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Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation

Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation – Examiner.com Ann Garrison 27 May 09  “………………

He had almost gone to Flagstaff to enlist just before the Gulf War, in 1991, but had gotten a job making better wages on the reservation instead.  Eight of his friends had gone, and all eight had returned alive, but then, all eight had died of cancer, within two years.  All eight had believed that uranium weapons poisoning caused their cancers; all eight had been on the deck of an aircraft carrier when a black cloud of munitions blowback descended upon them.

The Veterans Administration denied that their cancers had anything to do with uranium weapons, or, any sort of other toxic exposure in the Gulf,……………. I’m not going to name my friend, or the friends he lost,  because the recruiting pressure in Native America is like nothing I’ve ever seen outside New Orleans.

I also learned about the horrific, ongoing post-World War II legacy of uranium mining contamination in Navajoland, which had killed many Navajo people and left many others suffering birth defects and illnesses, including cancer in numbers far disproportionate to the general population.

The uranium in the weapons that the Navajo vets had believed to be the reason they were dying might well have been mined, in their own poisoned homeland, as the U.S. built its post World War II nuclear power, weapons, and war machine.

SF Energy Policy Examiner: Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation

May 27, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, USA | antinuclear, indigenous, nuclear, radioactive, uranium