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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 26, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Anna Rondon: Uranium killed Navajo miners

[Anna Rondon, community planner for the Dine Nation (Navajo) and representative of the Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum]

In Navajo creation stories we are told uranium-we call it "klejj"-should be left in the ground.

We want to join to create a worldwide movement to educate people to its dangers.

On our reservation back in 1941 a mineral called carnotite was found in the Carrizo mountains. Carnotite contains vanadium and uranium.

The vanadium was used to create a hard alloy for battleships. The Manhattan Project, creator of the atomic bomb, used the uranium for the first atomic bombs. Then from 1946 to 1968, 13 million tons of uranium were mined on the reservation to make more atomic bombs.

For that, 1,500 uranium miners were used. Today, more than half have passed away due to cancer illnesses and respiratory diseases.

In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that created a $200-million trust fund. But out of 500 claims, only 50 widows of the Navajo miners have received any compensation.

The Department of Justice makes it so difficult to bring evidence of medical documents, or proof of Navajo traditional marriages.

The tailings from over 1,000 underground and open-pit mines remain on the reservation. Children play in them. They have signs saying "Beware," but most of our people still don't read English.

Homes are being built from tailings. Six hundred homes now lived in are made from actual rocks from the mines.

Right now Hydro Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Uranium Resources Inc. out of Australia, is proposing to open up two uranium mines. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is policing its own projects. It is the political arm for the corporations and the terrorists-the United States Army, the Department of Defense.

The U.S. Army plans to launch 80-100 cruise missiles a year at Fort Wingate until the next century. The Environmental Impact Statement says it will harm nobody, but there is a school right in that area near Fort Wingate-the same fort where the U.S. Army held us hostage in the 1800s.

Indigenous people decided at a summit that we should demand to ban uranium mining. Ban DU. Keep nuclear waste where it is. Increase public information campaign for nuclear issues at local, state and regional levels.

Create new alliances and strengthen existing alliances.

Share tactics that work.

We also propose actions for Oct. 12 to unplug Mother Earth and give her a rest. Bring out American Indian issues in your work.

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