A first: Navajo’s recent court win over uranium miners

Imperial nuclear power

Examiner.com Ann Garrison 27 May 09 Corporations mined uranium all over the Navajo Nation’s famously scenic mountains, mesas and canyons after World War II,
as the U.S. built its nuclear power, weapons, and war machine.

In “Uranium mining and weapons poisoning, on the Navajo Nation,” I told the story of eight Navajo veterans who died of uranium weapons poisoning within two years of returning from the Gulf War, and, of the toxic legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation.  These histories inspired me, over the past five years, to study the uranium mining  industry, most of all in indigenous country in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Africa.

Earlier this month the Navajo Nation won a victory in a U.S. federal appeals court, which supported the Diné Natural Resources and Protection Act of 2005, a ban on uranium mining, and, the only indigenous assertion of  sovereignty over natural resources of its kind.

Anyone who might be persuaded by the argument that nuclear power is a clean, green “solution” to global warming , including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and San Francisco Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, should consider the devastating impact of uranium mining, the first step in the nuclear process, on indigenous peoples and environments all over the world.

http://www.examiner.com/x-8257-SF-Energy-Policy-Examiner~y2009m5d27-Imperial-nuclear-power?#comments

May 28, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, USA | antinuclear, indigenous, nuclear, radioactive, uranium