Harney devoted his life to working to save the land on which his people have survived for thousands of years. The
United States Government has exploded more than 1,000
nuclear weapons at the
Nevada Test Site, which is located on Western Shoshone land from the
Treaty of Ruby Valley (1863). Harney spent most of his time travelling around the world spreading a message about the dangers of
nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. In 1989, Harney visited the former Soviet hydrogen bomb testing site in
Semipalatinsk,
Kazakhstan. He reported that he saw victims of the radiation in hospitals that he visited, people who lived close to the Russian nuclear test site. Harney talked about the
contamination of water in his writings and speeches. He said:" I didn't really understand what I was told until I went to
Kazakhstan in Russia. where he remained as board chair until his death. In 2003 received the
International
Nuclear Free Future Solutions award. Harney's experiences with victims of the nuclear weapons testing, particularly the "
Downwinders" of the Western United States, gave credibility to his words. Downwinders refers to the US citizens that were downwind from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada. Harney was a keynote speaker at the Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Conference in 2001, in
Nagasaki, Japan, where he was able to speak with still-recovering survivors of the testing (in the Marshall Islands, and other South Pacific atolls) or use (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) of
nuclear weapons. a traditional healing center in
Tecopa, California."I have established Poo-Ha-Bah for all the people. Poo-Ha-Bah in my language is a very important word--it's talking about Doctor Water. My people have always traveled for many miles to get into different kinds of healing waters." Trained from childhood in the traditional Newe ways of
medicine and
spirituality (the two are not viewed separately), Harney noted the
extinction of
medicinal plants due to the
toxins of mining, and the disappearance of many birds and other animals that once roamed the Newe homelands. Harney completed arrangements for the publication of his second book, "The Nature Way", shortly before his death. In this book he shares the traditional knowledge of his people, the Newe. Harney died of
cancer which had
metastasized into his bones (
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma). == Film ==