Published: January 6, 2011
The Salt Lake Tribune reported on January 1st, 2011:
The sickness in Elsie Mae Begay’s family troubled her for a long time. So she turned to a Navajo medicine man.
The healer took measure of the family settlement here and told her the poison was in the dust kicked up by the wind that sometimes rips through the desert. In years to come, environmental scientists for the tribe and the U.S. government would confirm that diagnosis in their own way, saying the family was at risk from radiation left over from uranium at the Skyline Mine on the mesa above the homes.
[…]
About $5.9 million is being spent on the tainted piles in Begay’s backyard. The contaminated dirt — as much as 30,000 cubic yards of it — is just beyond a cluster of dwellings built on land that her aunt, Mary Holiday, settled around the time the mine was idled in 1962. Begay moved her six children there in 1978 after her divorce.
Read the full article, A legacy of uranium, a prayer for healing by reporter Judy Fahys.
