After nearly four decades of open-pit uranium mining in the Navajo Nation (1955-95) – the commissioning of new mines has brought the entire attack on native lands back, to all those who live within the region. The protests also symbolize the renewed destruction of ecosystems and the contamination of land and water, due to due to open-pit mining. Today, doctors and families continue to link health issues – particularly high rates of kidney disease, cancer and reproductive disorders – to the mines. A coalition of hundreds of environmental activists, Navajo and Havasupai tribal members are protesting the transportation of uranium ore through the Navajo Nation, as a newly opened mine near the Grand Canyon resurfaces a painful legacy of nuclear development. There is no ecological sense nor social benefits in such destruction of Nature, yet always motivated by economic reasons and greed, based on entirely capitalist ethics. The resistance by environmental activists and the Indigenous shows us yet again, the global economy which is always in favor of infinite extraction, mining and pollution.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/06/uranium-mine-ore-navajo-havasupai-grand-canyon
A more detailed look at the impact of uranium mining within Najavo Nation reservations.
