The story of how the Indian tribes may become the repository for radioactive waste is yet another chapter in their sad history in North America. In this film tribal leader Ron Eagleye Johnny takes us to four reservations whose inhabitants chronicle the negotiations with the U.S. government to place Monitored Storage Retrieval sites on their land The large commercial power companies have run out of places to bury their nuclear waste.

The lure to these impoverished people is quick money, jobs, and the promise of safety. Unhappily, it is often the tribal councils that will negotiate the deals and profit from them without the money filtering down to the rest of the population. The tour starts with the Paiute Shoshone reservation, near Fort McDermott, Oregon, goes to the Skull Valley Cosiute reservation outside of Salt Lake City, and takes us to New Mexico and Nevada where the Apaches, Navajos and Pueblos have long been recipients of nuclear fallout from weapons testing. Ron Eagleye Johnny also visits a power plant in Minnesota where conversation is monitored by lawyers and public relations people.

Radioactive Reservations is an eloquent statement from the Native Americans themselves on the vulnerability of their very existence.