Word: navajoized
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Since 1974, conditions have not improved for Navajo and other Indian uranium miners. As of today, 25 Navajo uranium miners have died and an additional 25 have radiation-induced lung cancer. Since the dosage of radiation is relatively low, the effects do not appear for many years, yet they do surface eventually. Doctors at the Shiprock Indian Hospital treating the miners have found that neither radiation therapy nor surgery arrests the cancers' development. This rare type of small-cell carcinoma is diagnosed usually less than a year before the time it claims its victim...
...uranium miner deaths are not enough, Kerr McGee's abandoned uranium mine amounts to something more than an eyesore for the Navajo people. The uranium mill at one time processed raw uranium ore into "yellowcake," discarding tons of low-grade uranium ore called tailings in the process. For every ton of uranium mined, only 2.24 ounces of processed ore results. Although the company is long gone, the 71 acres of uranium mill tailings remain, untreated and exposed in the city of Shiprock. The U.S. Department of Energy now estimates that those persons residing within a half-mile radius of uranium...
Last year, the TVA, Mobil Oil, and United Nuclear Corporation submitted an environmental impact statement for a proposed uranium mine and mill complex in the eastern portion of the Navajo reservation. The BIA made arrangements for the lease in 1970, although Navajos living in the area never heard anything about the proposal until 1978. Mary C. Largo, a Navajo woman of the Dalton Pass Chapter (an area under lease), signed up as a plaintiff in the December 1978 lawsuit after drilling began on her land allotment without her permission. "I never saw any contract papers, I never put my thumbprint...
Twenty uranium exploration holes now surround Largo's hogan, a traditional Navajo house. Several of these holes lie less than 100 feet from her front door. Marie Largo went to the local BIA representative, who told her that the mining operation would bring her money. For the time being, however, her sheep cannot feed on the grass near the exploration rigs, and the water contaminated in the uranium exploration is unsuitable for either her personal or livestock needs...
...resolution late last spring calling for a halt to all uranium exploration and mining on their lands. The impact was nil. Development continues unabated as the TVA-Mobil-United Nuclear consortium project expands from uranium exploration into mine shaft and mill construction. The miners will be drawn from the Navajo population, with the "specialists" being non-Indian experts from outside the reservation. This project, in conjunction with the many other coal and uranium mining projects, promises to make a uranium boom town out of a hitherto traditional Navajo community. In turn, according to the environmental impact statement, the uranium will...