Navajo Nation battles yellow 'monster'

[nosmokes]

original

Navajo Nation battles yellow 'monster'
Posted: November 23, 2006
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today

These days we speak of weapons of mass destruction without truly considering the historical weight of those words. The phrase is bandied about by talking heads without an ounce of emotion or regret. That the United States is trying to halt the proliferation of nuclear programs for the sake of preventing mass casualties by terrorist attack, while maneuvering constantly to maintain its status as a world superpower, is ironic. The earthly material used to transform the United States into the world's most powerful political and military force, uranium, has proven just as massively destructive as the nuclear weapons it spawned.

A new book, ''The Navajo People and Uranium Mining,'' edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally and Esther Yazzie-Lewis, is the documented history of the forgotten victims of America's Cold War, according to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. Generations of indigenous people living and breathing on Navajo land have suffered the deadly effects of uranium mining, without compassion or just compensation from the federal government. Shirley described the uranium mining era as genocide. ''There is no other word for what happened to Navajo uranium miners,'' he said.

Leetso, ''yellow dirt'' in Dine', is found throughout Navajoland. A map of mining areas shows a dozen mines in Navajo alone, and a few others in the vast outlying territory. As in countless stories of the exploitation of indigenous resources, the Navajo and Hopi people were the last to know the true effects of their mining efforts.

The Dine' are people with the utmost respect for the ground on which they live. The world's largest deep uranium mine is at the foot of Tsoodzil, the Navajo sacred mountain of the south. Imagine the spiritual loss for a people whose ancient ways tell them it is disrespectful to dig into the Earth with steel tools or machinery. The miners themselves suffered often fatal radiation-related diseases and dangerous threats to their way of life as Dine'. These are the primary handlers of the uranium; countless secondary victims live today in communities wasted by invisible radiation exposure that runs deadly through families, hogans and playgrounds. Even the wind itself blows radioactive dust throughout the land. The result, lamented Shirley, has ''cost the Navajo Nation the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, stories, songs and ceremonies of hundreds of our people.''
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complete article here

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1. Adding yet more insult to a centuries-long injury. And Clinton signed the bill which forced the Dine

to move off their ancestral homelands so that foreign mining companies could rape the land for profit.

[Cha]

2. REally? He should

be scalped.

[begin_within]

4. Here's more info on it...

An old page, but as far as I know it's still going on...

http://www.vvawai.org/sw/sw34/big-mountain.html

[Turtlebah]

3. Clinton also pardoned

Peter MacDonald! Clinton is trash, as far as I'm concerned.

Joe Shirley jr. is doing everything he can to keep the mining companies out. Let's hope Washington doesn't break more laws, and invade the rez. The uranium mines has killed far too many of my people on the rez. Let's see how much spine the Dems have.

[Jcrowley]

5. Stealing the fire

Uranium mine blamed for high Aboriginal cancer rate

Liz Minchin and Lindsay Murdoch
November 23, 2006

CANCER cases among Aboriginal people living near Australia's biggest uranium mine appear to be almost double the expected rate, a study by the Federal Government's leading indigenous research body shows.

The study also found there had been no monitoring in the past 20 years on the Ranger mine's impact on local indigenous health. Yet since 1981, there have been more than 120 spillages and leaks of contaminated water at the mine, located in the world heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

The Herald believes the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies paper will be submitted to the Government's nuclear energy taskforce, led by Dr Ziggy Switkowski, which this week released a draft report backing the expansion of uranium mining.

The study compared the number of Aboriginal people diagnosed with cancer in the Kakadu region with the cancer rate among all Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory from 1994 to 2003. It found the diagnosis rate was 90 per cent higher than expected, with 27 cases reported.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/11/22/1163871481956.html

K&R