Geography & The Land
The Navajo Nation spans across three U.S. states: Utah, New Mexico, and this Grand Canyon state.
Demand for Navajo uranium skyrocketed during this multi-decade period of geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Because they breathed in radioactive dust daily, uranium miners suffered extremely high rates of this specific type of cancer, also known as EGFR or KRAS?
What is lung cancer?
In 1990, Congress passed this act (RECA) to finally offer a one-time $100,000 apology payment to sick uranium miners.
What is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act?
Unaware of the danger, many Navajo families used these leftover, sandy mining byproducts to mix cement for building their own homes.
What are uranium tailings?
This is the Navajo word for the people themselves, translating directly to "The People."
What is Diné?
Early uranium extracted from the reservation was secretly used by this WWII project, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, to build the first atomic bombs.
What is the Manhattan Project?
As uranium decays, it turns into this odorless, colorless radioactive gas that accumulates heavily in poorly ventilated mine shafts.
What is radon?
This federal agency, created in 1970, is currently responsible for overseeing the Superfund cleanup of the abandoned Navajo mines.
What is the Environmental Protection Agency?
The burden of illness often fell on these family members, who faced their own secondary radiation exposure while washing yellowcake dust off their counterpart's or family member's work clothes.
Who are wives?/Navajo women?
In the 1940s, prospectors discovered massive deposits of this radioactive element, atomic number 92, scattered across the reservation.
What is uranium?
The sole purchaser of Navajo uranium from 1944 to 1970 was this U.S. federal agency, which held a strict monopoly on nuclear materials.
What is the Atomic Energy Commission?
Radioactive particles permanently embed in respiratory tissue, leading to this fatal scarring of the lungs that can be definitively identified in postmortem forensic tissue analysis.
Because the mining companies were operating under federal contracts, the U.S. government invoked this legal doctrine to shield itself from being sued by miners for negligence.
What is sovereign immunity?
Due to heavily contaminated groundwater, up to 30% of Navajo Nation residents lack access to this basic modern utility, forcing them to haul it from unregulated wells.
What is tap water/running water?
The EPA estimates there are currently over this many abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation, leaving radioactive tailings exposed to the elements.
What is 500? (523 Also works)
Navajo miners were intentionally not provided with these protective facial devices to filter out radioactive dust, despite the government knowing the respiratory risks.
What are respirators or gas masks?
In addition to respiratory illnesses, long-term ingestion of uranium-contaminated groundwater heavily damages these bean-shaped organs responsible for filtering blood.
What are the kindeys?
In 2005, the Navajo Nation made environmental justice history by passing the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act, which completely banned this activity on their lands.
What is uranium mining?
The USPHS conducted a secretive medical study on the miners starting in the 1950s, raising severe ethical concerns because they failed to obtain this from the subjects.
What is informed consent?
This major 1979 disaster released 94 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Puerco River, yet received a fraction of the media coverage of Three Mile Island.
What is the Church Rock uranium mill spill?
This 1868 document established the Navajo reservation, but its sovereign provisions were largely bypassed when the federal government allowed private mining companies to exploit the land.
What is the Treaty of Bosque Redondo? (Treaty of 1868 works too)
The atomic number or symbol of uranium?
What is 92 or U?
In 2014 and 2015, the U.S. government reached massive settlements (totaling over $5 billion nationally) to clean up abandoned mines with this corporate successor to Kerr-McGee.
What is Tronox/Anadarko Petroleum?
Formed by sick miners to lobby Congress for compensation, the NURVC stands for the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims—this.
What is Committee?