima. The inhabited island of Rongelap lay just 100 miles from where the
15-megaton bomb was dropped (Johnston and Barker 2011,15,17). The inhabitants
of Rongelap received near lethal doses of radiation during the Bravo event and
were continually exposed to radiation through their environment. Instead of
receiving badly needed treatment for radiation poisoning the U.S. government
used the Rongelapese as human test subjects. In the Rongelap Report: Consequential Damages of Nuclear War (2011), the
atrocities of the U.S. government nuclear testing programs from 1946 to 1954
are revealed. The use of these proving grounds in the Pacific Ocean caused
major irrevocable damage to the people and the environment by permanently
changing the landscape of the atolls through blasting and irradiated fallout. Johnston
and Barker play an intricate part as ethnographers in presenting the findings
of this ethnography to The Nuclear Claims Tribunal in 2001(Johnston and Barker
2011,225). This ethnography is an excellent example of applied and public
anthropology. This work gives focus to events that happened almost 60 years ago
and shows how those events are still affecting the Marshallese people and their
environment today.
The purpose of this work was to find “culturally appropriate
strategies for assessing the value of land in a nonmarket environment” and to
“identify[ing] the consequential damages and losses experienced by the people
of Rongelap”(Johnston and Barker 2011,48). In this way Barker and Johnston
assess the situation from an alternate, but scientific view. This report
uncovers the gross mistreatment of the Rongleapese at the hands of the U.S. government,
their repeated exposure to radiation through testing and their environment despite
being reassured by the U.S. government that it was safe to return to their
atoll system. This has resulted in a total loss of a way of life, not just the
loss of land but altering “health, subsistence strategies, sociopolitical
organization, and community integrity” (Johnston and Barker 2011, 33,43). This
report served to inform the Nuclear Claims Tribunal hearing in 2001 but was
also used by the UN Human Rights Council and is referenced in the UN report
regarding ongoing human rights violations (Holly Barker, e-mail message to the
author, November 10,2012). This report also documents the misuse of the
Marshallese as human test subjects by the U.S. government in ongoing
human-environmental experiments. While the Marshallese knew they were being
studied after their exposure they did not know that they were human subjects
and merely being studied and not treated for their radiation sickness. Informed
consent was never provided and many individuals were coerced or even bodily
forced to participate. This even extended to what the government referred to as
the “controls” that were to serve as a control group for “Project 4.1- the
Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma
Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons”(Johnston and Barker 2011, 105). During all of the Project 4.1
experimentation, the Marshallese culture, traditions and taboos were broken.
Women and men were exposed to one another’s naked bodies, foods that were
staples to the Marshallese diet became poisonous and after the self imposed
exile of 1985, the elders can no longer pass on the traditional lifeway to the
next generation. Because of the contamination on Rongelap and the extremely
crowded conditions on the other Marshall Islands burial has become a problem.
To gather information for the Report (2011) Holly
Barker worked in collaboration with Marshallese sociologist Tina Stege and others
to interview informants for testimony. As a result of this collaboration the
anthropologists have a passive voice, Barker and Johnston act as facilitators.
In 1994 during the Clinton administration the Marshallese benefited from a
declassification order; allowing access to documents that had been secret since
the 1950’s. With access to these documents Johnston and Barker were able to
demonstrate that the Marshallese had been used in a wide-range of experiments,
“including purposeful intent to involve the population of Ronglelap in
long-term human-environmental studies on the hazards of fallout” (Johnston and
Barker 2011,53). The voice of the Marshallese first-hand accounts are used to
great advantage to illustrate how horrific their experience of the event and
the following years of suffering impact their culture holistically and their
day to day lives. Since 1954 the Marshallese people have suffered at the hands
of the U.S. government. First as human test subjects then when the government
no longer had any use for them, to be tossed aside and hushed, while they tried
and failed to seek government aide for radiation related illnesses, cancer and
the intergenerational mutagenic affects of high dose radiation. It is sickening
to think that the U.S. government was using human test subjects at roughly the
same time the Nuremburg Trials were happening.
Analysis
From the beginning this ethnography was for the Marshallese
people, this work fit the needs of the community, not the needs of the anthropologists.
The anthropologists were invited by the “NCT Public Advocate Bill Graham to
prepare this report” and the research on land valuation was designed by the
Marshallese people (Johnston and Barker 2011,15). This project was
collaborative and driven by the native community not the anthropologists. This
project did more than “doing no harm” but actually did help as Borofsky urges
in Why a Public Anthropology? (2011).
The Rongelap Report (2011) has many
elements of public anthropology. It takes a large problem in a small part of
the world and applies anthropological methods and theories to help solve
problems and bring public attention to the plight of a people who have been under
duress for many years at the hands of a government that would like to forget
about them.
When the U.S. government detonated Castle Bravo, they
poisoned a people but also a way of life, an entire ecosystem. The people of
Rongelap did not just subsist on one small island but relied on the atoll
system to sustain them. There were specific places where the islanders
collected eggs from seabirds, certain reefs that were good for catching
specific fish and many sacred places. The people where stewards of the land,
they tended the pandanus trees the breadfruit trees, and the coconut trees. The
coconut was used for trade with passing ships, and arrowroot; another staple
food was ground into flour and could be kept for many months (Johnston and
Barker 2011,79). After the testing all of these resources became poisonous. Interviewees
describe epileptic like seizures from eating the contaminated food, and
developing oral blisters and throat swelling. By eating fish that had in turn eaten
radioactive plankton the radiation exposure of the Marshallese people was
compounded (Johnston and Barker 2011,119,121)
The Marshallese people face health disparities both on the
islands and in the U.S. health system. There are two sources for healthcare
open to the Marshallese on the islands, the DOE (Department of Energy) and the
177 programs. The DOE will cover anyone who lived on the islands of Rongelap or
Ujurik on the day of the Bravo event. This health coverage only will cover
illness that is considered radiological by
the DOE. There are only about 90 people still alive that actually could qualify
for this coverage. The 177 program covers any persons for the four Bikini
atolls but the budget for this program is so small that there is only $7.50 per
patient per month for medical care (Barker, Lecture 10/26/12). In the epilogue
of the Rongelap Report (2011) Almira
Matayoshi’s testimony includes a description of her hand gestures. When
describing how she is sent back and forth between the two programs, she pushes
at the air from right to left, a back and forth motion; going from one to the
other program and never receiving the treatment she desperately needs (Johnston
and Barker 2011, 233). In the U.S. the Marshallese often do not qualify for
basic DSHS health insurance and this basic insurance only covers emergency
care, not preventive medicine. In working with the Marshallese community in the
Northwest, I have observed that preventative care is of vital importance to a
population who is at risk for, high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes.
The Marshallese story is still a globally relevant one even
if it is 60 years old. The Marshallese would be leading very different lives if
the government had taken responsibility; or if in an effort to rectify the
situation had admitted wrong doing and pledged transparency moving forward.
Sadly uninformed persons are still being used in this same way by C.R.O’s the
world over, but especially in countries like India with a large population of extremely
poor and illiterate persons (Ceron, Lecture and in class video 11/7/12).
Today the Marshallese are still struggling with global
health issues, poverty, and lack of sufficient health care. Because there are
no Oncologists on the Marshall Islands and no mental health professionals, there
is great physical and mental suffering. Many people who gave interviews to
Holly Barker and testimony at the 2001 Tribunal have since passed away. Their
passing was marked by much anguish from their families and in their community.
Almira Matayoshi had travelled to the Hawaiian Islands to seek cancer treatment
and sadly passed away alone, without her family by her side. Other Marshallese,
without the means to travel for healthcare are forced to suffer on the islands
without treatment (Barker, Lecture 11/7/12).
Conclusion
From beginning to end, this ethnography was informed by the
community and augmented by the anthropologists. This is a practical work that
works for the people that it is about, for the good of those people. The Rongelap Report brings the plight of
the Marshallese to the attention of the public and more importantly to the
attention of the institutions that could and should help rectify the wrongs
these people have endured. For these reasons, this ethnography is an excellent
example of public and applied anthropology at work. The American
Anthropological Association also felt that this was an import work and awarded
Dr. Johnston the Lourdes Arizpe Award, for engaging environmental issues and policy.
For the Marshallese people still living in the Marshall Islands their way
of life remains dramatically changed by the events of
nearly 60 years ago, their atoll system is still contaminated. Recently the
U.S. government has cleaned up a small portion of one part of Rongelap Island
and encouraged the people to move back, but the rest of the atoll system is
still contaminated and will not support their former way of life (Lecture,
Holly Barker 10/26/12). They have no reason to trust what the U.S. government,
despite the government’s assurance that the “clean” part of the island is safe.
I have
been in contact with Dr. Barker and know that both before this report and after
she has continued to work with and for the Marshallese people. As a student of Dr. Barker’s I have been in direct
contact with the Marshallese community here in the Northwest. I am currently
working on a group project to research the health needs of the Marshallese in
our area that will inform the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum representative
in Washington D.C. Health disparities are of special concern, especially for
Marshallese who have come to the U.S. Many Marshallese are still lacking basic
preventative health care, relying on emergency room care when poor health
reaches a crisis point. As Borofsky suggests it can be the work of the
anthropologist to inform the public on these issues and help find solutions.
Works Cited
American Anthropological
Association, CoPAPIA, “Lourdes Arizpe Award.” Accessed November 13,2012. http://www.aaanet.org/cmtes/copapia/Arizpe.cfm
Barker, Holly M.
Lecture, University of Washington, Seattle WA, October 26, 2012 and November
7,2012
Borofsky, Robert. Why a Public Anthropology? 1st
ed. Center for a Public Anthropology, 2011
Ceron, Alejandro, University of Washington, Seattle WA, November
7, 2012
Johnston, Barbara Rose,
and Holly M. Barker. 2008. Consequential
damages of nuclear war: the Rongelap Report. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press.
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