http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414061These days we speak of weapons of mass destruction without truly considering the historical weight of those words. The phrase is bandied about by talking heads without an ounce of emotion or regret. That the United States is trying to halt the proliferation of nuclear programs for the sake of preventing mass casualties by terrorist attack, while maneuvering constantly to maintain its status as a world superpower, is ironic. The earthly material used to transform the United States into the world's most powerful political and military force, uranium, has proven just as massively destructive as the nuclear weapons it spawned.
A new book, ''The Navajo People and Uranium Mining,'' edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally and Esther Yazzie-Lewis, is the documented history of the forgotten victims of America's Cold War, according to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. Generations of indigenous people living and breathing on Navajo land have suffered the deadly effects of uranium mining, without compassion or just compensation from the federal government. Shirley described the uranium mining era as genocide. ''There is no other word for what happened to Navajo uranium miners,'' he said.
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Victims of radiation poisoning and their descendants have received very little federal compensation. The 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was initially drafted to address concerns of non-Native miners. They received some 80 percent of $300 million. Native miners and their families received 12 percent, or roughly $4 million. A quick look at the RECA compensation guidelines gives one the scope of the physical effects of radiation exposure. Eligible claimants can be compensated for leukemia, lymphomas and chronic renal disease, as well as a host of ''primary'' cancers affecting the brain, thyroid, lung, colon and ovary, among many others. The guidelines provide for ''compassionate'' compensation, to exact dollar amounts, for eligible claimants.
Many Navajo claims were denied, deemed ineligible for failure to produce a birth date or birth certificate. According to Navajo Nation communications, Shirley acknowledged this bureaucratic challenge at an update in September. He told the elderly miners, ''Many of you were born at home in a hogan and didn't receive a piece of paper with this information on it. Our mothers gave birth to us holding on to a sash belt and we remember a specific season, not a date and time.''
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