The Navajo Nation has faced, and continues to face, ongoing nuclear and extractive development assaults on their lands, bodies, and communities. Uranium mining for the Manhattan Project and Atomic Energy Program has left Navajo lands and waters contminated with radioactivity. Non-Indian-owned mining companies exploited Navajo labor, installed Navajos in the least protected and lowest-paid jobs as miners.[1] The United States' largest nuclear waste spill occurred in the Navajo Nation at the Church Rock Uranium Mill, releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Rio Puerco river.[2] Abandoned and unreclaimed uranium mines in the Navajo Nation remain highly radioactive and continue to leach toxic and radioactive sludge into tribal waterways, contaminating them with uranium, arsenic, lead, vanadium, and manganese.[3] One CDC study found that 27 percent of Navajos have high levels of uranium in their urine, a percentage that is more than five times higher than that of the US population as a whole.[1] Navajos continue to face augmented rates of cancer and birth defects.

Learn more about nuclear assaults on the Navajo Nation on our other pages