Indigenous veterans fighting for justice

Page 13

The lack of respect shown for Indigenous people in uniform is not a uniquely Canadian problem.

First Nations armed forces members returned home from war to Canada to face discrimination, receiving lower benefits than their non-Native comrades. And they've had to engage in long sessions of cut-throat negotiations with Canadian officials for just a fraction of what they were denied because of their race.

But at least they haven't been turned into ticking biological time bombs.

Tekoti Rotan is secretary-treasurer of the Fiji Nuclear Test Veterans Association (FNTVA). He joined the Fijian Reserve Navy in 1955. In 1958, he was sent to Christmas Island. Shortly after his arrival, the British government detonated several nuclear weapons on the other side of the island, just 24 miles away from here he was stationed. He and his approximately 300 comrades, all Fijian sailors, saw the mushroom clouds. They were not issued protective clothing, they say.

Like the Deline Dene men of Canada's North, who carried the uranium used to make nuclear weapons in burlap sacks thrown over their unprotected shoulders, the Indigenous Fijians were carelessly exposed to radiation while their non-Native bosses were not. The village in Canada's Northwest Territories, where the Deline Dene men worked the uranium mine is now called the "Village of Widows," because few of those men lived out their full life expectancy. Their survivors are still haggling with the government of Canada over compensation.

The Fijians were also exposed to radiation and are also still fighting for justice after several decades.

"The worst thing is that we were sent to Christmas Island and not informed about what would come after," Rotan said. "We were sent there to build houses and load ships, that sort of thing. And we were told we'd leave before the tests. But while we were there the tests started."

The Fijian sailors didn't know much about radiation and its long-term effects. It was only in the 1990s-when sailors and soldiers from New Zealand began demanding compensation for their exposure-that the Fijians realized the danger they were in.

"A lot of our members died young," Rotan told Windspeaker. "I was single at the time. If I'd known what I might pass on, I wouldn't have gotten married. I'm healthy, but one of my grandsons was born deformed. One of my daughters was born premature and my wife miscarried."

A recent visit to Japan to meet with the people and their descendants who were exposed to radiation by the U.S. bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War in 1945, showed Rotan that FNTVA members have similar symptoms.

"What happened to those people in Japan is also happening here," he said. "A scientist I met there said that if we've been exposed we will get one form of cancer or another. If you eat contaminated food or drink contaminated water or swim in contaminated water in the sea or breathe contaminated air, we may not have cancer now but at some time in the future we will get it. Or if we don't, our children or grandchildren will get it."

FNTVA members need to find all the people who were on Christmas Island in 1958 to complete the research necessary to prove their claim for compensation. So far, 167 of the 300 have been found. Some were still living and were asked for medical information. Others were deceased. Research was required into the causes of their deaths. For several years, FNTVA members set about that difficult and costly task with no help from either the British or the Fijian governments.

Now the British Ministry of Defense has funded a lawyer to help guide the case through the courts. And the Fijian government has assisted financially with the search for other veterans.

The FNTVA is also lobbying to have its members covered under the War Pension Act, a process normally reserved only for soldiers who were in combat. Even though there was no combat at Christmas Island, Rotan said, he and his fellow Fijias faced dangers just as great, if not greater.

"The injury is an internal sickness, hard to prove even now. Those soldiers who were in battle, their injuries can be seen. Our injuries can't be seen. This is our biggest problem," he said.