Toxic Chemicals and Waste
/Sustainable Development
- Mon Jun 20 2005
Source:
Third World Network Features
Allied community groups have achieved a hard-won victory: a ban on uranium mining, milling, and processing on the vast Navajo lands in Arizona and New Mexico, USA. A nuclear industry, with the help of the US federal government, has exploited the uranium reservation since the 1940s spreading contamination into Navajo's lands and waters.
On 19 April, the Navajo Nation Council passed the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005 (DNRPA), which bans uranium mining and processing anywhere in Navajo Indian Country, by a vote of 63-19 and on 20 April the uranium moratorium was signed by Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.
As amended by the Council during floor debate, the act states, 'No person shall engage in uranium mining and processing on any sites within Navajo Indian Country.' The law is based on the Fundamental Laws of the Dine, which are already codified in Navajo statutes.
The act finds that based on those fundamental laws, 'certain substances in the Earth (known as doo nal yee dah) that are harmful to the people should not be disturbed, and that the people now know that uranium is one such substance, and therefore, that its extraction should be avoided as traditional practice and prohibited by Navajo law'.
'This legislation just chopped the legs off the uranium monster,' said Norman Brown, president of Dine Bidzill. Traditional Navajo stories speak of monsters sleeping beneath the Earth that should not be awakened, for if they are, they will unleash destruction.
The Navajos have 65 years of experience of just how monstrously destructive uranium is. Uranium mining, milling and processing began on Navajo and Pueblo Indian lands in the 1940s and 1950s as part of the 'Manhattan Project' to create the atomic bomb and to fuel the nuclear arms race, and continued for many decades. Large numbers of Native Americans were hired as underground and aboveground miners.
'Though the toxic effects of radiation were known to government officials, no one did anything to protect the Navajo miners,' said Cora Maxx-Philips of the Office of the President and Vice President of the Navajo Nation. 'Our people toiled day and night in the mines without face masks, ventilation or clean drinking water. They breathed the radioactive dust and drank contaminated water, and later paid with their lives and their land.'
Radioactive and toxic, uranium mine and mill wastes have been carelessly dumped across the Navajo Nation by the nuclear industry and the US federal government. As on other Indigenous lands such as at Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, Canada and Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico (site of the world's largest open-pit uranium mine, in the midst of a community), these uranium wastes blow with the wind and flow with the water, contaminating the air, ground and surface waters, and soil.
In the late 1970s, one of North America's worst-ever radiologic disasters occurred when a uranium waste settling pond earthen dam burst, spilling vast amounts of radiation and toxins into the Rio Puerco, the sole source of drinking water for Navajo shepherds in a region of western New Mexico. Not only miners, but also local Navajo residents, have suffered the inevitable health consequences from uranium extraction and processing.
'It's very simple, uranium kills,' said Navajo Nation Council delegate Mark Maryboy during the debate on the measure.
'The Dine Natural Resources Protection Act evolved from former [Navajo Nation] President Zah's 1992 uranium mining moratorium and President Shirley's public statements opposing new mining,' said ENDAUM spokeswoman Lynnea Smith. 'It reflects the overwhelming sentiment of the Navajo people to resist new uranium mining and address the lingering effects of past mining, as reflected in a resolution adopted by nearly 350 people at the 10 July 2003 citizens' uranium conference in Shiprock [New Mexico].'
President Shirley signed the law in front of the Crownpoint Chapter House water station, from which thousands of people haul water every year. ENDAUM members and supporters held a banner reading 'Water is Life.'
President Shirley said, 'As long as there are no answers to cancer, we shouldn't have uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. I believe the-powers-that-be committed genocide on Navajoland by allowing uranium mining. I don't want to subject any more of my people to exposure, to uranium and the cancers that it causes. I believe we reinforced our sovereignty today.'
Mitchell Capitan, president of ENDAUM, began his work against uranium mining a decade ago to protect the precious water of Navajo country against the harmful health effects of uranium and radiation exposure that were already so well known and documented. 'I feel like the eyes and ears of the people have been opened,' Capitan said. 'There are many people who are suffering from the effects of uranium mining. I don't know if the federal government will ever be able to compensate us.'
Expressing his joy at the signing of DNRPA, Capitan added, 'I can always tell my grandchildren that I did something to protect them, something that I am proud of.' In addition to its gratitude to the Navajo President and National Council, ENDAUM gave special praise to the Southwest Research and Information Center and its long-time representative, Chris Shuey.
Norman Brown of Dine Bidzill said thousands of Navajos are still affected by uranium-caused cancers and need help through the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) amendments now before the US Congress. 'Hundreds of mines still sit open to the wind and air,' Brown said. 'I have witnessed our elders crying and families pleading for some type of relief from the many cancer deaths that continue daily across our great Navajoland.'
Navajo President Shirley is working with US Congressman Tom Udall, a Democrat of New Mexico, to block a provision in the US House of Representatives energy bill for US$30 million in federal taxpayer subsidies for 'in-situ leach mining' of uranium in New Mexico. Udall's amendment to block the subsidy was defeated recently by a 225 to 204 vote, but President Shirley has vowed to continue fighting.
'The Dine will not tolerate the risk of being exposed to uranium again,' Shirley said. Udall believes the controversial subsidy is not currently included in the Senate version of the energy bill, but it could be added during the House-Senate conference committee. New Mexico's two US Senators, Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, will both serve on the conference committee, so phone calls and letters to their offices urging opposition to in-situ leach mining of uranium would be very valuable.
Grace Thorpe (known as 'Woman of the Power of the Wind that Blows Up Before a Storm' or 'No Ten O Quah' in the Sac & Fox Indian language), an emeritus board member of NIRS and founder National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans which led the national effort to stop radioactive waste dumps targeted at Indigenous lands, related a Navajo story.
The Creator gave the Navajo the choice between two yellow powders, corn pollen and uranium yellow cake. The Navajo chose to live with corn pollen. The Creator then warned the Navajo that the uranium would unleash destruction if disturbed beneath the Earth. The Navajo have yet again rejected uranium, and reasserted the sacredness of their traditional ways.
The above article first appeared in WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor (#627, 13 May 2005), and was then reproduced by the Third World Network Features with permission.
Related web sites
--> Dine CARE (Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment)
Diné CARE is an all-Navajo environmental organization, based within the Navajo homeland. The main goal is to empower local and traditional people to organize, speak out and determine their own destinies.
--> Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM)
Located in Crownpoint, New Mexico, ENDAUM is committed to preserving the purity and quantity of water for the future generations in the Eastern Navajo Agency.
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