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peachieween's review against another edition
5.0
i’m devastated. i’ve lived in utah my whole life and i feel so much guilt for not knowing about the injustices presented in this book. high schools in the four corners states should include this book as part of their curriculum
mscalls's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Genocide, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Racism, and Terminal illness
kelseak96's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
This story SHOULD be right up there with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, but this book goes to show that while environmental devastation hits communities of color the hardest, we talk about these disasters the least. It's written in a style very similar to Evicted, with dense info artfully woven into the stories of the families most impacted by uranium mining on Diné lands. A must-read for environmental justice advocates, proponents of nuclear energy, anyone living near the Navajo Nation, and anyone who wants another example of the evils of the US government.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Racism
bookworm_mommy's review against another edition
3.0
Summary from B&N: From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people as the Navajos worked, unprotected, in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground. They built their houses out of chunks of uranium ore, inhaled radioactive dust borne aloft from the waste piles the mining companies had left behind, and their children played in the unsealed mines themselves. Ten years after the mines closed, the cancer rate on the reservation shot up and some babies began to be born with crooked fingers that fused together into claws as they grew. Government scientists filed complaints about the situation with the government, but were told it was a mess too expensive to clean up. Judy Pasternak exposed this story in a prizewinning Los Angeles Times series.\nShocking. My sister said it would be when she recommended it, and she was not wrong. My brother-in-law is Navajo, and I have always been fascinated with Native American culture, wishing I had such deep roots and abiding family ties.\nBut what the government allowed to happen to the Navajos�all for the sake of uranium�is appalling. The U.S. government is supposed to be a protector for these people. Instead, from 1930 -1960 they exploited the Navajos and their resources. And the implications of this exploitation are still being felt today. \nI had never heard of this before reading this book. There were a lot of technical and political items in the book that made it slightly more difficult to read. But Pasternak also tells the story through the eyes of The People, the Dine, who experienced uranium mining and its after-effects first hand.\nThe government again clearly proves that it is not capable of taking care of anyone � as government interests will always come first.\nI recommend reading this book. It will open your eyes to something that is not even touched upon in our history books.\n
alesia_charles's review against another edition
4.0
During World War II, the United States needed uranium. The Navajo Nation had uranium deposits and needed jobs and money – and was glad to be helping the war effort, as well. After the hot war, the Cold War required uranium for American nuclear weapons.
But the mining was carried out with no safety standards. No ventilation, no dust remediation, no breath masks, and not a word to the workers that the substance they were excavating might be dangerous. Pasternak notes that this was true at mines worked by whites as well, but truly vast quantities of uranium were mined on the Navajo Reservation by people who often did not speak English and usually were illiterate. This went on for approximately twenty years.
For about forty years, many of the Navajo people lived next to mine tailings piles that scattered dust all over their homes and workplaces, and drank water contaminated with uranium and arsenic. Having no idea that the “yellow dirt” was dangerous, people used the tailings to make concrete for houses and floors. For decades, the mines themselves were left open to the elements and anyone who wandered through. Cancers and birth defects became common causes of death across the reservation.
All together, there were about sixty years of occasional individuals trying to raise the alarm, and being silenced by business interests, government interests, bureaucratic buck-passing, and lack of both money and the willingness to try to get the money to clean up the hazards. Even when money was available, it was often tied up in language that addressed only a fraction of the problem.
Meanwhile, a town in whites’ territory whose residents had done equally foolish things with the local uranium mill’s waste material (used it for fertilizer, for adobe, etc.) had every scrap of contaminated material cleaned up and properly disposed of, and the yards, houses, etc. repaired and replaced (or even improved). Part of that, the book makes clear, was because the town’s problem caught the interest of a powerful Congressman.
In fact, it seems likely that the Navajos’ problem has only been dealt with because it caught the attention of a powerful Congressman, Henry Waxman. In 2007 – a year after the author’s newspaper series about the slow-motion disaster appeared – he brought the heads of the relevant agencies in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They listened to Navajo testimony, and testimony from several of the people who’d tried to help in the past, and got reamed out by another interested Congressman, Tom Udall.
You can read a transcript of the testimony here (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_house_hearings&docid=f:45611.wais). It’s not all that long, really.
You can also read this book. It’s painful, but necessary. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And frankly, it would be all too easy for the agencies who are supposed to protect these people – just like the rest of us – to drop the ball again.
But the mining was carried out with no safety standards. No ventilation, no dust remediation, no breath masks, and not a word to the workers that the substance they were excavating might be dangerous. Pasternak notes that this was true at mines worked by whites as well, but truly vast quantities of uranium were mined on the Navajo Reservation by people who often did not speak English and usually were illiterate. This went on for approximately twenty years.
For about forty years, many of the Navajo people lived next to mine tailings piles that scattered dust all over their homes and workplaces, and drank water contaminated with uranium and arsenic. Having no idea that the “yellow dirt” was dangerous, people used the tailings to make concrete for houses and floors. For decades, the mines themselves were left open to the elements and anyone who wandered through. Cancers and birth defects became common causes of death across the reservation.
All together, there were about sixty years of occasional individuals trying to raise the alarm, and being silenced by business interests, government interests, bureaucratic buck-passing, and lack of both money and the willingness to try to get the money to clean up the hazards. Even when money was available, it was often tied up in language that addressed only a fraction of the problem.
Meanwhile, a town in whites’ territory whose residents had done equally foolish things with the local uranium mill’s waste material (used it for fertilizer, for adobe, etc.) had every scrap of contaminated material cleaned up and properly disposed of, and the yards, houses, etc. repaired and replaced (or even improved). Part of that, the book makes clear, was because the town’s problem caught the interest of a powerful Congressman.
In fact, it seems likely that the Navajos’ problem has only been dealt with because it caught the attention of a powerful Congressman, Henry Waxman. In 2007 – a year after the author’s newspaper series about the slow-motion disaster appeared – he brought the heads of the relevant agencies in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They listened to Navajo testimony, and testimony from several of the people who’d tried to help in the past, and got reamed out by another interested Congressman, Tom Udall.
You can read a transcript of the testimony here (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_house_hearings&docid=f:45611.wais). It’s not all that long, really.
You can also read this book. It’s painful, but necessary. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And frankly, it would be all too easy for the agencies who are supposed to protect these people – just like the rest of us – to drop the ball again.
kathleenitpdx's review against another edition
5.0
“The stories were ceremony, to be told at just the right place and time”
Judy Pasternak is an extraordinary story teller and an investigative journalist. She has pieced together the legacy of uranium extraction on Navajo land and its aftermath. She beautifully and respectfully focuses on four generations of one family. She uncovers the stories of scientists and health professionals, Navajo and not, who tried to set off alarms and of governments and agencies that shuffled the reports and the blame.
The book ends at a hopeful time when, at last, meaningful cleanup and research is happening. But it is a lesson for all of us, Native and non-Native, to honor and preserve the land.
Judy Pasternak is an extraordinary story teller and an investigative journalist. She has pieced together the legacy of uranium extraction on Navajo land and its aftermath. She beautifully and respectfully focuses on four generations of one family. She uncovers the stories of scientists and health professionals, Navajo and not, who tried to set off alarms and of governments and agencies that shuffled the reports and the blame.
The book ends at a hopeful time when, at last, meaningful cleanup and research is happening. But it is a lesson for all of us, Native and non-Native, to honor and preserve the land.
exexteen's review against another edition
3.0
shot through with white gaze which was unfortunate because it had a lot of good historical research
kilgorewolfe's review against another edition
5.0
A disturbing account of one of the many terrible things done to the Navajo. The book is well-researched and reads easily. Some parts are just heart-wrenching, others beg the question "who the hell thought THAT was an okay thing to do?"
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