11 May 2020, during pandemic, official release from the US Department of Energy:
Uranium, right? Y’know how, for the past century, Navajo country experienced the worst radiation poisoning from uranium mining, then from nuclear weapons testing, and then from the disposal of radioactive waste? And how the largest single radiation poisoning disaster on “US soil” happened in Navajo country? And how babies born, to this day in 2020, in Navajo country have uranium in their bodies? And how Navajo country has the highest covid/coronavirus infection rates of any US “state”? And how the US federal government was 6 weeks late in sending Navajo country financial aid during the virus outbreak? And then the US federal government, in the middle of the pandemic, is signalling support for the opening of uranium mines in Lakota territory?
From the Department of Energy’s release, 11 May 2020:
Something I said the day before the Department of Energy’s announcement:
Uranium mining, environmental racism, and resource extraction on Native land during pandemic: The Navajo people were promised and also legally entitled to receive $600 million to help protect themselves against covid, but it took 6 whole weeks for the US government to issue the aid, which only happened after the Navajo sued the government. During those 6 weeks waiting for help, Navajo Nation became the site of the highest per capita infection rates outside of the NYC-Philadelphia urban corridor. In another major Native and relatively rural region held hostage by resource extraction companies, right in the midst of pandemic and quarantines, Lakota living in the Pine Ridge region (site of what might be the “poorest” counties in the US), are grappling not just with the beginning of the construction of the major Keystone XL pipeline, but also with renewed US federal government support of a Canadian mining company’s project meant to open a uranium mine in the Black Hills. And right before local quarantines and lockdowns began across the US, Dine land and the Navajo were in headlines because of a recent increase in attention given to the lasting legacy of poisoning and environmental racism from the infamous uranium mining on Dine land and the Colorado Plateau in the mid-20th century. (Much of the uranium mining was taking place at the same time that Dine matriarchs led the fights against coal mines at Black Mesa and other sites.) […]
By the end of 2018, the contiguous US had only 5 uranium mines, and, in 2019, a lobbying group of major resource extraction companies interested in uranium asked for help from the US president’s office. In April 2020, the president’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group released a report passionately advising revival of uranium mining, and the US president announced a 2021 budget granting over $150 million to purchasing uranium mined within US borders. In April 2020, during pandemic, the major Keystone XL oil pipeline was beginning construction; carrying Alberta oil, its route crosses directly through the Rosebud Sioux reservation land immediately next to Pine Ridge. At the same time, in April 2020, worldwide stock price of uranium surged as Canadian and US corporations now discuss their targeting of the Black Hills as a coveted sit. A Canadian company plans a 10,600-acre uranium mine, expecting to extract millions of pounds of the ore, as Lakota organizers pursue legal cases under the shadow of the desecrated Six Grandfathers. […]
Here’s a statement from The Guardian, from 8 May 2020: ‘The Native American tribe [Navajo] now has the highest per-capita Covid-19 infection rate after only New York and New Jersey, and the spread is not slowing. “We are doing our very best to flatten the curve with the very limited resources we have on the Navajo nation,” president Jonathan Nez told the Guardian. “The first citizens of this country were once again pushed aside by the most powerful government in the world … but now that we’re in the headlines, US citizens are finally realising the deplorable conditions our people live in. We’re fed up. This has got to end.” [Edit: As of 18 May 2020, infection rates at Navajo Nation have surpassed New York and New Jersey.] […]
‘A long-anticipated Trump administration report aimed to “revive and strengthen the uranium mining industry” was released Thursday [23 April 2020], and if its recommendations are implemented, it could provide direct government support for uranium production in San Juan County where the country’s last conventional uranium mill and several idled mines are located. Uranium companies applauded the plan within hours of its release while numerous conservation groups and Native American tribal leaders announced opposition. […] Residents of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, which is located several miles south of Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill, have long worried that groundwater contamination around the mill site could worsen and eventually reach its drinking water aquifer. The Ute Mountain Ute Environmental Programs Department sent a letter to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality in January pointing to “overwhelming data showing significant trends of increasing groundwater contaminants and acidification” below the mill site […].’ [Source: Zak Podmore. “Trump administration plan could revive the uranium industry in Utah, raising concerns from conservationists.” The Salt Lake Tribune. 25 April 2020.]
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