No One Ever Told Us: Native Americans and the Great Uranium Experiment

Starting in 1946, companies such as Kerr McGee, Vanadium Corporation of America, Foote Mineral, Amex and Climax began a twenty year commitment to produce bomb-grade uranium from the federal government and fuel-grade material for civilian nuclear plants. The Navajo nation of New Mexico and Arizona have perhaps suffered the most egregious harm due to uranium mining and milling in the American Southwest. Uranium mining and milling operations have regularly desecrated or destroyed places that are sacred to different Southwest nations. The Grants Uranium Belt of northwestern Mew Mexico is home to thousand-year old Pueblo communities. The eventual contamination the Grants Belt people faced when the Anaconda mine stopped operating was mind boggling: they had hosted the largest uranium strip mine on the planet for nearly thirty years. The deserts, forests and mountains of this land are thousand year carvings by water, wind and sun.