Tribes call for cleanup, remediation and an end to uranium mining and milling

By Linda Pentz Gunter

They were there to tell their stories. The contamination of air, land and water. The sicknesses. The displacement. The loss of community, culture and language. The deprivation of fundamental human rights. And they spoke with one voice in their plea for justice, the voice of Indigenous peoples in the United States and their lived experience of uranium mines and mills.

The occasion was a thematic hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) at the Organization of American States. The topic was: United States: Impacts of uranium exploitation on indigenous peoples’ rights.

The speakers came from Navajo, Arapaho, Havasupai, Ute and Oglala Lakota. 

And, across the room, they came from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of the Interior.

The Native American speakers made the same plea they have reiterated for decades: effective cleanup and removal of the radioactive waste that has poisoned their communities and people, and will do so again as long new uranium mines are allowed to go forward. And no new mines.

The personal stories they told the listeners — representatives from the US government, the IACHR panel and members of the public in the audience —were those of universal injustice against Indigenous communities, stories that have been told before and, seemingly, have to be told over and over. They are stories that are listened to and not heard, often not responded to and almost never acted upon. 

“We used to drink the spring water,” said Anfreny Badback of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, a member of the White Mesa Concerned Community who oppose operations at the White Mesa uranium mill near Blanding, Utah. “We don’t anymore.”

The mill belongs to Energy Fuels and is the last remaining such facility in the United States. It receives uranium tailings and other radioactive materials for “processing” and dumping. The mill was built right next to the tribal community on top of hundreds of culturally significant sites, a consideration that is routinely ignored.

Teracita Keyanna, a Navajo woman from the Red Water Pond Road Community Association, described how she had to take her family out of their home community because of the health risks to her children due to the continued failure to clean up the radiological contamination from the Church Rock uranium mine and mill. The mill suffered a devastating tailings pond dam break in 1979 that resulted in the biggest accidental release of radioactive waste in US history. As a result of the relocation, Keyanna said, her children are losing touch with their language and culture.

“We are the poorest community in the country but rich in cultural practices” said Tonia Stands, an Oglala Lakota who testified with her small daughter at her side. 

Stands has been a longtime leader in the struggle against expansion of the Crow Butte uranium mine in Nebraska, not far from the Pine Ridge Reservation where she lives and where the mine has already turned a precious water source, the White River, into what she refers to as Uranium Waters.

But her people, she worries, carry on their ceremonial traditions seated on the ground, where they are exposed to the radioactive earth beneath them. And she told of how “clean” drinking water was piped to them from the Missouri River, arriving in a community too poor to afford the necessary filters to ensure it is potable.

Two spirit activist Big Wind Carpenter, from the Northern Arapaho Nation in Wyoming, noted that “as climate concerns rise, so do the proposals for nuclear energy and the threat continues to jeopardize our collective wellbeing. Yet its proponents often silence the voices who have suffered and are harmed by its lasting impacts. They have rebranded nuclear as ‘green’ but the damage that it’s done to our homelands and communities is far from green.” Instead, Carpenter said, “uranium mining and processing poisons the very ground we call home, leaving lasting impacts on our sacred sites, water, and future generations”.

All of the stories were those of erasure. To be erased does not necessitate a massacre. It can just be decades-long neglect by the US government to make right a terrible wrong. The loss of a safe environment; no access to clean water or healthy food; the neglect of adequate or even any cleanup; the destruction of a culture; the deprivation of tradition and language. All of these constitute a genocide. No one called it that at the hearing. But that is what it is.

From the government spokespeople we heard mainly that they were doing their best; that they had listened; had held consultations; or that it fell outside their jurisdiction. 

But, as Christopher Balkhan from the IACHR panel pointed out, there seemed to be some sort of disconnect between the official regulations “and what is actually happening”. He noted the difference between free, prior and informed consent and consultation. Was the former being offered to these communities? “If not, why not?” he asked.

On the government side, tossed bones were presented as lavish gifts. Clifford Villa, Deputy Assistant Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, sought to reassure the communities that cleanup operations in their communities would deliver an abundance of jobs to residents as if somehow the opportunity to clean up a toxic mess not of their making and which had sickened and killed their families for decades should be accepted as some sort of honor. 

Similarly, Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, praised the uranium mining carried about by tribes as part of a “long-lasting contribution to the national security of the United States.” 

But it was nothing of the kind. The early uranium they mined was for atomic bombs dropped on other brown people far away. Later, the mined uranium was used to fuel nuclear power plants whose radioactive releases increase leukemia rates in children living nearby and whose waste is targeted at, yes, more Native communities. 

The cleanup requests have “fallen on deaf ears” said Edith Hood, also of the Navajo Red Water Pond Road Community. Many wondered if the same was happening at the IACHR hearing. The collective presentations of both the civil society and government sides were squeezed into 20 minutes apiece, with another 12 minutes for follow-up to questions from the commission.

“I’ve been a leader for 20 years and I have not seen a single response from any state or fed agency to my tribe on our pleas to stop Pinyon mine,” said Carletta Tilousi of the Havasupai Tribal Council at a press conference after the event. She and her tribe are fighting the newly active Pinyon Plain uranium mine at the edge of the Grand Canyon and the headwaters of Havasu Creek, owned by Energy Fuels Resources.

Tilousi asked that the commission “urge the United States to change the 1872 Mining Law” and “to present our case to the Inter-American court to seek an order requiring the adoption of provisional measures to prevent irreparable harm from uranium mining to the Havasupai tribe’s waters and sacred sites. Pinyon Plain Mine cannot be allowed to proceed,” she said.

The Pinyon Plain uranium mine just started operation earlier this year. Ore from the mine will be trucked to the White Mesa Mill.

That is why, said the tribal representatives, they were all there together. In solidarity. Speaking with one voice. Because the industry and the government try to divide them, to play one tribe off against another or to split tribes by dangling false promises of riches to come.

Eric Jantz, legal director at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center and representing the tribal speakers, summed up their requests in his opening remarks, noting in particular the absence of consent. What they wanted, he said, were three things: 

• For the United States to place a moratorium on all new uranium mining and processing on Indigenous lands or near culturally important sites until it has remediated all legacy waste and implemented laws governing uranium development that are consistent with its human rights obligations; 

• That the US begin phasing out ongoing uranium mining and processing in Indigenous communities. The only exception to this moratorium would be when an Indigenous nation has given its free, prior and informed consent to develop mineral resources within its jurisdiction. Free, informed and prior consent should especially include the right to say ‘no’. 

• Finally, during a moratorium, federal agencies responsible for regulating uranium production and remediation should review and change as necessary their policies, and regulations should be consistent with the United States’ human rights obligations.

At the press conference after the hearing, Jantz said:  “The Commissioners asked very probing and insightful questions of both the community groups and the U.S. government. Predictably the U.S. government response was underwhelming, in particular the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave its usual propaganda spiel that we’ve heard for the last 25 years.”

Added Hood: “I was here back in 2007 for the Waxman hearing and years later I’m still here trying to say ‘clean up the mess’ and nothing has been done. They do a good talk but nothing has been done.”

Keyanna echoed those sentiments. “It’s too much, we’ve been dealing with this for far too long,” she said. “This happened before I was born. Now I’m still dealing with it and my children are dealing with it.”

The IACHR can recommend a corrective course to the U.S. government. The big question now is will they?

Watch the full hearing.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.

Headline photo of Devil’s Tower, a sacred site for several tribes, by Bradley Davis/Creative Commons.