The forgotten Navajo people

By RACHEL MORGAN
Pavement Pieces

CHURCH ROCK, New Mexico — Teddy Nez’s home sits 500 feet from the mouth of abandoned uranium mine.

Since 1982, Nez and his family have been breathing in uranium particles and drinking uranium-contaminated water. They didn’t know the land that surrounded their home in Church Rock, N.M. – located on the 27,000 square-mile Navajo Reservation – was slowly killing them.

“We just assumed this was the way people lived,” Nez, 65, said. “But we came to find out the human risk factor.”

Nez has colon cancer, which he believes was caused by uranium contamination.

From roughly the 1940s to the 1980s, the federal government contracted private mining companies to blast uranium ore out of the rocky terrain of Navajo Nation for the development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.

During that time, nearly 4 million tons of the radioactive ore were mined from the area.

Decades later, the deadly health risks of uranium mining are starting to materialize. Workers who mined the rock are being diagnosed with cancer, respiratory problems, liver disease and more.

Perhaps most troubling is the effect on young children, who are prone to developing Navajo Neuropathy, a rare degenerative disease of the peripheral nervous system caused by breathing in uranium particles in the air and drinking water contaminated by the deadly metal. Symptoms include the shriveling of hands and feet, muscular weakness, corneal ulcers, delayed walking, infections and stunted growth.

The disease is primarily diagnosed in children in their first year of life – and 40 percent of these children die before they reach their 20s. There is no cure.
Nez said his symptoms began with an itchy rash in 1995. The rash turned into open sores that wouldn’t go away.

“I went to the doctor; he said it was just a rash and gave me ointment,” he said. “I use the ointment, but when it’s gone, the rash is still there.”

Nez soon realized he wasn’t the only one suffering from this rash. His neighbors had similar symptoms.

“We ask (the doctors), how do we treat it? And there’s no answer,” he said.
Nez was diagnosed with diabetes, then colon cancer in 2002. Both are said to be caused by exposure to high levels of radiation.

“At the beginning, I was afraid, scared,” Nez said of his cancer diagnosis. Today, he says a Navajo healing ceremony cured his colon cancer.
“I feel I am 100 percent cured,” he said. “Doctors tell me I still have cancer because I have not been treated by Western medicine.”

The L.A. Times reported in 2006 that cancer rates among the Navajos, once thought to be immune to cancer, doubled from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

According to the EPA, there are four primary ways the public can be exposed to the dangers of these radioactive materials: using uranium-contaminated rock as construction material, drinking uranium-contaminated water, breathing in uranium particles and being in the vicinity of the gamma radiation found in uranium.

Uranium mill tailings, leftover material from mining, are a radioactive, sand-like material that pose a variety of risks to anyone working or living in the vicinity of the mines, the EPA said.

Although Nez never worked as a uranium miner, years of living so close to the mines put him at serious risk of exposure and contamination.

The mine in Church Rock near Nez’s home is the biggest of the nearly 500 mines in Navajo Nation, said Lillie Lane, senior public information officer for the Navajo EPA.

The area around the Nez home was tested for radiation — and it was found to have 120 times the national amount of acceptable radiation.

“We lived with it since 1982,” Nez said. “I thought it was just a regular way of living.”

Nez said his children and grandchildren played in the land around his home, land that is teeming with deadly radiation.

While medical experts guess that approximately half the Navajo population has suffered some sort of health problem as a result of uranium exposure, specific percentages of those who are sick and what ails them are not easily determined. Most Navajos do not have access to health care, and even those who do rarely seek treatment.

In 2007, as part of the government’s five-year plan to clean up uranium-contaminated homes, Nez and his family were relocated to an apartment in nearby Gallup, N.M., so that the Church Rock mining site could be cleaned up.

Today at the site, bulldozers haul loads of uranium-contaminated dirt, and a single worker washes the area with water from a fire hose.

Nez and his family plan to move back into their home Dec. 23.

Nez has since joined the uranium activist movement and is now the president of the Red Water Pond Road Community, working to educate his fellow Navajos about the dangers of uranium contamination.

And he is angry.

“Some of my brothers say that the Indians are expendable,” Nez said. “(The government) can just use us as guinea pigs for anything they come up with. We need to be listened to.”

Anna Rondon, a local uranium activist, wants medical treatment and uncontaminated living quarters for the Navajo people.

According to Rondon, Southwest Research was monitoring the uranium problem in Navajo Country as early at 1971. At the time, Indian Health Services said the radon levels were too low to pose a health risk, she said.

“I just didn’t believe it,” Rondon said. “This is why I sought out other experts who had experience working with radiation.”

According to Lane, the issue gained national attention with the Waxman Congressional Hearings in 2007, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif., 30th District). The hearings, which examined the negative health and environmental effects of uranium mining on the reservation, shed light on the plight of the Navajo people for the first time.

Now, the Navajo EPA, the national EPA, the Abandoned Mines Land Program and the United States Army Corps are collaborating to tackle the enormous task of cleaning up the radioactive waste, Lane said.

In the 1980s, the group mapped out the areas with the highest contamination. They are working on cleaning up those areas first, Lane said. Over the years, various governmental agencies have worked to tear down and rebuild homes built with radioactive rock. However, these efforts have never been a centralized effort – a reoccurring problem in the cleanup process.

Lane said that mapping and data collection are a necessary part of the process, which takes time.

“We got a handle on what’s out there,” Lane said. “It takes a lot of money to clean up water, and it’s going to take a lot of money to clean up the old mines.”
It’s only in the last two years that any serious cleanup has gotten underway.

“The problem with uranium mines and mining is that it involves a lot of communities,” Lane said. The wide scope of the problem has slowed down the process, she said.

But 40 years is a long time to wait.

“They knew (the danger),” Nez said of the federal government. “All they were interested in was money. It’s like what’s been happening to the native people since 1492. We have just been pushed aside.”

While Rondon agrees that some progress is being made, she says it has stalled over the years.

“(Rebuilding) is going on,” Rondon said. “But not as much as it should. They’re always making the excuse that they don’t have the funds. But it’s been almost 40 years of waiting.”

But Lane said the Navajo EPA is doing what it can with the resources available.
“I think the (Navajo) EPA is doing as much as they can given the funding they’re given,” she said. “I think the government does not realize how big the problem is … because we’re so remote and our nation is so big.”

Rondon adds that “institutionalized racism” is a major barrier to the cleanup and relocation of Navajos away from contaminated land.

“Public policies either work in your favor or work against you, depending on the color of your skin,” she said.

Perhaps the most concrete example of “institutionalized racism” was in 1979 when there was a massive uranium spill in Church Rock, Ariz., on Navajo land – the largest peacetime release of radiation in history. A dam holding back thousands of gallons of uranium-contaminated water burst, and 94 million gallons of radioactive water was released into the Rio Puerco. This massive spill occurred the same year as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, which was cleaned up almost immediately. But 40 years later, the Navajos are still waiting.

The Navajos’ spiritual connection to the land, which is as sacred to them as Jerusalem is to the Jews, Christians and Muslims, compounds the problem of cleanup.

“We must do (cleanup) in a sacred manner,” Rondon said. “This industry has stepped on us so much. All we really have is our spirituality.”

Most Navajos won’t leave the reservation, even if it’s slowly killing them.

“We’ve been here for seven generations,” Nez said. “We’re not leaving. We’re connected to Mother Nature. That’s how it always was, and that’s how it’s always going to be.”

As a uranium activist, Rondon understands the danger of uranium; as a Navajo, she recognizes her people’s unbreakable ties to the land.

“It’s not that easy for us,” Rondon said. “We’re really connected to it. We can’t just get up and leave. We have such a deep connection to the land, the earth. It’s like, (if) we go somewhere else, (we) die.”

The Nez family's story

BY RACHEL MORGAN
Pavement Pieces

BLUE GAP, Ariz. – As a young husband and father, Leonard Nez was proud to work in a uranium mine near his home in Blue Gap, Ariz. For the two years he worked in the mine, he made a good living for his family and was able to buy food and goods from the local trader. Because he lived so close, he even allowed the mining company to store their tools in his family’s shed. Oftentimes, he would come home with rocks so his children would see what kind of work he was doing.
But Leonard had no way of knowing that these rocks would poison his family.

“I never knew the risk I put myself in by working for the uranium,” he said in his native Navajo language, as translated by his daughter Seraphina. “I know I returned home to my family contaminated with the uranium dust. I know I brought it home to my children. There were times I brought home rocks that were uranium, and I would put it on my windowsill for my kids to see the work I was doing. But I was unaware of the risk.“
Since then, Leonard and his wife Helen have lost seven of their 11 children — all before they reached the age of 36.
Six died from Navajo Neuropathy, a rare disease caused by exposure to radiation that primarily affects Navajo children. The disease attacks the peripheral nervous system. Symptoms include the shriveling of hands and feet, muscular weakness, stunted growth, infection and corneal ulcers. Forty percent of children affected die before they reach their 20s. The seventh child died from a miscarriage.

Many Navajo children were afflicted with the disease as a result of exposure to high levels of uranium in the air and water in and around their own homes.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, nearly 4 million tons of uranium ore was mined from Navajo land as part of the United States’ effort to develop a nuclear bomb during the Cold War.

When the miners left, uranium tailings and contaminated water and air were left behind on tribal land. Like the Nezes, many Navajos were unaware of the health risks caused by exposure.
Helen, 71, and Leonard, 74, lost their first child in 1968.

“(Dorenta) never walked; she had unusual puffiness in her face, her cheeks,” Helen said through her daughter Seraphina. “And she was very thin in her extremities. Her abdominal area — her stomach — had enlarged.”

Dorenta was just 3 years old when she died.

John was born in 1967 and died in 1970; Claudia was born in 1970 and died 1972; Euphemia was born in 1975 and died in 1978.

Years later, Cedar died at the age of 36, followed by Theresa, who died at the age of 26 in 1996.

All died of Navajo Neuropathy.

“All of the symptoms were identical,” Helen said. “Today, I still agonize and think about the past. To have six children die of the same symptoms and not know what it is. … One doctor in Albuquerque said, ‘Well, if you live in some sort of contaminated area, that might be the cause.’ ”

The Nezes’ home still sits half a mile from the mouth of the abandoned uranium mine.

And the Navajo government officials say the issue is not theirs to resolve.

“This is a federal government issue,” said Patrick Sandoval, chief of staff at the office of the Navajo president and vice president. “People can always do more in every effort. The federal government should have left uranium alone. It shouldn’t have been bothered. The Navajo people didn’t know what was happening when (the miners) came in. For our part, a bigger effort could be done, but we are doing the best we can with what we have.”

Gary Garrison, public officer at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the BIA is not responsible either.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs is not involved with providing outreach to the communities on this particular issue, funds for cleanup, or health care to residents of the Navajo Nation,” he said. “Those areas are being handled by other tribal and federal agencies responsible for carrying out those actions.”

As for federal government efforts, programs to clean up the contaminated areas are in place.
The Environmental Protection Agency began working to solve the problem of contaminated homes in Navajo Nation in 1994 with the Superfund program, which has provided $13 million to assess contaminated areas and develop a plan of action. In 2007, the Superfund Program finished a comprehensive atlas of each contaminated site and the level of contamination.
Since then, four yards and one home in Church Rock have been cleaned up at a cost of $2 million, paid for by the U.S. government.

In 2007, the EPA initiated the Five-Year Plan in conjunction with the BIA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Indian Health Services and the Department of Energy. These groups also worked closely with the Navajo EPA.

The Five-Year Plan lays out a procedure to assess the severity of the contamination and a plan of action to address it. It was the first coordinated effort of federal and local groups to deal with the problem. One of the first initiatives was to require the owner of the Church Rock mine to conduct a cleanup.

Regardless, these programs came too late for the Nezes.

Helen remembers the uranium mining all too well.

“I do recall the blasting,” she said. “I recall the dust filling my dishes. We didn’t have laundry close by. Sometimes I washed my children’s clothes with (my husband’s) contaminated clothes.”

When their children first became sick, Helen and Leonard visited doctor after doctor, searching for answers.

Instead, they were faced with accusations from local doctors.

“The indication was, ‘Is there incest?’ ” Helen said. “ ‘Is your husband related to you? Is he your brother, your uncle? Is that the reason your children have these symptoms?’ They never apologize, only the speculation of incest.”

Further complicating matters, Leonard’s involvement with the mine was off the books. Miners were paid in goods and food for their families. They never received either paychecks or cash for their work. Now, there is no record whatsoever of Leonard’s time in the uranium mines.

“Working for the uranium, I was only given a piece of white slip, a piece of paper, to take to the local store to purchase food and other things,” Leonard said.

With no record of his work history, there is little hope for the Nezes to gain compensation for the loss of their children.

“My heart is broken and I blame the government,” Leonard said. “I think back now, if I didn’t expose my children to the uranium, I could have had a big family. Now I am surviving only four children. This is my biggest regret, to work for the uranium.”

Chris Nez, 44, is one of Leonard’s surviving children.

He is angered at the way the Navajo Nation is treated by the federal government.

“This has been going on for quite some time,” he said. “One thing that really bothers me is we say ‘our land,’ but technically it’s not our land, this so-called Navajo Reservation. We do not own anything on it at all. Not even the land. All we got is probably three inches of topsoil. If there’s any oil, if there’s any kind of water, it belongs to the government. And yet, they contaminated the whole area. And now they’re just playing hush-hush.”

The legacy of Navajo Neuropathy spans generations in the Nez family. Helen’s great-grandson died in June of the same disease that claimed six of his aunts and uncles.

Even 17-year-old Floyd James Baldwin, Helen and Leonard’s grandson, sees what uranium has done to his family and to Navajo tribal lands.

“Well, growing up, I saw some pretty weird things,” he said. “When I was a child … getting my diaper changed next to my uncle — my own uncle, who’s a full-grown man. And I was just a little kid. I didn’t know it was wrong or anything. But as I grew up, I noticed that’s not normal. That doesn’t happen.” Loss of kidney function is another side effect of Navajo Neuropathy.

Floyd worries about the same thing happening to him. Still, he can’t imagine leaving the reservation.

“I think about (the effects of uranium on me) every time I drink anything,” he said. “(But) this is where my family’s at, and we’ve always been here. I can’t just leave this place.”

Navajo Nation: Part 2

Navajo Nation: Part 1

After 24 in hours in Navajo Nation reporting, I am amazed at the depth of the stories we've encountered - stories that must be told. The Navajos have been dealing with the aftereffects of uranium mining on their land for nearly 40 years. They are being diagnosed with cancer, Navajo Neuropathy, liver disease and breathing problems because of the radiation caused by uranium tailings left behind by mining companies - mining that was orchestrated by the federal government.

As a result, these Navajo families are being torn apart by death. Today we interviewed a mother and father who had lost six of their eleven children to Navajo Neuropathy. And this is a horrible disease - your limbs curl up, you can't walk or use your hands, your stomach and face swells up and you die. Doctors have very little explanation to this - but it is believed to be caused by exposure to radiation. This family, the Ne family, had nowhere to turn, no health care and no help from the government. The pain on their faces was so poignant; nothing rivals the pain of a parent losing a child.

We also traveled to an actual mining site, where cleanup was in process. We went with a Navajo man, Teddy Nez, who literally lived 500 feet from the mine's edge, in the middle of the cleanup site. The site of his home was tested for radiation and it had 120 times the accepted amount of radiation. He and his family were relocated to apartments in a neighboring town. But Teddy still plans to move back into his home on Dec. 23.

One question that is often asked of the Navajo is this: Why don't you just leave?

It seems simple enough to us Westerners. If a place is making you sick, then move to a new place. Simple. But to them, it is anything but. The Navajo are spiritually tied to the land. They even call it "their blood and their bones." One Navajo woman and our guide for the trip, put it simply, "To leave is to die." And to them, a spiritual death by leaving the land is worse than staying. Even if the land they are living on is essentially killing them.

On a personal note, being on the scene of the issue is incredible. There's an element you just don't get over the phone; seeing where someone lives, seeing them with their people, seeing their homes - it all makes for a better story. I'm beginning to think that being some sort of traveling reporter is something I would like to do.

Live interview