Beautiful valley and Navajo people, I respect your culture.

☢💔🪶 After the invention of atomic weapons in 1945 and the subsequent development of nuclear power plants, mining companies dug more than 4,000 uranium mines across the Western U.S. Though other tribes were affected - including the Hopi, the Arapaho, the Southern Cheyenne, the Spokane and Laguna Pueblo, etc. - roughly 1,000 of these claims were located on Navajo Nation, which encompasses 27,000 square miles where Arizona, Utah and New Mexico meet. Many Diné people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the CDC shows uranium in babies born now. From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands under leases with the Navajo Nation. In the early 1960s, after about 10 years of mining, the first cases of lung cancer began appearing in Navajo uranium miners. The affected Navajo communities looked for the cause of this heretofore rare to nonexistent disease. As a result, uranium mining has left the Navajo Nation with a legacy of over 500 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs), four inactive uranium milling sites, a former dump site, contaminated groundwater, structures that contain elevated levels of radiation, and environmental and public health concerns from contaminating the environment with radioactive dust, radon gas, water-borne toxins, and increased levels of background radiation. Nearly all homes of the Diné are located within a mile of a natural water source. And 17% are just 200 feet away - or less - from an occupied residence. Experts estimate that as a result, 85% of all Navajo homes are currently contaminated with uranium. On the Navajo Nation, most uranium deposits sit in aquifers. Drilling into these aquifers can cause radioactive uranium to leach into the water, contaminating both the underground supply and the water absorbed from the surface. When the mines were active, companies recruited Navajo men to work them. They hired women and children as support staff; to save money and avoid leaving a paper trail, they “paid” them with sacks of sugar, flour, potatoes and coffee. Exposure to radioactive ore and toxic by-products such as arsenic, cadmium and lead was commonplace - a fact of everyday life. Navajo families crushed the poisonous rock to make concrete. Homes were built from abandoned mine tailings. Kids played in waste piles. Herders watered sheep in open, un-reclaimed pits. Husbands came home covered in uranium dust; wives washed their clothes. Everyone drank the contaminated groundwater; everyone inhaled mine dust borne on the hot desert winds. They still do today. “They never told us uranium was dangerous,” says Cecilia Joe, 85, a Navajo woman who worked as a miner from May 1949 to June 1950. The federal government had studied and documented the danger in depth, but deliberately kept it secret. “We washed our faces in it. We drank in it. We ate in it. It was sweet.” Joe’s story is typical. Her father spoke no English; he signed his mining permit with a thumbprint. The local mine was named after him, and Joe’s entire family worked there. Joe grew up nearby, about 20 miles southeast of Cameron, Ariz. She started driving a jeep that hauled uranium rocks when she was 13. Today, Joe lives 10 miles down a dirt road in a home without running water, electricity or telephone service. She mostly speaks Navajo. Her daughter Augusta translates. “She would taste the uranium,” Augusta says as Joe puts her fingers to her lips. “Her siblings would put it in their mouths, put it on their teeth, to imitate people with gold teeth.” Her neighbors, Joe continues, stopped working at the mine and moved to Utah when their daughter Mary was 2. “The little girl passed away while they were there,” Augusta translates. “She started coughing up blood. She began having convulsions. They say that she twisted into unnatural positions.” When Joe was 3, seven of her siblings died in a span of 20 days. Three of her brothers started coughing up blood on their way to Tuba City, Ariz., in a horse-drawn carriage. The hospital there couldn’t save them. Previously, lung disease was largely nonexistent on Navajo Nation; few Navajo smoke. But by the late 1970s, Navajo miners were dying of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses linked to uranium exposure - including silicosis, tuberculosis, pneumonia and emphysema - at higher rates than other Americans. Rates of thyroid disease, kidney disease and other lethal and aggressive cancers also started to rise. A neurological disorder among children was even named Navajo neuropathy, and linked to uranium. Though mining on the Navajo Nation is a thing of the past - in 2005 the Navajo Nation Council passed the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act, a law prohibiting uranium mining and processing on any site within its borders -💔☢☢☢☢💔---uranium tailings/pollution continue to have a devastating impact on the health of the Navajo/Diné people. 💘🌎 #SaveSoil

@Someonelse1224

3 ай бұрын

I hope it gets better but so far there had been almost no attempt to clean up the mess and no compensation for the familys.also a the air and water are still kid of poisoned to this day.

@chuckheppner4384

3 ай бұрын

@@Someonelse1224 Unfortunately, it's not likely to improve until we clear-out the corruption in the Extreme Court. 💰⚖💰 #SCOTUSStench

What a story. This woman's plight and ultimate victory is amazing. Thank you for sharing her story with the world. And all the beautiful footage of my beloved Arizona.

Navajo women their beautiful blouses with jewelries! Thank you for sharing story!

My Grandfathér W.A. Sullivan RIP. was a building contractor (Moms Dad) In on construction of NDN Hosp. Housing Skools ECT. in 50/60s. They lived in Quemado. I'm 64 last time at (I forgot, constrctn in Gallup) NDN Rodeo in 1969 or 70. This video was so heart warming. Thanks.

Very much enjoyed this documentary. 👍

Think Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

Kerr Mcgee killed alot of navajos

they like us the Qazaq people! our life style is so similar!

Gracias por traducir al castellano

Wow pretty interesting video

To think that most of the people shown here are dead by now...😔

@jmsjan12

Жыл бұрын

Did you know that this company created a shell company called Tronox in order hide all of its toxic liabilities in 22 states? They got caught in a massive fraud scheme and then agreed to a $5 billion settlement to address all their legacy sites. Navajo Nation received the first $1 billion. Our documentary The Return of Navajo Boy shows footage of a Navajo family in this company film to reveal the human cost of uranium mining.

Even then we didn't get much water. It'll come as it goes.

OXY base are our now