Oral
histories address uranium's effects on Navajo miners
and families
Tuesday,
November 21, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The legacy of uranium mining is
devastating to Navajo communities in the western U.S.,
where 1,000 abandoned uranium mines still mar the landscape.
A new volume from UNM Press entitled, "The Navajo
People and Uranium Mining" is the result of the
ten-year Navajo Uranium Miner Project headed by Tufts
University's Doug Brugge and Navajo activists. Brugge
and Navajo speakers Timothy Benally and Esther Yazzie-Lewis
interviewed miners and drew from clinical and historical
sources to trace the cultural, legal, and biological
effects of Leetso, the "yellow monster."
The lure
of uranium mining as a profession for Navajos is not
difficult to understand. After the stock market crash
of 1929, Navajo men found work off the reservation working
on the railroad and on farms in Phoenix and California.
Then during WWII, many Navajos went into the military.
So when the U.S. entered the nuclear age and uranium
was found on Navajo lands in 1941, Navajos who'd been
working afar were happy to work close to home.
Uranium mining
in the Four Corners area provided much-needed income,
and thousands of Navajos worked in the poorly ventilated,
unsupervised camps. Accidents were common, and the miners
breathed in uranium dust and drank contaminated water
regularly. The boomtown atmosphere caused secondary
problems-violence, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and the
disruption of traditional living arrangements. The mere
act of mining defies Navajo culture, which opposes damaging
the earth with metal instruments. So while mining provided
economic opportunity, it went against the very grain
of Navajo life.
In 1960,
widows and children of miners killed by uranium-induced
diseases began speaking out about the government's misinformation
campaign.
"The
Navajo uranium miners and their families were literally
sacrificed to help the nation prevail in the Cold War,"
writes Stewart Udall, former secretary of the interior,
in his foreword.
Finally,
in 1990 the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was
passed, calling for government compensation to families
devastated by uranium mining. Then in 2000, RECA was
amended to correct its previous shortcomings.
In 2005,
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley signed the Diné
Natural Resources Protection Act law, banning uranium
mining on the reservation. Finally, justice has been
served to miners' families, though the critical issues
of healthcare compensation and the physiological effects
of exposure remain.
Editors of
The Navajo People and Uranium Mining are Timothy Benally,
Esther Yazzie-Lewis, and Doug Brugge. Doug Brugge has
a PhD in cellular and developmental biology from Harvard.
He is associate professor in the Department of Public
Health and Family Medicine at Tufts University School
of Medicine in Boston, where he is director of their
Community Research Center. Brugge has worked with neighborhoods
in Boston and with Native American communities in Oklahoma
and New Mexico in identifying public health dangers.
Timothy Benally, a bilingual Navajo, is retired as director
of both the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers and the
Uranium Education Center at Diné College in Shiprock,
New Mexico. Esther Yazzie-Lewis, of Edgewood, New Mexico,
is a bilingual Navajo, and official interpreter for
the U.S. Federal Court System.
The Navajo
People and Uranium Mining is available at bookstores
or from the University of New Mexico Press. To order,
please call 800-249-7737 or visit www.unmpress.com.
Royalties from the sale of this book support the Navajo
Uranium Memorial.
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