For the better part of two decades, John Bill Maryboy was a driller in the uranium mines of southern Utah and northern Arizona, blasting holes into the soft red sandstone in search of uranium ore.

He had been born and raised in the redrock canyons. He had married and raised his family here on Navajo tribal lands, his lands.

Maryboy enjoyed his job, not worrying much whether the mines were ventilated or if the water inside the mines was safe to drink. Like the other miners, he believed the government and industry officials who promised there were no dangers.

Trust came easy, and with poverty running rampant on the reservation, John Bill was just glad to have a job that could provide the basics of life for his wife and seven children.

John Bill was 51 when he succumbed to lung cancer in 1977.
"All of a sudden he got sick," said his son, San Juan County Commissioner Mark Maryboy. "He certainly didn't expect to die so early."

There's not a shadow of doubt in Mark Maryboy's mind that his father was a victim - one of thousands on the Navajo Reservation - of a government conspiracy that sacrificed indigenous peoples in the name of Cold War nuclear superiority. It is a conspiracy that Congress has tacitly admitted by agreeing to compensate uranium miners and mill workers across the West who were deceived about the effects of uranium that sickened and killed them.

The Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee estimates 400 Navajo miners have already died of lung diseases caused by working in the 1,100 mines on tribal lands in the Four Corners area. Maryboy believes many times that number are sick and dying, all because the government decided Navajos were dispensable.

"Definitely, the government discriminated against us," he says. "The government knew the effects of radiation, but with the Navajo people, with any minority, they didn't see the need to provide the necessary equipment to protect them. And now you see suffering everywhere."

Maryboy, who also serves in the Navajo legislature, is one of many who now champion the cause of government compensation for Navajo uranium workers, not just those in Utah but those throughout the region who answered the siren call to work in the mines. Another is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who last year pushed through amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that allows more uranium miners to qualify for compensation.

"The next battle is for appropriate funding for the trust fund," Hatch said. "It's currently broke."

Advocates are encouraged that Congress again admitted culpability, but they are frustrated at interminable delays that have persisted more than a decade since the original compensation bill, also sponsored by Hatch, was passed in 1990.

That bill was supposed to offer "compassionate payments" to Navajos, among many others, who worked the mines and were victimized by radioactive fallout. But of more than 3,000 Navajos who registered for payments only about 500 requests were granted.

Navajo victims and their families found themselves lost within a bureaucratic maze. Many could not speak, read or write fluent English, and filling out the mountains of paperwork demanded by the Department of Justice became an impossible task.

Many couldn't prove they actually worked the mines. They were migrant workers who traveled from mine to mine, were paid in cash and left behind no employment records.

Surviving spouses were often denied compensation because they couldn't produce a marriage certificate - a common situation on reservations where traditional wedding ceremonies are conducted by tribal elders.

The Hatch amendments are supposed to correct such shortcomings in the 1990 legislation. But advocates say there are still too many workers falling through bureaucratic cracks.

Those who worked in the mines after 1971 are still not eligible. Neither are family members who got sick from radiation brought home on workers' clothing, Neither are the children who played on tailings piles.

Maryboy blames the cancer death of his sister on the fact she played in the spent uranium ore stacked outside one southern Utah mine where his family lived.

"As poor as people were, they would move to the mine to work and use materials from the mines to build their shelters," Maryboy said. "And kids being kids, they played in the yellowcake. I was 3 or 4 at the time. I probably played in it too."

Phil Harrison, a consultant with the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, suffers from several ailments he attributes to working in uranium mines in the early 1970s. He is not eligible for compensation, but his family could be. His father died of lung cancer in 1971 after years in the mines.

It is a small price to pay, Harrison said, for the government to admit it victimized thousands of American Indians, many of them war veterans who served their country with distinction. These were workers who were paid half of what white miners were and who were subjected to then-secret government experiments on the effects of radiation on the human body.

The 1990 compensation act, which addresses downwind victims throughout the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau, acknowledges the government made mistakes in failing to warn citizens of the deadly effects of radiation.

"The government did lie to them and frankly we proved it," Hatch said.
"I think the Navajo people were sacrificed," Maryboy said.
"You hear the cries of people who are dying (from uranium exposure) on a daily basis," he adds, "and when you are in constant contact with people like that it makes you think. You just don't want to see anything like that happen again."

E-mail: spang@desnews.com

Bisogna creare una commissione di psichiatri criminologi per capire come si sia arrivati a questo punto. Ma avete una idea, ad esempio, di quanta energia elettrica STANNO CONSUMANDO le nostre centrali nucleari "spente"? Non ve lo dicono perché si vergognano. E comunque non la pagano loro. Come non vengono pagate le famiglie dei morti causati dalle centrali. Alla Casaccia, a Roma, gli effluenti radioattivi finiscono addirittura direttamente nelle fognature. Così come l'uso dell'incenerimento di biomasse radioattive, nelle altre centrali ENEL, provoca epidemie di tumori in Sardegna ed in Umbria. Se inceneriranno le mucche contaminate, il fenomeno darà ampio motivo di studio ai nostri perenni ricercatori non-trovanti scopriranno la "Sindrome dell'inceneritore pazzo", un altro virus brematurato remington, con scappellamento a destra).