December
The Turner Network Television network
launches a series of programs about
Indians.
Initiated by Ted Turner, owner of Turner Network
Television, the cable network begins a year of pro-
gramming about Native Americans, starting with
the airing of Geronimo, a television movie biogra-
phy of the 19th-century Apache leader. The project
will include six movies about historical Indian fig-
ures and a six-hour documentary on Indian history
titled The Native Americans. Turner’s Cable News
Network (CNN) will also produce The Invisible
People, a 20-part series of reports about contempo-
rary Indian issues.
1994Cree protests halt the James Bay Project.
With the support of environmental groups, Cree
convince Hydro-Quebec to postpone the sec-
ond phase of the James Bay Project (see entry for
MAY 10, 1989), the construction of a hydroelec-
tric plant that threatens the Cree’s lands along
James Bay. They cite the environmental chaos the
first phrase of the project, completed in 1985,
wreaked in Cree territory: Ancient burial grounds
and fishing sites were flooded, drinking water be-
came polluted, and the migration routes of caribou
hunted by the Cree were disturbed. Perhaps most
detrimental to the Cree, fish in area rivers were poi-
soned with mercury. A 1990 study found that some
Cree elders, dependent on fish as their major source
of food, had as much as 20 times the safe level of
mercury in their bodies. After many years of debate
and thousands of environmental studies, in 2002
the Cree and the government of Quebec will finally
negotiate the “Agreement Concerning a New Rela-
tionship,” also known as “La Paix des Braves” (The
Peace of the Brave). In the agreement, the Cree will
agree to the construction of the Eastmain-1 power
station, which had been part of the original James
Bay Project.
The Native American Religious Freedom Act
is amended to protect religious peyote use.
To address contradictions between state laws
and federal policy, an amendment to the Native
American Religious Freedom Act (see entry for
AUGUST 11, 1978) allows Indians to use peyote in a
ceremonial context without fear of arrest and pros-
ecution under state drug laws.JanuarySouth Dakota bank pays damages for
discriminating against Indians.
The Blackpipe State Bank of Martin, South Da-
kota, settles with the Justice Department for
discriminating against Indian customers. The bank
was accused of applying higher finance charges and
interest rates to Indian borrowers than to whites.
As part of the settlement, Blackpipe is required to
establish a $125,000 fund to compensate loan ap-
plicants whom it had rejected because of their race.February 15The Mescalero Apache agree to a nuclear
waste dump on their reservation.
Mescalero Apache leaders sign an agreement with
Northern States Power that will allow the Minne-
sota company to store nuclear waste on the tribe’s
New Mexico reservation. Citing health risks, the
governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, joins with
the Indigenous Environmental Network in object-
ing to the waste site. The Apache tribal council,
however, says its decision was made after careful
study and emphasizes that the waste storage facil-
ity will provide jobs for reservation residents for the
next 40 years. (See also entry for MARCH 9, 1995.)February 11 to July 15Indian protesters stage the Walk for Justice.
American Indian Movement activists Dennis Banks
and Mary Jane Wilson-Medrano organize the Walk
for Justice, a protest march from Alcatraz Island in
San Francisco Bay, California, to Washington, D.C.