Fluoride and the Mohawks

Cows crawled around the pasture on their bellies, inching along like giant snails. So crippled by bone disease they could not stand up, this was the only way they could graze. Some died kneeling, after giving birth to stunted calves. Others kept on crawling until, no longer able to chew because their teeth had crumbled down to the nerves, they began to starve.

These were the cattle of the Mohawk Indians on the New York-Canadian St. Regis Reservation during the period 1960-75, when fluoride pollution from neighboring aluminum plants devastated the herd and the Mohawks’ way of life.

Crops and trees withered, birds and bees fled from this remnant of land the Mohawk still call Akwesasne, “the land where the partridge drums.”

Today, nets cast into the St. Lawrence River by Mohawk fishers bring up ulcerated fish with spinal deformities. Mohawk children, too, have shown signs of damage to bones and teeth.

In 1980, the Mohawks filed a $150 million lawsuit for damage to themselves and their property against the companies responsible for the pollution: the Reynolds Metals Co. and the Aluminum Co. of America. But five years of legal costs bankrupted the tribe and they settled for $650,000 in damages to their cows.

The court left the door open for a future Mohawk suit for damage to their own health. After all, commented human rights lawyer Robert Pritchard, “What judge wants to go down in history as being the judge who approved the annihilation of the Indians by fluoride emissions?” — Joel Griffiths

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