Antinuclear

The Navajo Nation comprises a land area larger than several US states. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 15 percent of Diné do not have access to piped water in their homes—down from 30 percent in 2003. The nonprofit Navajo Water Project says the Diné are 67 times more likely to be without running water or a toilet connected to sewer lines than others in the United States. As a result, many are forced to drive or even walk several miles to the nearest communal water station. Some instead get water from an unregulated source, like a livestock trough. But research shows uranium mining may have contaminated many wells on the reservation.

A large portion of the area’s groundwater has been contaminated with uranium as well as other mining by-products like arsenic that were mobilized by the mining operations, according to researchers who presented their findings at a 2019 American Chemical Society conference. Another recent study found that 11 percent of unregulated wells tested on Diné lands exceeded the maximum contaminant levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for uranium. Seventeen percent contained high levels of arsenic.

According to a 2019 report by the environmental groups U.S. Water Alliance and DigDeep about access to water, the number of cases for gastric cancers doubled in the 1990s in the Diné areas where uranium mining had taken place.

The Navajo Cancer Workgroup, which includes representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as nonprofits, universities, and government agencies, concluded that the Diné die from stomach, liver, and kidney cancers at two to four times the rate of non-Hispanic whites. One report titled “Cancer among the Navajo” covered the time period between 2005 and 2013 and analyzed the Diné’s increased mortality rates in the context of their environment, including their contaminated water supply…………

The Diné have faced significant linguistic obstacles to protecting their health from the harmful effects of uranium. The Diné call the substance leetso and used it in sand paintings and body adornment for many years. But the Dine did not have a word for radiation, which has limited their ability to discuss contamination. As a result, the concept of radiation hasn’t been a part of Diné culture despite its impact on Diné bodies.

According to social scientist Susan Dawson, the author of a 1992 study published in Human Organization, Diné miners were never “informed of the dangers of radiation, nor were they informed of their rights under state workers’ compensation laws when they became ill.” Most didn’t speak English, the language of their predominantly white managers. In the book, The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, a Diné miner named George Tutt recalled shoveling uranium ore and radioactive waste by hand. He and others, he said, “were not told to wash or anything like that.”

Philipp Harrison, president of the Uranium Radiation Victims Committee in Arizona and himself a Diné, expressed his outrage and grief at the World Uranium Hearings, a global gathering of Indigenous activists, scientists, and environmental groups held in Salzburg, Austria, in September 1992. Harrison witnessed several former miners die from lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses, including his father, who was only 43 years old when he died. “It was very, very hard for me to see him die a painful death. … He weighed only 90 pounds when he left us. I have never witnessed anything like the way he died.”

When mining companies were extracting 30 million tons of uranium from the Navajo Nation, language barriers prevented miners from getting accurate information about the risks of their jobs. Likewise, those barriers have impeded the families of miners who died from conditions linked to working in the uranium mines from seeking compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which will sunset in 2022.

Today most young Diné speak and write English, but older members of the community are not always comfortable in the language. The August report on COVID-19 and Indigenous communities found that just 32 percent of people in the Navajo Nation live in English-only households. When Dawson interviewed a widow whose husband worked in a mine, the researcher wanted to know why her interviewee did not file for occupational illness compensation. The widow responded that, “she felt intimidated by the process because of being told she had to write letters,” while she “had no stationery or stamps and could not write in English, and so decided against it.”

In a testimony at the 1992 World Uranium Hearing, Laurie Goodman, a Diné and member of the non-profit organization Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment, said that, “[o]ur lands are chosen [for uranium mining], because our people are isolated and lack access to technical information. Most have only a basic level of formal education and have little organized political opposition. When a society does not have words in their language, translation[s] for ‘hazardous,’ ‘toxic,’ and ‘poison’, it is a clear indication that education is needed for affected people to make informed decisions that determine their destiny.”

The Navajo Nation Council banned uranium mining under the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, but much of the mining contamination remains. While the Environmental Protection Agency says that $1.7 billion has been secured through legal settlements with mining companies and other agreements dating back to at least 2014 for cleanup at 219 of the 523 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation, the Diné say little of the work has been completed.  “The biggest thing is that out of the $1.7 billion dollars I think the total amount that has been spent as of today is $116 million on studies. … Out of the 219 that were funded, not one site is 100 percent ready to be cleaned up,” Navajo Council speaker Seth Damon said last year, according to the Navajo Times. The newspaper reported that the Environmental Protection Agency hopes to begin cleaning up the sites by 2024.

Indigenous organizations are doing a tremendous amount of work to address radiation poisoning and water scarcity in the Diné community. …………

. Systemic racism, language barriers, mistrust of federal agencies, misinformation about uranium mining, preexisting medical conditions from chronic radiation illnesses, and an acute water scarcity make the Diné uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic. The double public health crises in the Navajo Nation need our urgent attention and immediate assistance. https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/radiation-illnesses-and-covid-19-in-the-navajo-nation/