Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Killing Navajo
Uranium mining on Navajo land over the last seventy years has caused widespread cancer among Navajo communities, so much so that the Navajo Nation has banned all uranium mining. Yet, despite the horrendous hazards from earlier mining operations, American corporations continue to mine nearby. Recently, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the Navajo appeal of the 10th Circuit Court's decision to allow uranium leach mining in an aquifer adjacent to Navajo territory.
Unlike accidental spills or tailing waste negligently left to kill Navajo through inhalation of radioactive dust, leach mining injects chemicals into the ground to dissolve uranium, which is then pumped out. In the process, the chemicals and uranium simultaneously contaminate the surrounding aquifers, thereby creating nuclear waste from pure drinking water.
The legal system of the United States has made clear its bias in this case, and signals the start of battles across Indian country over energy resource extraction. As these battles intensify, the police powers of the United States could conceivably be used to once again crush Native American opposition to the insane environmental and energy policies of a corporate America.
Unlike accidental spills or tailing waste negligently left to kill Navajo through inhalation of radioactive dust, leach mining injects chemicals into the ground to dissolve uranium, which is then pumped out. In the process, the chemicals and uranium simultaneously contaminate the surrounding aquifers, thereby creating nuclear waste from pure drinking water.
The legal system of the United States has made clear its bias in this case, and signals the start of battles across Indian country over energy resource extraction. As these battles intensify, the police powers of the United States could conceivably be used to once again crush Native American opposition to the insane environmental and energy policies of a corporate America.
