REVIEW : "Money Does Not Greet You"

REVIEW : "Money Does Not Greet You"

18th December 2007

by Stuart Kirsch

"The Navajo People and Uranium Mining", Edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally, and Esther Yazzie-Lewis, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Pp. xix+210. $29.95.

When the United States government needed uranium to develop its nuclear weapons program, it turned to the American Southwest. From 1945 until 1988, thirteen million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands. Navajo men worked in open-pit and poorly ventilated underground mines, often using pickaxes and other hand tools. They were not advised about the risks of exposure to uranium or provided with protective equipment.

When they were thirsty, they drank water contaminated by uranium. Some of the workers' families moved close to the mines; their children played nearby. Many of the Navajo miners and their family members subsequently experienced health problems caused by their exposure to radiation. More than one thousand abandoned and unreclaimed mines continue to contaminate the landscape. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, passed by Congress in 1990 and amended in 2000, provides compensation to eligible uranium miners (10,000 men worked in the mines, all told), workers at the Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons, and people living downwind from the test site.

This edited volume documents the experiences of the Navajo miners and their families. Half of the book comprises transcripts of interviews conducted by the Navajo Uranium Miner Oral History and Photography Project. In these interviews, Navajo men describe their initial reaction to getting jobs at the mines: "It was good! Work was available close to home. We were blessed, we thought . . . [but] we were not told the ore might harm us" (George Tutt, p. 15). Today they realize the consequences of uranium mining on their lands: "Well, the way it is with us, it seems like everything has been ruined. . . .We have been exposed to radiation. People have been exposed to it . . . it has affected all people and animals and land" (Joe Ray Harvey, p. 133). Tommy James (p. 123) notes, "And this uranium will not stop. It will continue to kill us off for a long time." The monetary compensation they receive does not make up for their losses: "Money is something that just disappears in your hands, and human beings are priceless. Human beings can greet you all their life. Money does not greet you . . . there are many relatives who . . . went into the mines and never came back out" (Lorraine Jack, p. 54).

The other half of the book contextualizes these oral histories from a variety of perspectives, including environmental justice, social work, and psychology. For example, we learn that disasters which involve failed trust relations may have more profound psychological consequences than natural disasters. A discussion of the original compensation act describes how it failed to recognize Navajo marriages, which kept surviving family members from receiving compensation. These events might lead one to assume that the Navajo would oppose further uranium extraction. But a proposal to use chemicals to leach uranium from the surrounding rock divided the Eastern Navajo Dine in 1994.

While opponents of the project expressed concern about its impact on underground aquifers, the landowners compared their opponents to witches for taking food out of the mouths of their grandchildren. This conflict remained unresolved as the book was going to press.

Although "The Navajo People and Uranium Mining" is a valuable resource, readers seeking a more synthetic analysis will be disappointed. Cold war politics, while central to the events described here, are barely mentioned, and important comparisons to the impact of U.S. nuclear weapons testing in Micronesia are ignored. Many chapters in the second part of the book were previously published in social science journals, and their technical and experience-distant language contrasts sharply with the interview texts, begging the question of the book's intended audience.

Even the oral histories are limited by their formality; many of the Navajo men and women were clearly uncomfortable with the standardized questions and formal interview setting. That said, however, these shortcomings should not distract us from the important lessons to be learned regarding the U.S. government's willingness to expose Navajo men, women, and children to radiation in the name of national security interests.

This review is also pubished in "Technology and Culture", January 2008 VOL. 49: 248-249.