Allen Tsosie was just 14 when he went to work in the uranium mines in the Lukachukai Mountains near Cove, Arizona.
Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, beginning in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the deadly radon gas, and they were never told the stones they were handling – let’s see in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – was deadly.
In Cove, “you see a lot of women and children,” said Kathleen Tsosie, Allen’s daughter, because hundreds of men who worked in the mines died.
Between 1944 and 1986, miners dug up almost 30m tonnes of uranium ore – material used to develop nuclear weapons – from the Diné homelands, which spread across northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona, and a sliver of southern Utah. These workers developed respiratory diseases such as lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis and silicosis. alarming rates.
Allen, who worked in the mines for three decades, was one of the victims: he died of lung cancer in 1985 at the age of 47.
Now, nearly 40 years after the last mine in Navajo country closed, former miners and other members of the Diné community exposed to uranium are fighting to get the radioactive waste cleaned up and to get fair compensation for those who are sick.
In July, the US Senate voted to extend the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (Reca), which expires next year. The original version of the law did not cover those who worked in the industry after 1971 and offered limited coverage to downwinders – people who lived near nuclear weapons test sites or the mines. But if the expansion passes as part of a larger defense spending bill, advocates say it offers life-changing compensation to those who helped build the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal and lived amid its toxic waste.
The Guardian spoke to Diné miners and the children of miners about the deadly legacy of the uranium boom.
Fighting for restitution: Phil Harrison
Harrison grew up near Cove, one of the most concentrated areas of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. At night, he said, you could see the flickering of hundreds of miners’ campfires up in the mountains, “like little villages”.
Harrison, whose father died of lung disease in his early 40s, has advocated for uranium workers since the 1970s. He worked briefly underground during high school and joined his father in the mines. Later, Harrison worked in Tuba City, Arizona as a surveyor at a shuttered mill while the site was being repaired.
He helped pass the original and also drafted the proposed amendment, leading delegations to Washington to lobby for it.
As it stands, miners, millers and truckers exposed to radiation can apply for a one-time, lump-sum payment of $100,000 in compensation, and downwinders can receive $50,000. But according to Harrison, Reca protection is far too narrow. Downwinders in parts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado can apply; but those who lived just across the border in New Mexico – where the first atomic bomb was built and tested – could not. Nor those who worked in the mines or mills after 1971.
Harrison himself was treated for kidney disease, but he is not eligible for restitution: his time underground was too short, and remediation workers are not covered.
The amendment would allow post-1971 workers to apply, expand the list of illnesses and job categories eligible for compensation, and would provide larger payouts. It would also greatly expand the boundaries of downwind areas.
Harrison also works as a patient advocate for a home health care company that serves former uranium workers through a Department of Labor program, helping them access home nursing and medical equipment. These services are lifesaving for the Diné, three quarters of whom experience food insecurity and otherwise struggle to get the care they need.
“The majority of our people were uneducated and could not read,” said Harrison. They took jobs in the mines, unaware of the danger, thinking they would support their families – but now, he said, “people are pinching pennies to make their medical appointments”.
During a lobbying trip to Washington in July, Harrison said, “It’s imperative that this amendment be made as soon as possible. We’ve already lost a lot of people.” Many more were waiting for funds to pay for medical care – people like Leo Martin, a former remedial specialist diagnosed with advanced kidney disease.
Martin told the Guardian in August that he plans to apply for compensation if the amendment goes through. In early September he died.
‘We poisoned ourselves’: Lena Dick Cason
Lena Cason remembers her father bringing home jugs of cold water he picked up on the job while working in uranium mines in the 1950s and 60s. It seemed like an easy advantage of the industry: deep underground, along the ridge of a mountain range not far from Cason’s childhood home, cold water poured down the walls of the caves where her father and other men worked . “The water was so cool in the mines,” Cason said. “We thought it was delicious, but we poisoned ourselves.”
Natural spring water is a precious resource for the Diné, 40% of whom a lack of running water at home. The water her father brought home was not only used for drinking, but for washing. Cason helped her mother wash her father’s work clothes in steaming vats of mine water, which reeked of a pungent, metallic smell of uranium.
She still marvels that miners were not warned against using the radioactive water. The mining companies “knew how dangerous it was, but they made no effort whatsoever to protect the people and the families”.
Under a stormy August sky, Cason stood outside her childhood home in Red Valley, on the Arizona side of the Navajo Nation. The house had been abandoned for many years, but the three apricot trees her parents had planted still grew in front, and the playhouse her father had built for the children in the back was also still there.
Cason’s father died of lung disease at the age of 43. Cason, who is 70, was treated for stomach cancer 10 years ago and had surgery to remove a brain tumor last year. She has lingering pain and a tremor in her hand. She received physical therapy to help her regain strength and mobility, but she is not eligible for home health care — those services are only for upwinders, not downwinders. If the Reca amendment passes, she will be able to get physical therapy at home, and a payout to make up for years of lost work.
When medical bills pile up: Kathleen Tsosie
At the age of seven, Kathleen Tsosie was already helping her grandmother herd sheep in the Red Valley, near Cove, Arizona. In the summer, they moved their herd up to the Lukachukai Mountains, where the air was cooler. When Tsosie was free to play, she and her friends scrambled over the piles of discarded uranium ore in their games. Her family, too, drank water from the underground, and she remembers trucks rumbling through ore, uncovered, to carry stations and mills near and far.
Tsosie was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, when she was 47; four of her five sisters and her mother also had breast cancer. As a Reca-eligible downwinder, Tsosie received $50,000 in restitution. But chemotherapy and radiation treatments — and losing her job as a school aide when the side effects of these treatments became unmanageable — drained those funds. When the money ran out, she had to stop traveling to Albuquerque for doctor’s appointments.
Tsosie joined Harrison’s delegation to Washington in July to vote for the Reca amendment. If successful, she will receive an additional $100,000, which will allow her to pay her outstanding medical bills. But she didn’t make the trip for herself, she said; she did it for “all my people”.
A month after the trip, Tsosie said she doubted the bill would pass. Meanwhile, she said: “I thank my Creator every day that I can see the sunrise.”
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the Lukachukai mining region where she played as a child to the Superfund list.
Coping with Chronic Illness and Grief: Albert Lee
Nearly 50 years ago, along the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation near Shiprock, New Mexico, Albert Lee built a one-room house for his family. Forced to reuse materials that were plentiful and free, Lee collected sand from the abandoned uranium mill along the road, which he then mixed into concrete to build a solid foundation.