FWD from Louis Proyect: The More Things Change . .

Note by Hunter Bear:

Many thanks indeed to Louis Proyect for posting on BWB the NYT piece on the uranium tragedy in Navajoland, and also my much older piece on the topic from Bert Cochran's American Socialist magazine, September, 1957. I am forwarding those and these current comments of mine to various discussion lists.  [While I was preparing this, I noted that Blue had just posted the Times article on RBB -- but I will send this there as well.]

When I wrote this Navajo piece, in February 1957, I was either at the end of being 22 or at the very beginning of 23.  At that point I was living at Tucson, in a kind of glorified [but, in its own way, dignified] shack.  Inside, it was -- well, adequate.  It was fine for me since I've never believed really solid writing of any kind can be done in an atmosphere of undue affluence.

The FBI duly noted the appearance of my piece, as It had noted some other published things of mine, and it's among the earliest components of my huge FBI file which stretches, ostensibly at least, from 1957 into 1979.

In September 2000, we had had a computer for a year and a half and our now large Lair of Hunterbear website was six months old.  Maria was cruising the Net and came across Louis' Marxmail discussion list.  She thought I might be interested but I initially demurred -- simply because I didn't want to get too deeply into computer culture.  Still, I looked the Marxmail list over and became interested.  I joined it at almost the very same point that Louis had finished transcribing selected articles from the American Socialist magazine and placed them in special American Socialist archives. Mine was among those he selected. Little indeed about American Indians was appearing in radical [or liberal] publications in those very early days and Louis, much interested in Native causes, was wondering Who was the John R Salter, Jr of 1957.

And then, his wish was granted -- as I popped up.

Solidarity, Hunter Bear
_________________

American Socialist, September 1957

Navaho Indians: Oil and Mining Buzzards Hover Overhead
by John R. Salter Jr.

(The author is an Arizonan who writes for the American Socialist for the 
first time.)

NINETY years have now elapsed since, in 1867, the Navaho Indians ceased 
their hostilities with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Sumner, at 
Bosque Redondo, New Mexico Territory. The 8,000 Navaho comprising the 
loosely federated were given a portion of northeastern Arizona and 
northern New Mexico as a reservation; they were promised schools for 
their young, medical facilities, and the opportunity to make their 
living from the raising of stock animals and crops. In return, they 
surrendered most of their hunting grounds.

Today, in 1957, the Navaho tribe comprises nearly 85,000 individuals. 
They have been given some schools and some hospitals-not nearly enough, 
however. Disease is rampant among the Navaho; many adults and children 
cannot write or speak English and have no real conception of the land 
beyond the borders of the Navaho reservation. And in some portions of 
the Navaho homeland there are fully grown adults who have never seen a 
Caucasian.

The original reservation has been gradually and unwillingly extended by 
the government to include some 15,000,000 acres on which the Navaho are 
expected to eke out their semi-nomadic existence as stock raisers and 
farmers. But in spite of the tremendous area encompassed by the 
reservation, it is the poorest land in the Southwest, a land attractive 
on the post-cards of the tourists, perhaps, but not a land for any sort 
of real subsistence. It is waterless, grassless, and rocky; fifty acres 
are required to support one sheep or goat; three hundred acres are 
needed for a horse or a cow. The result is that Navaho stock is in a 
deplorable condition, Navaho farming most nil, and the Navaho people are 
a starving people.

Recently, there have been some mineral discoveries-oil and uranium-but 
it is difficult to determine whether the Navaho will obtain the benefits 
from these, or whether the large oil and mining concerns will. If past 
experience is a guide, the Navaho has good reason to worry. It has been 
a comparatively short time since both the government and the oil 
concerns combined forces in Oklahoma to seize most of the land and 
resources of the Five Civilized Tribes. It could quite easily happen to 
the Navaho, and there are indications that it may. The politicians are 
now speaking of moving the Navaho one and all from their reservation, 
ostensibly to 'make them better Americans'; the flock of oil and mining 
operators are hovering over Navaholand like so many buzzards over an 
animal soon to die.

full: 
http://www.marx.org/history/etol/newspape/amersocialist/amersoc_5709-b.htm

---

NY Times March 31, 2012
Uranium Mines Dot Navajo Land, Neglected and Still Perilous
By LESLIE MACMILLAN

CAMERON, Ariz. - In the summer of 2010, a Navajo cattle rancher named 
Larry Gordy stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine in the middle of his 
grazing land and figured he had better call in the feds. Engineers from 
the Environmental Protection Agency arrived a few months later, Geiger 
counters in hand, and found radioactivity levels that buried the needles 
on their equipment.

The abandoned mine here, about 60 miles east of the Grand Canyon, joins 
the list of hundreds of such sites identified across the 27,000 square 
miles of Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico that are the 
legacy of shoddy mining practices and federal neglect. From the 1940s 
through the 1980s, the mines supplied critical materials to the nation's 
nuclear weapons program.

For years, unsuspecting Navajos inhaled radioactive dust and drank 
contaminated well water. Many of them became sick with cancer and other 
diseases.

The radioactivity at the former mine is said to measure one million 
counts per minute, translating to a human dose that scientists say can 
lead directly to malignant tumors and other serious health damage, 
according to Lee Greer, a biologist at La Sierra University in 
Riverside, Calif. Two days of exposure at the Cameron site would expose 
a person to more external radiation than the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission considers safe for an entire year.

The E.P.A. filed a report on the rancher's find early last year and 
pledged to continue its environmental review. But there are still no 
warning signs or fencing around the secluded and decaying site. Crushed 
beer cans and spent shell casings dot the ground, revealing that the old 
mine has become a sort of toxic playground.

"If this level of radioactivity were found in a middle-class suburb, the 
response would be immediate and aggressive," said Doug Brugge, a public 
health professor at Tufts University medical school and an expert on 
uranium. "The site is remote, but there are obviously people spending 
time on it. Don't they deserve some concern?"

Navajo advocates, scientists and politicians are asking the same question.

The discovery came in the midst of the largest federal effort to date to 
clean up uranium mines on the vast Indian reservation. A hearing in 2007 
before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led to a 
multiagency effort to assess and clean up hundreds of structures on the 
reservation through a five-year plan that ends this year.

Yet while some mines have been "surgically scraped" of contamination and 
are impressive showpieces for the E.P.A., others, like the Cameron site, 
are still contaminated. Officials at the E.P.A. and the Department of 
Energy attribute the delay to the complexity of prioritizing mine sites. 
Some say it is also about politics and money.

"The government can't afford it; that's a big reason why it hasn't 
stepped in and done more," said Bob Darr, a spokesman for the Department 
of Energy. "The contamination problem is vast."

If the government can track down a responsible party, he said, it could 
require it to pay for remediation. But most of the mining companies that 
operated on the reservation have long since gone out of business, Mr. 
Darr said.

To date, the E.P.A., the Department of Energy and other agencies have 
evaluated 683 mine sites on the land and have selected 34 structures and 
12 residential yards for remediation. The E.P.A. alone has spent $60 
million on assessment and cleanup.

Cleaning up all the mines would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, 
said Clancy Tenley, a senior E.P.A. official who oversees the uranium 
legacy program for the agency in the Southwest.

Some say the effort has been marred by bureaucratic squabbles and a 
tendency to duck responsibility. "I'll be the first to admit that the 
D.O.E. could work better with the E.P.A.," said David Shafer, an 
environmental manager at the energy agency.

Determining whether uranium is a result of past mining or is naturally 
occurring is "a real debate" and can delay addressing the problem, Mr. 
Shafer said. He cited seepage of uranium contaminants into the San Juan 
River, which runs along the boundary of the reservation, as an example. 
"We need to look at things like this collectively and not just say it's 
E.P.A.'s problem or D.O.E.'s problem," he said.

E.P.A. officials said their first priority was to address sites near 
people's homes. "In places where we see people living in close proximity 
to a mine and there are elevated readings, those are rising to the top 
of the list for urgent action," Mr. Tenley said.

Agency officials said they planned a more thorough review of the Cameron 
site - which still has no warning signs posted - within the next six months.

Meanwhile, Navajos continue to be exposed to high levels of 
radioactivity in the form of uranium and its decay products, like radon 
and radium. Those materials are known to cause health problems, 
including bone, liver, breast and lung cancer.

Lucy Knorr, 68, of Tuba City, Ariz., grew up near the VCA No. 2 mine 
operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation, now defunct. Her father, a 
former miner, died of lung cancer at age 55 in 1980, and her family 
received a payout of $100,000 under the Radiation Exposure Compensation 
Act, a law that was enacted after her mother hired a lawyer and 
testified before Congress.

The program has awarded $1.5 billion for 23,408 approved claims since it 
was enacted in 1990.

Ms. Knorr's father was one of hundreds of Navajos who did not wear 
protective gear while working in the mine. "He'd wash at a basin 
outside" after leaving the mine, she said, "and the water would just 
turn yellow."

The government has been successful in tracking down and holding some 
former mining companies accountable. The E.P.A. is requiring that 
General Electric spend $44 million to clean up its Northeast Church Rock 
Mine, near Gallup, N. M. Chevron is paying to clean up the Mariano Lake 
Mine, also in New Mexico.

When the government cannot locate a responsible party, which is most 
often the case, the E.P.A. and the Department of Energy work with the 
tribal authorities to reach cleanup decisions. In general, the E.P.A. 
handles mines, while the Energy Department is responsible for the mills 
where the ore was processed and enriched.

One of the Department of Energy's biggest priorities is a billion-dollar 
uranium mine cleanup that is under way in Moab, Utah, and that received 
$108 million in federal stimulus money and the backing of nine congressmen.

Some Navajo officials point out that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar 
signed a 20-year moratorium on new uranium and other hard-rock mining 
claims on one million acres of federal land around the Grand Canyon in 
January, saying it was needed to preserve the mile-deep canyon and the 
river that runs through it. The mining industry is challenging that 
decision in court.

But the Navajo Nation, considered a sovereign government entity, has not 
gotten similar treatment from the federal government for its land, some 
of its officials say. The nation has asked for $500 million for mine 
cleanup, but the money has not materialized, said Eugene Esplain, one of 
two officials with the Navajo E.P.A. responsible for patrolling an area 
the size of West Virginia.

Taylor McKinnon, a director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an 
environmental group that worked to halt new mining claims near the Grand 
Canyon, said the Cameron site was the worst he had seen in the 
Southwest. He has even seen cow droppings near the mine, he said, an 
indication that cattle are grazing there. And "people are eating those 
livestock," he said.

Ronald Tohannie, a project manager with the Navajo advocacy group 
Forgotten People, said the locally grown beef was tested at the 
slaughterhouse, but not for the presence of radioactive substances like 
uranium.

When E.P.A. officials in the California office overseeing the region 
were asked to accompany a reporter to the Cameron mine site, they 
countered with an offer to visit the Skyline Mine in Utah, on the 
northern boundary of the reservation in Monument Valley, where a big 
federal cleanup was completed last October.

The onetime mine, atop a 1,000-foot mesa, provides a sweeping panorama 
of the red valley below. Just one tiny dwelling is visible, the 
packed-earth hogan of Elsie Begay, a 71-year-old Navajo woman. Ms. Begay 
was featured in a series of articles in The Los Angeles Times in 2006 
about serious illnesses that several of her family members developed 
after living in the area for many years.

The publicity "might have bumped the site up the priority list," said 
Jason Musante, who oversaw the $7.5 million cleanup of the mine for the 
E.P.A.

In trailers and cinder-block dwellings on the Navajo reservation, there 
is deep cynicism and apprehension about the federal effort. "That's what 
they want you to see: something that's all nice and cleaned up," said 
the Navajo manager of a hotel near the Skyline mine. He asked not to be 
identified, saying that he had already come under government scrutiny 
for collecting water samples from the San Juan River for uranium testing 
at a private lab.

For some Navajos, the uranium contamination is all of a piece with their 
fraught relationship with the federal government.

"They're making excuses, and they've always made excuses," Ms. Knorr 
said. "The government should have had a law in place that told these 
mining companies: you clean up your mess when you leave."



HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm

For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial Introduction by me.  We are close upon
the 50th anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of1962-63.:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm