nuclear-news

Navajos anxiety over uranium mining

A new demand for uranium power brings concerns for Navajo groups
Mining planned at a mountain considered sacred

By Kari Lydersen

Washington Post
October 25, 2009

 

Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease……………

“This has multi-generational effects. I won’t even live long enough to see what it does to people in 500 years,” said Earl Tulley, who lives near Church Rock and is vice president of the Navajo environmental group Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment. His wife had breast cancer and his daughter had an ovarian tumor removed, both of which were attributed to uranium exposure. “People are being taken apart from the inside out.”……………..

Interior Secretary Ken L. Salazar over the summer instituted a two-year moratorium on awarding new claims or beginning production on claims not already established as viable. While it is not tribal land, this region is considered sacred to many Indians. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. and other tribal leaders testified in support of a House bill introduced this year by  Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) that would ban Grand Canyon watershed uranium mining.

October 26, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, indigenous issues, USA | antinuclear, cancer, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium, wastes