Why would anyone want to live on top of a radioactive dumpsite?

"The view is great," city staffer Doug Newcomb assured the Boulder City Council, as they met to discuss the fate of the city-owned Valmont Butte, where over half a million cubic yards of radioactive wastes from a half century of ore milling and other sources lay buried.

According to recently released appraisal jointly paid for by the City of Boulder and a prospective buyer who plans to transfer Valmont Butte land to Native American interests, the "highest and best use" of the land would be to divide the city-owned 71 acres into two parcels for home sites.

Yet it's what cannot be seen that should cause concern. One thing a prospective buyer would not see is the Native American sweat lodge which for years has sat atop the butte's west end, where traditional ceremonies for years have been held by Native Americans who consider the Valmont Butte to be sacred land. According to city officials who informed one of the region's Native American spiritual leaders on Wednesday, it's been stolen.

Also on Wednesday, the City of Boulder advised Cross that they had added a second lock to the gate to the sweat lodge area, one that could only be opened by18 city personnel given the key, but not to Cross for his traditional ceremonial purposes without being accompanied by a city staffer to unlock the site. Only last week, RMPJC had raised concerns to the City of Boulder about whether Native Americans who have been atop Valmont Butte for various ceremonies over the years of concerns might have been contaminated from exposures to the toxic and radioactive hazards there, given records reviewed.

Yesterday, the spiritual leader who constructed the ceremonial lodge, Lakota Robert Cross, filed a theft report with the Boulder County Sheriff and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center called for a full investigation into the sweat lodge's mysterious disappearance by both City of Boulder and Boulder County officials.

This newest theft and a lockout from their sacred ceremonial site adds only onto the growing pile of abuses and betrayals faced by Native Americans in Boulder County and elsewhere around the United States to this day.

The bigger theft is the land below, the expropriation of a treasured vista offering spectacular views in the four directions. There, Native Americans could honor the spirits and celebrate their traditions going back centuries, but for the last half century it's been used as a dumping grounds for after-profit radioactive leftovers of white industrialists who've made big money from land-scarring activities there. Aided and abetted by state and federal agencies willing to turn a blind eye to the on and offsite impacts of toxic ruins contaminating water below, the poisoned property with less than full disclosures of known potential environmental liabilities has been foisted onto the public, the taxpayers of Boulder.

In a series of land flips by white men who had profited from despoiling the land, the butte was sold for $10 and unspecified "other consideration" in deed records obtained by CU students in 1998. Prior corporate owners knew what hazards lurked below and beyond, records show. Yet in 2000, the City of Boulder spent over $2.5 million of taxpayers' monies to buy the battered butte, with an announced intent to despoil it further, including a plan to put a sewage sludge processing facility there -- or more bluntly, to "spray all our shit around," as Councilman Macon Cowles put it at a city study session last week -- to further desecrate lands considered sacred by Native Americans.

Whether this is greenwashing by whites to get the reds to buy a polluted property and undisclosed potential liabilities -- environmental racism at its worst -- warrants a careful unearthing of the truth. What lies within the butte and beyond must be key to decision-making by our current city council. Impacts to those who frequent the site or live in its shadow could have long-lasting and deadly serious effects, whether in the form of cancers, chronic skin rashes or other dashed dreams. From traditional Native Americans who have honored the spirits there, to pioneer settlers' families visiting their ancestors' graves, to those who have lived in the shadow of the butte with livelihoods tied to the lands below, all have an interest in the truth.

It's a legacy of not-so-little white lies that Boulder's current city council must now deal with. Their burden is a heavy one, including the white man's burden of what has been done to Native Americans right here in Boulder County, considered the heart of progressive politics in Colorado. Righting the wrongs of the past may be costly, but not doing so?

It's a steal, at any price. From Native Americans.

Adrienne Anderson coordinates the Nuclear Nexus and Safe Water Colorado projects for the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. For 11 years, she taught for the Environmental Studies and Ethnic Studies programs at CU Boulder, teaching students how to investigate environmental hazards such as this one, at Valmont Butte. "Peace Train" runs every Friday in the Colorado Daily. The opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Colorado Daily management or staff.