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Navajo victims of uranium mining

why should they [the Navajo] be victimized from another wave of uranium mining?”

A legacy of uranium, a prayer for healing | The Salt Lake Tribune, by Judy Fahys, 2 Jan 2011, Monument Valley, Utah • The sickness in Elsie Mae Begay’s family troubled her for a long time. So she turned to a Navajo medicine man.The healer took measure of the family settlement here and told her the poison was in the dust kicked up by the wind that sometimes rips through the desert. In years to come, environmental scientists for the tribe and the U.S. government would confirm that diagnosis in their own way, saying the family was at risk from radiation left over from uranium at the Skyline Mine on the mesa above the homes……..

All told, EPA investigators found 80 spots in the three-acre site where levels of penetrating gamma radiation was at least double natural background levels. And, because exposure is linked to increased risk of cancer, the EPA wants to get the radiation out…………
Its survey had found contaminated homes and radiation hot spots all over the reservation lands, an expanse roughly the size of West Virginia in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

The EPA also discovered 29 water sources with higher-than-expected levels of radiation………….

Uranium » Even with the cleanup, the fight to bring attention to the uneasy relationship between the Navajo and uranium is far from over.

In the courts, advocates for the Navajo have failed to protect tribal lands from more uranium mining despite a ban enacted by the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005.

“From their perspective, why should they be victimized from another wave of uranium mining?” asked Eric Jantz, an attorney who worked on one of the cases. He adds that cases like Begay’s underscore that new mining seems foolish, given how long it has taken to recognize and address the damage Navajo have suffered because of the past uranium boom.

“It seems ridiculous,” he says. “People are having to wait generations to have these problems addressed.”

On the public front, the Chicago-based group Groundswell Educational Films continues its campaign to bring attention to the legacy of uranium on the Navajo Reservation. Its 2000 film “The Return of Navajo Boy,” which features Begay’s family, is used as an educational tool to raise awareness on and off the reservation….

A legacy of uranium, a prayer for healing | The Salt Lake Tribune

January 2, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, USA