Imagine living in the Navajo Native American reservation in New Mexico. You wake up to a gorgeous orange and yellow sunrise climbing over rolling red painted desert hills. The air feels pure as it enters your lungs. But then one day, you wake up to loud blasting sounds coming from your backyard. Uranium miners had apparently made an agreement with the leaders of the nation to set up mines all throughout your precocious land, your home that your ancestors had roamed since before the era of colonization and settler colonialism.
Unfortunately, this scene you are picturing happened in Church Rock, New Mexico. In 1968 during the race to develop nuclear weapons, several uranium mining companies, including the United Nuclear Corporation, entered Navajo territory and developed hundreds of Uranium mines. At the time, Navajo leaders allowed them to do so, as the mines offered many jobs to their people. However, the mines treated the Navajo workers very unfairly; there were little to no safety regulations in place to protect the workers. According to a documentary by Vox, workers repored not wearing helmets and experiencing almost no ventilation deep within the mines. Because of this, many Navajo people, both miners and community members, began to die of diseases the Navajo Nation had never seen before. There were increased rates of cancer, specifically. This was due to toxic waste from the mines being stored in Church Rock’s backyard and toxins leaching into underground aquifers and the nearby Puerco River.
But this was not the worst of the situation. In 1979, “1100 tons of radioactive detritus and 95 million gallons of wastewater” (Nguyen) were released into the Puerco River. The mines were aware of the severity of the spill as soon as it happened, but still took two whole days to warn the Church Rock community of the accident. Navajos drank from that water for two days not knowing it was filled with radioactive toxins from the biggest radioactive spill in the United States recorded.
Once the community was finally alerted, they were forced to leave their community. The spill had done so much damage to Church Rock and the surrounding ecosystem that even if the mining companies were good about cleaning the spill, it would still be dangerous for Navajos to live in Church Rock. As a result, the Church Rock community was told to move outside their reservation to a nearby city called Gallup. Some Navajos moved, but others stayed to fight back against big companies and their unjust treatment of minority communities.
/3-mile-island-nuclear-plant-56a9a7ef5f9b58b7d0fdb625.jpg)
There was little to no media coverage on the Church Rock incident. However, when something similar happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (a nuclear plant leaked radioactive waste), the local communities that were primarily white middle class were immediately alerted and evacuated. They were given both temporary housing and a significant amount of money to compensate for the inconvenience. The Navajo people and reservation were barely compensated, especially in comparison to the communities outside of Three Mile Island.
How could the United States government let this happen and why was there no media coverage? These are questions I have been exploring in my introduction to Human Geography class I am taking with Dr. Melissa Wright this semester. We read an article last week written by Laura Pulido that discussed the difference between white privilege and white supremacy in the context of environmental racism. Before I get into that, I want to define environmental racism as a form of systematic racism where marginalized communities (usually communities of color) are burdened with a disproportionate amount of environmental hazards in comparison to privileged communities. This unjust treatment is sometimes reproduced by real company and state policies. As Pulido argues in her article, many of the companies that take advantage of their marginalized neighbors, such as the United Nuclear Corporation taking advantage of the Navajo Indians, do so intentionally to get more capital gain. They either see their neighbors as racially expendable or take advantage of the fact that their neighbors lack power in society to fight back. Through these intentional policies and actions, they are supporting white supremacy, or the idea that white people are more important than people of color.
Church Rock is one of many examples of the reproduction of environmental racism and white supremacy in the United States. In this blog, I will do my best to take you through some other examples and explain some of the recent movements that push back. Thanks for listening, and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for me to make the material more understandable!
Sources:
Watch this video if you want to know more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETPogv1zq08&t=649s
https://www.history.com/topics/1970s/three-mile-island
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2019/ph241/nguyen-h2/
Hi Allie,
Thank you for sharing your post with us! While the topic of environmental racism is distressing to read about, you did an incredible job of telling the story of the injustices suffered by the Navajo Nation in Church Rock, New Mexico. It is disappointing to read how the United Nuclear Corporation took advantage of the Native American populations in New Mexico to support the uranium mining efforts. In watching the additional video you shared, it is saddening to hear of the lack of protection given to the mine workers/residents and to understand the true danger the corporation put the local populations in. Toxic uranium waste and radioactive exposure consistently threatened the lives and livelihoods of the Navajo people, and when the dam broke, the United Nuclear Corporation did not even step in to protect the Navajo from the contamination. When viewed in comparison with the Three Mile Island incident (which is pretty close to where I live), it is difficult to comprehend how differently the surrounding populations were treated by the US government.
I admittedly am not as knowledgeable as I should be on this topic, so I am certainly grateful for your work to advocate for this issue! Many of the inequitable racial systems we see in other areas of life directly relate to environmental protections, and this is an example of yet another area where change is needed in America. Thank you for advocating on this topic!
Allie, I want to start by saying that you presented the story of Church Rock in a truly compelling way. It has exactly the feeling you mean for it to have—I was left with that murky, upsetting pit in my stomach when learning about something blatantly unjust yet much too unknown. The inequality between Church Rock and Three Mile Island really is a perfect example to illustrate the issue. That’s not to say all your first post did was depress me; I promise it was a very motivating read. Environmental racism, as I’ve come to learn, is such a pervasive issue which is criminally under-discussed. It’s quite apparent that greater issues like systemic injustice and the climate crisis are intertwined with environmental racism, and until we tackle this intersectionalism, progress will certainly be hindered.
Hey Allie! i really enjoyed reading this first blog post. Mining and tampering with tribe lands is definitely an issue in our country, especially with the recent news coverage of pipelines going through native lands. As you stated, these types of issues involving Native Americans do nit get nearly enough news coverage as they should. These stories should be posted everywhere and every American should know what is going on. The fact that the Navajo workers were treated unfairly and worked with little to no safety precautions is disgusting. And, as an ordinary human, I had no idea this crisis even happened. The country has to do better with educating people on environmental racism. I look forward to reading your future posts and learning more soon!
Hey Allie! I have to admit, I never knew about the issue of environmental racism. When thinking about environmental issues, racism is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind. What’s most interesting about this is that choices made about the environment can be against a marginalized group and in favor of another. Your example of what happened to the Navajo Nation is quite insane to say the least. The fact that this got little to no attention from the government and media in comparison to what happened in PA is absurd. While pushing Native Americans out of their reservations has been something that’s come up before, environmental harm which lead to health harm should not be a way to get away with what may be considered racism. Thank you for your insight into this!