Shundahai Network was formed at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1994, by a council of long-term nuclear disarmament activists, at the request of Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone Spiritual Leader. Shundahai Network was very successful with its campaigns during fiscal year 2001 as we brought hundreds of people together to learn about and take action on nuclear and indigenous issues. We strengthened and developed alliances between networks of people who might never meet, let alone work together. Our network stretches throughout the United States, bringing together people from reactor sites across the country and those who are targeted in the southwest for disposal of nuclear waste from those same reactors.

We are a steadily growing alliance of multi-cultural activists, dedicated to "breaking the nuclear chain" by bridging the gaps between the environmental, peace, justice, indigenous and civil-rights communities. Our staff and volunteers work on a wide range of community outreach, education and public action campaigns. Through our events and campaigns, Shundahai Network helps train activists in community organizing and the use of nonviolent direct action to generate public awareness and apply political pressure on nuclear and indigenous rights issues. We strive to uphold the principles of Environmental Justice and insure that Indigenous voices and concerns are heard in the movement to influence U.S. nuclear and environmental policies.

Shundahai Network has developed three main programs: Environmental Justice Now Campaign, Action for Nuclear Abolition Disarmament Campaign and Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign. Our main office serves as an international nuclear and indigenous information clearinghouse.

Environmental justice has always been the backbone of all our campaigns. In all of our work, we strive to insure that indigenous voices and concerns are heard in the movement to influence U.S. nuclear and environmental policies. We work very closely with the Western Shoshone Nation as well as activists and organizations from many indigenous communities around the country. Our board of directors is indigenous-led and we are developing a strong Native Advisory Board to keep us on track with our work

The cornerstone of this campaign is the important work of our executive director, Corbin Harney, Western Shoshone spiritual leader and activist. Shundahai Network provides strong support for his personal project, Poo Ha Bah, an indigenous retreat center for traditional healing. Poo Ha Bah is in its fourth year of renovation and provides an important place for those who are in need of physical healing, as well as a retreat center for indigenous led organizations and alliances. So far this year, Corbin has traveled extensively on educational and outreach tours. He has been a keynote speaker at the Environmental Land Air Water Conference, in Eugene, Oregon; Prescott College, Arizona; University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Weaver State University, Ogden, Utah; Sacred Earth Conference, Seattle Washington; and the University of Nevada in Reno. Corbin’s passion and his dedication to uniting people regardless of race and walk of life has inspired thousands and has helped us fulfill our main goal of bridging the gaps between the environmental, peace, human rights and indigenous communities.

This year, Shundahai Network has dedicated funds to help sponsor Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness, a grassroots Goshute community organization resisting plans to place a nuclear dump on the Skull Valley Reservation, just 45 miles from Salt Lake City.

We have also provided logistical support for the Western Shoshone National Council’s events such as the Yucca Mountain Indigenous Peoples Gathering, Western Shoshone Defense Project Spring Gathering at Crescent Valley, Nevada, and Newe Sogobia Mava’a Mia "Walk on Sacred Land," a walk led by Western Shoshone activists around the western border of NTS to bring attention their land rights issues. Other important indigenous gatherings we have supported are the Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Gathering in Death Valley, California, and the Tewa Women United Gathering for Mother Earth near Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Our members work very closely with the People of Color and Disenfranchised Environmental Health Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor the Earth, and have participated in a major national strategy planning meeting led by indigenous organizers to tie together the environmental justice campaigns of the sustainable energy movement and the Skull Valley and Yucca Mountain proposed nuclear waste dumps.

This year’s Nuclear Free Great Basin Gathering was a huge success. It brought together nearly four hundred organizers, indigenous leaders, and families from all over the country. The weekend spent at the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation gave people the opportunity to see for themselves what the impacts of the Private Fuel Storage nuclear waste dump could be. A Sunday afternoon rally brought Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson to speak, as well as Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Kevin Kamps- Nuclear Waste Specialist with Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Lisa Gue from Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, and Deb Katz from Citizen’s Awareness Network (a northeastern regional alliance of nukebusters). These were just a few of the many people who gathered to support Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear and other resistors in their struggle for justice on the Skull Valley reservation.

Since the gathering, there has been a new Skull Valley Tribal Council elected, which has not taken a public position on the PFS lease. This new council is being contested by the former council (who signed the lease with PFS- for an undisclosed amount of money), and is dealing with Bureau of Indian Affairs (Bossing Indians Around) officials who do not recognize the new council, and are still negotiating with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and PFS. Shundahai Network is proud to support the new tribal council, and will continue to work with tribal members to educate on the dangers of high-level nuclear waste, storage and dumping.

After the success of our first Nuclear Free Great Basin Gathering, held at NTS in October of 2000, Shundahai Network officially created our Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign. This campaign is working to develop a strong alliance between indigenous and community based environmental organizations who are working on the many nuclear issues within the Great Basin bio-region and the campaign has already generated strong support nationally.

As our first major focus for this campaign, we have chosen to support and work closely with the Goshute tribal opposition to the proposed Private Fuel Storage nuclear dump on the small-impoverished Skull Valley Goshute Reservation near Salt Lake City. To this end we opened up a campaign office in Salt Lake City which organized the 2^nd Nuclear Free Great Basin Gathering.

With this campaign, we have also been involved in many other watchdog, educational and organizing activities. Members of Shundahai Network have: spoke at a national press conference in Washington DC, calling for a congressional investigation into D.O.E’s illegal bias towards declaring Yucca Mountain a suitable site for a nuclear waste dump; Testified at Nevada hearings on DOE’s Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Yucca Mountain and submitted written comments; made presentations to several Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and monthly NTS Community Advisory Board meetings; Participated in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s annual Washington DC Lobby Days; and assisted with the Radioactive Roads and Rails Campaign, (a project organized by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Public Citizen) during their stops in Georgia and Minnesota; Co-sponsored the regional Nevada – Utah release of Public Citizen’s report entitled "Another Nuclear Rip-off: Unmasking Private Fuel Storage"

We are currently producing a comprehensive "Peoples Environmental Impact Statement on Yucca Mountain" which we will release with simultaneous press conferences in Washington DC and Las Vegas this fall. We are also in the beginning stages of organizing a Nuclear Education and Action Tour (NEAT) which will focus on outreach and education to mobilize university campuses student activism along the proposed nuclear waste transportation routes. This tour will take place in stages during the months of February – April of 2002.

Our Action for Nuclear Abolition Disarmament Campaign has taken on a renewed sense of urgency with the Bush administration moving quickly towards revamping the nuclear weapons industrial complex and plowing ahead with the Star Wars national missile defense system, despite international outrage and concern. The administration has publicly acknowledged it is opposed to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Bush has directed the Nevada Test Site to prepare to resume full-scale nuclear weapons tests within six months of a presidential order.

Shundahai Network has responded to the current situation by intensifying its work with national and international campaigns to abolish nuclear weapons and close down the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories and Nevada Test Site to all projects except for clean up and containment, and by planning future events which will educate and inspire people around the country to act for disarmament.

The pinnacle of our campaign so far this year has been our hallmark Mothers’ Day Gathering at NTS in May. The gathering, called "A Celebration of Life and Sovereignty," brought over 300 activists together to demand closure of NTS as the central link in the nuclear weapons complex and honor the sovereignty of the Western Shoshone Nation within whose land NTS lies. It was a successful gathering where people left better educated on the issues and inspired to continue working towards a nuclear-free world from their own communities.

We also provided outreach and logistical support for many other nonviolent direct action events against the nuclear weapons establishment, like the Nevada Desert Experience’s annual peace walk from Las Vegas to NTS, the Lenten Desert Experience Gathering in April, and the Vandenberg Airforce Base "Stop Star Wars" event in May. We also participated in the U.S. Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ annual conference, Peace Action’s Nuclear Abolition Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico and a nonviolent direct action at Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab.

As part of our role as a watchdog public education organization we spoke at D.O.E public hearings in Nevada and Washington DC and submitted written comments on the Environmental Impact Statement for Long Term Stewardship Plans. We are also currently working on producing six new fact sheets on:

• Globalization, corporations and nuclear weapons;
• NTS and the nuclearization of space;
• Environmental impacts of the nuclear weapons programs on groundwater and the resulting health and environmental nightmares;
• The story of the resistance movement to nuclear testing at NTS;
• Current nuclear programs at NTS such as the on-going "low-level" nuclear waste dumping; and
• The Western Shoshone Distribution Act and its relationship to the nuclear invasion of Newe Sogobia (Western Shoshone territory.)

We will follow this up with the production of the "Peoples Guide to the Nevada Test Site for the 21st Century," an in-depth and comprehensive report on all of these issues.

Our office in Salt Lake City organized a Nuclear Abolition Now! Nagasaki Day memorial vigil at the Salt Lake City Federal Building, on August 9th. This was the first nuclear abolition event in Utah in many years and, combined with widespread media attention, has served to reinvigorate local activism on this issue.

We have also initiated a major national nuclear abolition campaign, which will culminate in a Nuclear Abolition Summit and nonviolent direct action encampment at NTS in October of 2002. We hope to mobilize the tens of thousands of people involved in the movement to ban nuclear testing from the 80s and early 90s while educating a new generation of nuclear abolition activists to continue this important work.

Shundahai Network serves as an international nuclear information clearinghouse. Through our daily updated award winning web site (which receives around 10,000 visits monthly), email Action Alert and E-News lists, two major outreach mailings and spring and summer editions of our Shundahai Network News, we continue to educate and inspire thousands of organizers, activists and concerned citizens.