Militaristic endeavors by the government have historically led to exploitation of Native Americans and consequently their economic status and the land in which they live, degrading it.

The term “treadmill of militarism” reflects our debt to the treadmill of production for drawing attention to expansionary dynamics that result in the creation and deposition of toxins in the environment. But this terminology also reflects the specificity of the phenomena we examine and the importance of looking beyond capitalism and markets (including those markets distorted by institutional racism) to understand the full range of environmental inequality. Militarism and coercion have played a pivotal role in all aspects of the Native American experience. With regards to environmental inequality, the treadmill of militarism – like the military-industrial complex – is marked by the influence of geopolitics in the spatial distribution of environmental “bads.” This type of environmental inequality is also marked by a coercive (and often racist) state through which vulnerable populations are forced to live in proximity to dangerous facilities. Erik O. Wright provides an insightful discussion of non-economic forms of oppression: In the case of nonexploitive oppression, the oppressors would be happy if the oppressed simply disappeared. Life would have been much easier for the European settlers in North America if the continent had been uninhabited by people. Genocide is thus always a potential strategy for nonexploitive oppressors…. The contrast between North America and South Africa in the treatment of indigenous peoples reflects this difference poignantly: in North America, where the indigenous people were oppressed (by virtue of being coercively displaced from the land) but not exploited, genocide was the basic 24 policy of social control in the face of resistance; in South Africa, where the European settler population heavily depended upon African labor for its own prosperity, this was not an option (Wright 1997: 11-12). It is not only the case that exploitation was not the dominant form of oppression, but the areas in which Native Americans are concentrated is characterized by relatively low levels of economic activity and relatively few employment opportunities. For those emphasizing the treadmill of production, the state does not directly benefit from environmental inequality; but it promotes regional growth (Szasz and Meuser 2000) and the profitability of large corporations (Pellow 2000). For Pellow (2000: 594), this facilitative role has become pronounced in recent years, accelerated by globalization. However, the actions that concern us preceded this recent wave of globalization and were not pursued for the sake of corporate profitability. During a time of war, the state exercises expansive property rights and uses these powers to acquire land and other resources. Military bases were built and operated in the name of national security; national security planners were concerned with strategic planning and with the secrecy and security of military operations (Hooks 1994a). Over the first 150 years of its existence, the United States was exceptional among the world’s leading powers because the “backbone of the American army was a locally based militia system” (Skowronek 1982: 86). Its standing army and professional officer corps were modest when compared to the European powers of the 19th Century. However, the demographic, technological, and logistical advantages enjoyed by the United States -- coupled with the devastating impact of Old World diseases -- overwhelmed Native American resistance as the nation expanded from the Atlantic to the Pacific (Diamond 1999). “It is generally supposed that the American ideal is peace. But 25 unfortunately for this high-school classic, the U.S. Army, since 1776, has filched more square miles of the earth by sheer military conquest than any army in the world, except only that of Great Britain” (Fortune Magazine in Mills 1956: 177). Even if the military was less professionalized than the great powers of Europe, through a succession of 19th Century wars, the United States exerted its claim over the lands of North America. Native American peoples were forcibly relocated to much smaller – and in the eyes of European-Americans – unattractive (if not useless) tracts of land. In their study of Silicon Valley, Szasz and Meuser (2000) emphasize the inexorability of economic growth and resulting ecological harm. In the 19th Century, the westward expansion of the United States – and the accompanying displacement of Native American peoples – was also inexorable. While capitalism contributed to this expansion, the conquest of North America was propelled by demographic and geopolitical dynamics. This expansion was in large measure a statist project to prevent a geopolitical threat to the young nation’s west. That is, the United States was very concerned that a European power would conquer and control the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and subsequently west of the Mississippi River. In the 20th Century, the military’s claims on economic and natural resources grew exponentially – as did the lands that were damaged by military activities (Jacob 1992; Shulman 1992). As the United States ascended to a position of international military hegemony, the inexorability of military expansion was driven by geopolitical competition and arms races – not the voraciousness of capitalism. As it fought two global wars, the United States built and maintained a military force of unmatched potency. The expanse of lands controlled by the military and the intensity of the land use (i.e., the 26 destructiveness of materials stored and deployed on these lands) increased sharply. For example, in 1940 as the nation began to mobilize for World War II, President Roosevelt created with the stroke of his pen the single largest gunnery range in the world (Loomis 1993). Originally known as the Las Vegas Bomber and Gunnery Range, now known as Nellis Range, this gunnery range measured 3.5 million acres. This history of military expansion illustrates the idea that different ethnic groups experience different types of environmental inequality (Getches and Pellow 2002). Native Americans as a byproduct of the treadmill of militarism experience the impacts of extraction of natural resources while also the testing and storage of the weapons those natural resources built. In a strange paradox then, Native Americans experience both the front end (extraction) and the back end (weapons testing, storage) of these environmental hazards (Pellow 2000). Further exhibiting the uniqueness of the Native American experience with respect to the military is the fact that Native Americans are the only minority population affected by environmental inequality in the United States with a claim of sovereignty. Though the history of this tribal sovereignty is inconsistent (Fredericks III 1999) it can largely be described as one of “dependent sovereignty” (Krakoff 2002). This adds another layer to our conception of how environmental inequality affects Native Americans as on many occasions coercion superceded legal treaties in the spatial distribution of Native Americans