Uranium Mining on Navajo Land

By Emily Nicolosi

»During th e Cold War, the United States government employed thousands of American Indians on western reservations to excavate uranium ore to fuel nuclear reactors and atomic bombs.

“When we were hired we weren’t aware of the potential hazards,” says former uranium miner Larry King. King worked for the United Nuclear Corporation’s mine in the Eastern Navajo Agency near Crownpoint, New Mexico from 1975 to 1983. He and his fellow workers mined without any protection from uranium exposure. “It wasn’t until afterward that I started learning about hazards,” King explains. “Indian Health Services was experiencing a lot of patients with cancer – lung cancer – so they did a study. All the cancer linked back to the past uranium miners.” To date, thousands of miners have died from uranium-related illnesses and many others are sick.

The mining also subjected miners’ families and other community members to radioactive contamination and associated illness.

Today there are more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation, many of which continue to emit contamination. The thousands of Navajos living near these mines are financially unable to relocate, and the government has not taken action to clean up the mines.

It was not until 1990 that the government gave assistance, in the form of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The law was intended to compensate those who became ill from uranium exposure. However, its provisions do not include compensation for families living near former mines, or even for miners, like Larry King, who worked after 1971.

While residents of the Navajo Nation and its surrounding communities continue to deal with issues arising from past uranium mining, they face

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Left: Larry King of Church Rock, NM. Below: A home on the Navajo Reservation, approximately 15 miles northeast of Gallup, NM, sits within 500 feet of an unreclaimed, highly contaminated uranium mine waste dump.