Uranium Mining On The Navajo Nation

Diné or Navajo Nation borders Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. There are four mountains that act as landmarks are Tsisnaasjini' (Mount Blanca), Tsoodzil (Mount Taylor), Doko'oosliid (San Francisco Peaks), Dibé Nitsaa (Mount Hesperus). Navajo Nation is the largest Native American Reservation in the United States, occupying 17 million acres.

Navajo culture distinctively took hold in the four corners area of the Colorado Plateau around 100 A.D., although they are believed to have been around for centuries before then. Disliking the term “Navajo Indians”, they refer to themselves as the “Diné” which means “The People” or “Children of the Holy People”.

The society was affected because the farm lands abandoned and the food food prices dropped. There was not as much food needed because the populations had dropped. The people were down sick and they could not work which caused the farm lands to be abandoned and

The Diné means “The People” and it is what the people that we know presently as the Navajo went by. The Red Nation article “Considering a Navajo Name Change: Self-Identification, Land, and Liberation” by Majerle Lister states that “‘Navajo’ is not a Diné word or concept, despite its use as our [the Diné] official name for more than a hundred and fifty years.” This is a clear example of how settler colonialism has impacted the Navajo Nation. Settler colonialism has had an impact in the Peoplehood matrix of the Navajo from language and sacred history to place/territory and ceremonial cycles, yet it has not stop efforts from the Navajo Community to mend the damage that settler colonialism has had on their culture over the years.

In order for the plan to go into action, on October 31, 1862, the establishment of the Fort Sumner was declared and war was made against the Mescalero Apache and Navajo Indian tribes (Robert 2004). As shown in figure 1, a 300 miles route was walked by children, women, and men for about two months. Once they reached the destination, an estimation of 200 people had died from starvation. A couple years later had gone by when the United States decided to introduce a treaty in1868 that allowed the Navajos to return to their homes also now called the reservations.

Paiute means “true ute” or “ water ute”.The Paiutes entered Utah about A.D. 1100-1200. The tribe have been alive for more than 916 years now.The Paiutes of Utah live in the south, where the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau meet. The Paiutes had their own language called Paiute Language. It was in the 19th century when the Paiutes made contact with whitemen.

The Navajo are the largest federally recognized Native American Indian tribe in the United States. The Diné Bikéyah or “Navajoland" encompasses 27,000 square miles residing within Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and contains a population of over 220,000 natives. The

Numbering roughly 250,000, the Navajo reservation covers approximately 25,000 square miles. Window Rock located in the North Eastern part of Arizona is the capital of the Navajo Nation. As one of the poorest regions in the country, isolation, culture, traditions, as well as economic status affect the Navajo communities’ wellbeing and healthcare. While the elderly Navajo population grows about three percent a year, life expectancy is “73.7 years compared to 76 years for the general population” (Mercer, 1996, p 184). Elderly Navajo members are revered due to their wisdom and life experience. Other things that negatively affect the healthcare of the Navajo are little running water or electricity, no phones, rough rugged terrain and most must drive more than one hour to a facility that provides health care. The Navajo home or hogan entrance must face east to welcome the sun for daily blessings. Made of tree bark, mud and wooden poles, the hogan is windowless. The majority of the Navajo population has no indoor plumbing. Merely 38% of Navajo people actually have electricity, heat and plumbing (McCauley, 2004, p. 47).

Every culture has their own way of life, their own religious beliefs, their own marriage beliefs, their own values and feelings on life and the options it has to offer. Each culture has their own way to run things within their own government, and own way to keep their economy up to their standards. Also each culture and society have their own primary mode of subsistence that makes them unique. Among the Navajo culture their primary mode of subsistence are pastoralists.   Pastoralists have an impact on different aspects with in the culture.   The aspects that I will be discussing will be the Navajo’s beliefs and values, economic organization, gender relations and sickness and healing.

The disproportionate amount of Navajo forced to relocate heightened age-old anxieties between the Navajo and Hopi. The Navajo are still at the center of the relocation controversy as many traditional Dineh families have chosen to remain within the HPL in defiance of 1974's P.L. 93-531.

Mesa Verde National Park, located in Montezuma County, Colorado, was established in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. This United States landmark was designated for the preservation of several Puebloan archeological sites and the vast geologic history exhibited within the 52,485 acres of land occupied by Mesa Verde. The Ancestral Puebloans, or Mesa Verdeans, associated with the archeological sites of Mesa Verde National Park, lived in the Mesa Verde region from the mid-sixth century to the end of the thirteenth century.[3]

The Navajo, also known as the Diné, are one of the largest Native American Tribes in the world. Their culture is made up of very distinct and unique characteristics that have been passed down from generation to generation. They have been taught to adapt to their surroundings and to the land. Each moral, standard, belief and value are what make the Navajo so unique to the Native Americans. In the following, their primary mode of subsistence, kinship system, beliefs, values, and economic organizations will be briefly examined to gain a better knowledge of the Navajo culture.

Arizona’s historical development dates back to thousands of years ago. Arizona holds the second largest amount of indigenous/ Native American population of any other state in the United States. One of the first groups of people to live on Arizona’s land was the Native Americans, or otherwise called the American Indians. These Natives came much before any of the Europeans, or the Spanish settlers came to Arizona. There were three main Native American groups that truly began the exploration of Arizona. These groups include the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon tribes. Each of their tribes settled in different sections of Arizona ranging from Northeastern to Southeastern parts of the land.

The world view of the Navajo who had lived for many centuries on the high Colorado Plateau was one of living in balance with all of nature, as the stewards of their vast homeland which covered parts of four modern states. They had no concept of religion as being something separate from living day to day and prayed to many spirits. It was also a matriarchal society and had no single powerful leader as their pastoral lifestyle living in scattered independent family groups require no such entity. This brought them repeatedly into conflict with Spanish, Mexicans and increasingly by the mid-nineteenth century, Americans as these practices were contrary to their male dominated religiously monolithic societal values. The long standing history

South Dakota was one of the states that provided a great amount of uranium to be used during the 50’s, 60’s and the Cold War era. The demand of uranium increased and the constructions of mines were also increased. One of the areas that needed uranium was the military to be used in weapons ammunition and vehicles. Most of these mines were abandoned and the contamination spread around the nearby land and waters. “An earlier study of Forest Service land, on which the old mines from the 1950s and 1960s are located, found levels of arsenic, uranium and other contaminants in concentrations higher than what occurs naturally” (Walker, 2007). Some of these waste was carry down by rain precipitation to areas away from the mine. Indian reservations were affected by the mine contamination and