Earlier this year, Mother Jones reporter Nate Halverson found that record amounts of glyphosate—the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup—have been sprayed in California’s forests in recent years.
He also exposed how key scientific studies that the US Forest Service and others relied upon to say glyphosate was safe were ghost written by manufacturer Monsanto. Today, Nate explores how this dousing of California’s forests with glyphosate harms Native American communities. (Bayer, which now manufactures the herbicide, maintains that it is safe to use.)
Stephen Young, 26, is a traditional Maidu basket weaver. He’s seen the harm glyphosate can do. “There were elders who started to get sores in their mouths because of the pesticides. We use our mouths to help in basket weaving,” Young said. “And then if you’re cooking in these baskets and the material has been sprayed, then people can be ingesting it.”
For Young and other Indigenous leaders Nate interviewed, California’s massive herbicide use without regard for their health is a continuation of the same genocidal behavior that began 150 years ago, when Native people were hunted and killed by California authorities.
Beverly Ogle, a Maidu elder in the Lassen area of California, put it like this: “It’s kind of like killing our tribe again. It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid to go out in the backcountry and gather plants. Because are we gathering something that’s got poison on it?”
—Sophie Hurwitz
