Utah Women Making History: Margene Bullcreek

Continuing on with highlighting Utah women making history for Women’s History Month, let’s take a look at Margene Bullcreek. 

Margene was born in Tooele in 1946 and moved to the Skull Valley Indian Reservation at ten years old. She was a member of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes and spent her life working to protect her community from the harmful effects of nuclear testing and waste. As a young woman, she studied with paralegals on her reservation and tried to better understand her Goshute ancestry and how native nations had been historically oppressed native nations way of life. 

She went on to become the secretary of the tribal council to provide all the resources available for the members of her nation. She worked with organizations like the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah to protect native lands and people from U.S. government plans to dispose of harmful wastes on reservation land. She also became an activist in the late 1990s and began working with the Native Community Action Council (NCAC) to investigate the impacts of nuclear testing on the Skull Valley Goshute nation and eventually went on to become the president of the NNCAC. 

But wait, there’s more. She participated in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and used all her research to intervene in the licensing for nuclear companies to dump waste in the Yucca Mountains. The continued her anti-nuclear work until she passed away in 2015. 

You can find out more about Utah Women's History at the link here.