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Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people. The Navajo worked unprotected in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground. They drank contaminated water from old pits, which had filled with rain. They built their houses out of chunks of yellowcake, they inhaled radioactive dust borne aloft from the waste piles the mining companies had left behind, and their children played in the unsealed mines themselves.
Ten years after the mines closed, the cancer rate on the reservation shot up and the babies began to be born with crooked fingers that fused together into claws as they grew. Scientists filed complaints about the situation with the government but were told it was a mess "too expensive" to clean up. Few had heard this story until Judy Pasternak exposed it in a prizewinning Los Angeles Times series. Her work not only inspired this book, which is already a winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award, it also galvanized both a congressman and a famous prosecutor to clean the sites and get reparations for the tribe. Yellow Dirt powerfully chronicles both the scandal of neglect and the Navajo’s fight for justice.
Ten years after the mines closed, the cancer rate on the reservation shot up and the babies began to be born with crooked fingers that fused together into claws as they grew. Scientists filed complaints about the situation with the government but were told it was a mess "too expensive" to clean up. Few had heard this story until Judy Pasternak exposed it in a prizewinning Los Angeles Times series. Her work not only inspired this book, which is already a winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award, it also galvanized both a congressman and a famous prosecutor to clean the sites and get reparations for the tribe. Yellow Dirt powerfully chronicles both the scandal of neglect and the Navajo’s fight for justice.
11 pages, Audible Audio
First published September 10, 2010
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March 3, 2023
“the american government wouldn’t do that!” well, they have, and they will continue to do so.
May 4, 2013
A penetrating study of what happened to the Navajo people when they started to mine Uranium in the early 1940’s.
This occurred on the Navajo reservation that is located in Arizona and Utah. A great deal of the mining was in Monument Valley. The initial reason for extracting the Uranium was the real fear that the enemies of democracy, particularly Nazi Germany, would also start to process Uranium for the purposes of making a nuclear explosion. In the early 1940’s little was known of the affects of radiation from exposure to Uranium. There was no effort to protect the Navajo workers. The debris from the mines was dumped pell-mell all over the reservation. Some of the debris was utilized to build homes on the reserve. The water sources were also becoming contaminated by the dynamiting at the mine sites.
After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the affects of radiation became very obvious. But on Navajo land nothing at all was done to protect the workers. With the advent of the Cold War and the Korean War Uranium mining kept accelerating in Navajo country.
Eventually workers started dying of cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, brain tumours). More and more women and children became diagnosed with cancer and died prematurely. Tests and studies were made on people, on the drinking water, and the habitats – some of which showed severe levels of radiation. The radiation was literally spreading more and more across their land. And nothing was done! The companies and the managers got rich. The Navajo’s got hardly anything, particularly compared to miners off the reservation.
Both the companies and the various government organizations (and there are many) obfuscated the issues and “Passed the Buck” as people continued to get sick and die. This was certainly not “Government of the people, by the people, for the people…”.
To extract this Uranium, haste and utility were used; to compensate and aid the victims and to clean up the radioactive environment, only a withering and inept bureaucracy was encountered. It took over sixty years for a real cleanup to begin in earnest. Some parts of this book make one want to scream in frustration at the intransigence of government and the immorality of companies who put profits ahead of protection of workers.
Ms. Pasternak’s book is very well written and frightfully convincing. There is no scientific jargon on radiation to deter readability. We are left saddened once again at the plight of a dispossessed people in North America. A highly recommended read.
This occurred on the Navajo reservation that is located in Arizona and Utah. A great deal of the mining was in Monument Valley. The initial reason for extracting the Uranium was the real fear that the enemies of democracy, particularly Nazi Germany, would also start to process Uranium for the purposes of making a nuclear explosion. In the early 1940’s little was known of the affects of radiation from exposure to Uranium. There was no effort to protect the Navajo workers. The debris from the mines was dumped pell-mell all over the reservation. Some of the debris was utilized to build homes on the reserve. The water sources were also becoming contaminated by the dynamiting at the mine sites.
After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the affects of radiation became very obvious. But on Navajo land nothing at all was done to protect the workers. With the advent of the Cold War and the Korean War Uranium mining kept accelerating in Navajo country.
Eventually workers started dying of cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, brain tumours). More and more women and children became diagnosed with cancer and died prematurely. Tests and studies were made on people, on the drinking water, and the habitats – some of which showed severe levels of radiation. The radiation was literally spreading more and more across their land. And nothing was done! The companies and the managers got rich. The Navajo’s got hardly anything, particularly compared to miners off the reservation.
Both the companies and the various government organizations (and there are many) obfuscated the issues and “Passed the Buck” as people continued to get sick and die. This was certainly not “Government of the people, by the people, for the people…”.
To extract this Uranium, haste and utility were used; to compensate and aid the victims and to clean up the radioactive environment, only a withering and inept bureaucracy was encountered. It took over sixty years for a real cleanup to begin in earnest. Some parts of this book make one want to scream in frustration at the intransigence of government and the immorality of companies who put profits ahead of protection of workers.
Ms. Pasternak’s book is very well written and frightfully convincing. There is no scientific jargon on radiation to deter readability. We are left saddened once again at the plight of a dispossessed people in North America. A highly recommended read.
October 13, 2010
There have always been some fucking monsters in this world--we don't need fictional stories to conjure them up because greed, racism, and patriotism already create them.
Pasternak writes a concise, well-researched report on the depredations of the U.S. government and uranium mining countries as they exploited Navajo land to fuel their profits and weapons supply. The neglect, recklessness, and lack of compassion shown by those entities is absolutely stunning, and the shock is all the more sharp given the straight-frward prose it is delivered by. While the tale is told with a reporter's equanimity, Pasternak's often dry, sarcastic wit easily pierces the excuses of officials and executives.
Everyone should know about this--especially now as people are still trying to argue for more nuclear power and claiming that it was our nuclear arsenal that kept us "safe" all those long years of the Cold War. Tell it to the Navajos.
Pasternak writes a concise, well-researched report on the depredations of the U.S. government and uranium mining countries as they exploited Navajo land to fuel their profits and weapons supply. The neglect, recklessness, and lack of compassion shown by those entities is absolutely stunning, and the shock is all the more sharp given the straight-frward prose it is delivered by. While the tale is told with a reporter's equanimity, Pasternak's often dry, sarcastic wit easily pierces the excuses of officials and executives.
Everyone should know about this--especially now as people are still trying to argue for more nuclear power and claiming that it was our nuclear arsenal that kept us "safe" all those long years of the Cold War. Tell it to the Navajos.
June 26, 2020
I've heard about how the Navajo code talkers were essential during the war, but never about the Navajo's contribution to the mining of uranium. Depressingly insightful. Check out the EPA website for current information and updates.
June 10, 2019
This book made me angry. It made me sad. It left me gobsmacked. The story of how the Navajo people found themselves at the center of the uranium rush and were left with a legacy of poisoned lands and countless deaths isn't a tale of evil, it's a tale of ignorance, greed, and governmental incompetence.
The story is told in the best way for a recent history like this. It tells the stories of the people involved, from the Navajo eager to prove their patriotism by working the mines during WWII to the government officials trying to figure out what the hell happened when those miners began dying young of lung cancer. Through all these, you learn about the Navajo and their concept of balance with nature and how they hold the land sacred. You see the struggle to balance that balance with the need for jobs and money in the poverty-stricken reservation. And most of all, the reader learns how ignorance of the dangers of radiation and the incredible foot-dragging by the mining companies and the government led to lost generations of Navajo.
Amazingly good read. I recommend it to anyone interested in our environment.
The story is told in the best way for a recent history like this. It tells the stories of the people involved, from the Navajo eager to prove their patriotism by working the mines during WWII to the government officials trying to figure out what the hell happened when those miners began dying young of lung cancer. Through all these, you learn about the Navajo and their concept of balance with nature and how they hold the land sacred. You see the struggle to balance that balance with the need for jobs and money in the poverty-stricken reservation. And most of all, the reader learns how ignorance of the dangers of radiation and the incredible foot-dragging by the mining companies and the government led to lost generations of Navajo.
Amazingly good read. I recommend it to anyone interested in our environment.
January 14, 2011
Yellow Dirt was the second book I read while on vacation this January. The first was Torment - a piece of post-apocalyptic zombie fiction, and then this book which tells the story of how we basically raped the land in Navajo Nation of uranium, left the radioactive crap laying around to contaminate everything in sight and are just now getting around to making restitution to the Navajo. Not exactly the feel-good books of the year. But as I always say, the funny thing about feeling is don't always expect it to tickle.
I can't remember how I came across Yellow Dirt, although now that I think about it, it might have been the "people who bought this book also bought..." thing on Amazon. In any event, I was pleased (and surprised) to discover that the library had it. So I trekked down there to get it, along with five other books. It was one of those trips to the library where I got a crapload of books just to see if anything will stick.
Yellow Dirt, as I said, is about uranium mining in the Navajo Nation during the 40s and 50s and the effects it had on the people and the land. We drove through Navajo Nation on our trip west last summer. I have never in my life seen a more desolate and depressing place. In many ways, it resembled the Martian landscape. Considering our nation's treatment of the Native Americans, it's not surprising that we gave them the crappiest land to live on. Granted, it was their homeland from which they were forcibly removed in 1864, only to return to 4 years later. But it was of not much use for farming or anything else and was not desirable real estate until uranium was discovered on the reservation in the 1940s during the race to build the world's first atom bomb.
The book follows one Navajo family through the generations. It specifically talks about a mine known as Monument No. 2, which was a mesa that was almost completely destroyed due to uranium mining. Navajos mined uranium without even the most rudimentary of precautions, despite mounting evidence that exposure to uranium (and all the radioactive elements that it breaks down to) was detrimental to human health. Once the boom of uranium mining started to fade in the 1960s, the mines and uranium mills were mostly abandoned, leaving piles of radioactive waste to contaminate the ground and the water. For a people that depend on the land for a living, the short term monetary gains provided by uranium mining - which the mining companies mostly cheated them out of - were not worth the long term effects on the environment and their health. Cancer, relatively unknown in the Navajo, began to show up in levels several times that in the general population, starting with the miners themselves and then, as waste contaminated the water, the rest of their families.
When I read books like this, I am always amazed at how horribly we've treated our nation's first inhabitants. At the end of the book, I was more convinced than ever that the United States has one hell of a karmic payback headed its way based solely on our treatment of the Native Americans. Yellow Dirt is a riveting account of people deliberately poisoned because no one gave a crap about them. It is also pretty easy to read in that it does not get bogged down in facts and figures. It also ends with some hope, as cleanup efforts are underway.
As one who was not really aware of this, I can't recommend this very tragic book enough.
I can't remember how I came across Yellow Dirt, although now that I think about it, it might have been the "people who bought this book also bought..." thing on Amazon. In any event, I was pleased (and surprised) to discover that the library had it. So I trekked down there to get it, along with five other books. It was one of those trips to the library where I got a crapload of books just to see if anything will stick.
Yellow Dirt, as I said, is about uranium mining in the Navajo Nation during the 40s and 50s and the effects it had on the people and the land. We drove through Navajo Nation on our trip west last summer. I have never in my life seen a more desolate and depressing place. In many ways, it resembled the Martian landscape. Considering our nation's treatment of the Native Americans, it's not surprising that we gave them the crappiest land to live on. Granted, it was their homeland from which they were forcibly removed in 1864, only to return to 4 years later. But it was of not much use for farming or anything else and was not desirable real estate until uranium was discovered on the reservation in the 1940s during the race to build the world's first atom bomb.
The book follows one Navajo family through the generations. It specifically talks about a mine known as Monument No. 2, which was a mesa that was almost completely destroyed due to uranium mining. Navajos mined uranium without even the most rudimentary of precautions, despite mounting evidence that exposure to uranium (and all the radioactive elements that it breaks down to) was detrimental to human health. Once the boom of uranium mining started to fade in the 1960s, the mines and uranium mills were mostly abandoned, leaving piles of radioactive waste to contaminate the ground and the water. For a people that depend on the land for a living, the short term monetary gains provided by uranium mining - which the mining companies mostly cheated them out of - were not worth the long term effects on the environment and their health. Cancer, relatively unknown in the Navajo, began to show up in levels several times that in the general population, starting with the miners themselves and then, as waste contaminated the water, the rest of their families.
When I read books like this, I am always amazed at how horribly we've treated our nation's first inhabitants. At the end of the book, I was more convinced than ever that the United States has one hell of a karmic payback headed its way based solely on our treatment of the Native Americans. Yellow Dirt is a riveting account of people deliberately poisoned because no one gave a crap about them. It is also pretty easy to read in that it does not get bogged down in facts and figures. It also ends with some hope, as cleanup efforts are underway.
As one who was not really aware of this, I can't recommend this very tragic book enough.
June 29, 2011
Reading this for fall learning community: Neglected Landscapes: Approaching the Environment Through Film and Creative Writing. Deborah Poe and I are teaching the class together. I'm reading this book because the Monument Valley area is one of the "neglected landscapes" we will deal with. This is a very readable and informative (not to mention disturbing) book by a writer for the LA Times exposing the devastation of the environment and people of the Four Corners area by 70 years of mining for radioactive materials. An indispensable adjunct to this reading is "Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko.
May 10, 2015
Due to my preference for non-fiction, I often read books that I have no desire to review. Why? Because the subject matter is just too depressing to write about. This is one of those books.
How long and how often will we continue in the U.S. to rape and pillage non-whites? I'm thinking maybe when non-whites finally become the majority? That day is coming soon, thank God! Oh, no wait, then of course there is the constant barrage of abuse of the poor, who are just getting poorer and less powerful, by the rich, who are just getting richer and therefore more powerful. Well, most of them are white, so maybe they'll keep a lid on the majority/minority? The thing is, American Indians are both, a minority and very poor, so they really get the worst of it, and always have.
This is another story of the abuse of American Indians, this time to get our hands on the uranium deposits that are present throughout the Navajo Nation in the Western U.S. Welcome to America! There's hope at the end of the story, but it ends in 2006, and the story is beginning again now in 2013. Same story.
How long and how often will we continue in the U.S. to rape and pillage non-whites? I'm thinking maybe when non-whites finally become the majority? That day is coming soon, thank God! Oh, no wait, then of course there is the constant barrage of abuse of the poor, who are just getting poorer and less powerful, by the rich, who are just getting richer and therefore more powerful. Well, most of them are white, so maybe they'll keep a lid on the majority/minority? The thing is, American Indians are both, a minority and very poor, so they really get the worst of it, and always have.
This is another story of the abuse of American Indians, this time to get our hands on the uranium deposits that are present throughout the Navajo Nation in the Western U.S. Welcome to America! There's hope at the end of the story, but it ends in 2006, and the story is beginning again now in 2013. Same story.
November 6, 2013
During World War II and during the the Cold War, the United States was looking for a source of uranium for its nuclear programs. A mother lode was found on the Navaho and Hopi reservations in the Four Corners region. This is the story of the exploration for the uranium and the explotation of the Navaho who became exposed to its toxic properties even generations after the mining stopped.
January 9, 2020
shot through with white gaze which was unfortunate because it had a lot of good historical research
July 27, 2013
Looking back at the 20th century now has an eerie ring of “the end justifies the means” for those with eyes to see it. True, here in America we developed faster than any other period in history: from the Industrial Revolution to the automobile to electricity to running water to medicine to the information age, we accomplished more than has ever been done in a century before. Not to mention we fought two enormous wars during those years and five or six smaller ones. In truth, history will probably look back on the 20th century as an enormous success for progress.
However, we miss the little things. For example, the topic of Yellow Dirt: people thrown by the dangerous, radiation-ridden wayside in the name of national safety. Not only did the hasty desire to be the most powerful drive us to destroy one of the most beautiful areas of the American Southwest, we set a legacy of pain and loss for three generations of people.
Impeccably researched and journalistically reported, Yellow Dirt takes readers back to the 1930s on the rocky, arid Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners area, where people still herded sheep and lived off the land just as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. Certainly not an easy life, but one the Navajo people have fought government legislation and invading frontiersmen for hundreds of years to preserve. However, when an intruding white prospector discovers the presence of potent uranium in the “yellow rocks” of a northern section called Cane Valley, it’s only a matter of time before the Navajo lands are to be breached.
For the next twenty-some years, American mining corporations excavated the nearby mesa in the Monument Valley for uranium to power the Manhattan Project and the arms race leading into the Cold War. Until the mine was abandoned in the 1950s, hundreds of Navajo workers entered the mesa and breathed in radiation-laden smoke every day for twelve-hour shifts, then returned home to houses built of uranium-rich ore and drank from uranium-polluted water. So, to modern readers, it is no surprise that fifteen years later, they were developing cancer in record numbers, and the US government refused to take any responsibility.
Judy Pasternak, a former L.A. Times reporter, has laid out each character and his or her role in the escalation of the situation in precise language, taking us logically through the story with little to no extraneous information. With a concept this complicated, it would be easy to go down rabbit trails of history or politics, but she has edited down the essentials of what we need to know about what occurred on the Navajo lands during those years, and it lends a refreshing brevity to what could be a very cumbersome story. E.G. Straight to the point, no wishy-washy ambiguity.
Pasternak has also not taken the “victimized underdog” approach that many people take when writing books about the abuse of the Native American culture by the encroaching U.S. government. She presents the characters as gravely real, faulted people (Adakai, the forefather in Cane Valley, is a rampant gambler; his son, Luke Yazzie, is a chronic drinker) caught up in a situation over which they have little to no control (Luke thought he could get enough money for a truck out of presenting the prospectors with the yellow rocks). By the time we reach the 1990s, when attention on the situation is finally coming to the environmental forefront, the people are just catching on and have begun to make noise about it, just as any other community would do.
Environmental journalism is nothing new, but Pasternak has put an emotional human face on it, similar to Rachel Carson’s infamous Silent Spring. It’s amazing how fast we forget these happenings: I had absolutely no idea about the extent of the mining or its aftereffects, and the news about this only came out in 2005. For sure, this kind of heavy topic is not for casual reading, but for those interested in the powers or ideas involved, this is a great work to start in on. Weighing in at just over 200 pages, it’s not a long read, and flows much like a novel.
Yellow Dirt is available on the Kindle for $10.38, or in paperback from Amazon for $10.40. I snagged my copy off a random shelf in my library, and because it’s almost four years old now, your library is likely to have a copy. See if you can find it, because it’s definitely worth a read, but unless you’re a social worker or an environmental lawyer, it may not be a book for prolonged study.
However, we miss the little things. For example, the topic of Yellow Dirt: people thrown by the dangerous, radiation-ridden wayside in the name of national safety. Not only did the hasty desire to be the most powerful drive us to destroy one of the most beautiful areas of the American Southwest, we set a legacy of pain and loss for three generations of people.
Impeccably researched and journalistically reported, Yellow Dirt takes readers back to the 1930s on the rocky, arid Navajo Reservation in the Four Corners area, where people still herded sheep and lived off the land just as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. Certainly not an easy life, but one the Navajo people have fought government legislation and invading frontiersmen for hundreds of years to preserve. However, when an intruding white prospector discovers the presence of potent uranium in the “yellow rocks” of a northern section called Cane Valley, it’s only a matter of time before the Navajo lands are to be breached.
For the next twenty-some years, American mining corporations excavated the nearby mesa in the Monument Valley for uranium to power the Manhattan Project and the arms race leading into the Cold War. Until the mine was abandoned in the 1950s, hundreds of Navajo workers entered the mesa and breathed in radiation-laden smoke every day for twelve-hour shifts, then returned home to houses built of uranium-rich ore and drank from uranium-polluted water. So, to modern readers, it is no surprise that fifteen years later, they were developing cancer in record numbers, and the US government refused to take any responsibility.
Judy Pasternak, a former L.A. Times reporter, has laid out each character and his or her role in the escalation of the situation in precise language, taking us logically through the story with little to no extraneous information. With a concept this complicated, it would be easy to go down rabbit trails of history or politics, but she has edited down the essentials of what we need to know about what occurred on the Navajo lands during those years, and it lends a refreshing brevity to what could be a very cumbersome story. E.G. Straight to the point, no wishy-washy ambiguity.
Pasternak has also not taken the “victimized underdog” approach that many people take when writing books about the abuse of the Native American culture by the encroaching U.S. government. She presents the characters as gravely real, faulted people (Adakai, the forefather in Cane Valley, is a rampant gambler; his son, Luke Yazzie, is a chronic drinker) caught up in a situation over which they have little to no control (Luke thought he could get enough money for a truck out of presenting the prospectors with the yellow rocks). By the time we reach the 1990s, when attention on the situation is finally coming to the environmental forefront, the people are just catching on and have begun to make noise about it, just as any other community would do.
Environmental journalism is nothing new, but Pasternak has put an emotional human face on it, similar to Rachel Carson’s infamous Silent Spring. It’s amazing how fast we forget these happenings: I had absolutely no idea about the extent of the mining or its aftereffects, and the news about this only came out in 2005. For sure, this kind of heavy topic is not for casual reading, but for those interested in the powers or ideas involved, this is a great work to start in on. Weighing in at just over 200 pages, it’s not a long read, and flows much like a novel.
Yellow Dirt is available on the Kindle for $10.38, or in paperback from Amazon for $10.40. I snagged my copy off a random shelf in my library, and because it’s almost four years old now, your library is likely to have a copy. See if you can find it, because it’s definitely worth a read, but unless you’re a social worker or an environmental lawyer, it may not be a book for prolonged study.
July 17, 2011
During World War II, the United States needed uranium. The Navajo Nation had uranium deposits and needed jobs and money – and was glad to be helping the war effort, as well. After the hot war, the Cold War required uranium for American nuclear weapons.
But the mining was carried out with no safety standards. No ventilation, no dust remediation, no breath masks, and not a word to the workers that the substance they were excavating might be dangerous. Pasternak notes that this was true at mines worked by whites as well, but truly vast quantities of uranium were mined on the Navajo Reservation by people who often did not speak English and usually were illiterate. This went on for approximately twenty years.
For about forty years, many of the Navajo people lived next to mine tailings piles that scattered dust all over their homes and workplaces, and drank water contaminated with uranium and arsenic. Having no idea that the “yellow dirt” was dangerous, people used the tailings to make concrete for houses and floors. For decades, the mines themselves were left open to the elements and anyone who wandered through. Cancers and birth defects became common causes of death across the reservation.
All together, there were about sixty years of occasional individuals trying to raise the alarm, and being silenced by business interests, government interests, bureaucratic buck-passing, and lack of both money and the willingness to try to get the money to clean up the hazards. Even when money was available, it was often tied up in language that addressed only a fraction of the problem.
Meanwhile, a town in whites’ territory whose residents had done equally foolish things with the local uranium mill’s waste material (used it for fertilizer, for adobe, etc.) had every scrap of contaminated material cleaned up and properly disposed of, and the yards, houses, etc. repaired and replaced (or even improved). Part of that, the book makes clear, was because the town’s problem caught the interest of a powerful Congressman.
In fact, it seems likely that the Navajos’ problem has only been dealt with because it caught the attention of a powerful Congressman, Henry Waxman. In 2007 – a year after the author’s newspaper series about the slow-motion disaster appeared – he brought the heads of the relevant agencies in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They listened to Navajo testimony, and testimony from several of the people who’d tried to help in the past, and got reamed out by another interested Congressman, Tom Udall.
You can read a transcript of the testimony here (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-b...). It’s not all that long, really.
You can also read this book. It’s painful, but necessary. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And frankly, it would be all too easy for the agencies who are supposed to protect these people – just like the rest of us – to drop the ball again.
But the mining was carried out with no safety standards. No ventilation, no dust remediation, no breath masks, and not a word to the workers that the substance they were excavating might be dangerous. Pasternak notes that this was true at mines worked by whites as well, but truly vast quantities of uranium were mined on the Navajo Reservation by people who often did not speak English and usually were illiterate. This went on for approximately twenty years.
For about forty years, many of the Navajo people lived next to mine tailings piles that scattered dust all over their homes and workplaces, and drank water contaminated with uranium and arsenic. Having no idea that the “yellow dirt” was dangerous, people used the tailings to make concrete for houses and floors. For decades, the mines themselves were left open to the elements and anyone who wandered through. Cancers and birth defects became common causes of death across the reservation.
All together, there were about sixty years of occasional individuals trying to raise the alarm, and being silenced by business interests, government interests, bureaucratic buck-passing, and lack of both money and the willingness to try to get the money to clean up the hazards. Even when money was available, it was often tied up in language that addressed only a fraction of the problem.
Meanwhile, a town in whites’ territory whose residents had done equally foolish things with the local uranium mill’s waste material (used it for fertilizer, for adobe, etc.) had every scrap of contaminated material cleaned up and properly disposed of, and the yards, houses, etc. repaired and replaced (or even improved). Part of that, the book makes clear, was because the town’s problem caught the interest of a powerful Congressman.
In fact, it seems likely that the Navajos’ problem has only been dealt with because it caught the attention of a powerful Congressman, Henry Waxman. In 2007 – a year after the author’s newspaper series about the slow-motion disaster appeared – he brought the heads of the relevant agencies in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They listened to Navajo testimony, and testimony from several of the people who’d tried to help in the past, and got reamed out by another interested Congressman, Tom Udall.
You can read a transcript of the testimony here (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-b...). It’s not all that long, really.
You can also read this book. It’s painful, but necessary. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And frankly, it would be all too easy for the agencies who are supposed to protect these people – just like the rest of us – to drop the ball again.
February 12, 2015
Summary from B&N: From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people as the Navajos worked, unprotected, in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground. They built their houses out of chunks of uranium ore, inhaled radioactive dust borne aloft from the waste piles the mining companies had left behind, and their children played in the unsealed mines themselves. Ten years after the mines closed, the cancer rate on the reservation shot up and some babies began to be born with crooked fingers that fused together into claws as they grew. Government scientists filed complaints about the situation with the government, but were told it was a mess too expensive to clean up. Judy Pasternak exposed this story in a prizewinning Los Angeles Times series.\nShocking. My sister said it would be when she recommended it, and she was not wrong. My brother-in-law is Navajo, and I have always been fascinated with Native American culture, wishing I had such deep roots and abiding family ties.\nBut what the government allowed to happen to the Navajos�all for the sake of uranium�is appalling. The U.S. government is supposed to be a protector for these people. Instead, from 1930 -1960 they exploited the Navajos and their resources. And the implications of this exploitation are still being felt today. \nI had never heard of this before reading this book. There were a lot of technical and political items in the book that made it slightly more difficult to read. But Pasternak also tells the story through the eyes of The People, the Dine, who experienced uranium mining and its after-effects first hand.\nThe government again clearly proves that it is not capable of taking care of anyone � as government interests will always come first.\nI recommend reading this book. It will open your eyes to something that is not even touched upon in our history books.\n
June 27, 2011
There's been a lot of talk since the 2010 election about intrusive government regulations hurting the economy and being at least partly responsible for rising unemployment in our Country. Without making it the point of the book, the author tells a story of why the opposite is also true. Unfortunately, as part of the Cold War, Uranium mining became a national priority in the 1950's, and one of the largest sources of domestic uranium was found on Navajo lands in the vicinity of the Southwest United States. Yellow Dirt describes the quest for uranium on the Navajo lands, the limited knowledge of the hazards of uranium, and the price paid by the workers in the mines. Additionally, Pasternak describes the longer lasting affects among the local residents due to the failure of the mining companies to clean up mine tailings, and from the poisoning of local drinking water supplies. Cleanup and compensation to those affected was a struggle, fighting through the obstacles of corporate buyouts, failed regulations, and a complicated legal system. This often overlooked but quite compelling story is well worth reading.
December 9, 2018
A hard book of more betrayal of Native Americans into the 21St century. After the Navajo's own trail of tears and exile from which they returned in 1868, uranium was mined on their land starting in the 1940's for development of the nuclear bomb, through the cold war years. Navajo men worked as miners, with no protection breathing air thick with yellow dust in tunnels or pits of high radiation. Navajo miners accumulated radiation exposure 44 times that of survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima! And after mining companies and government men left, mountains of waste remained that locals innocently used to make cement for their floors (where they traditionally slept on sheepskins) and stucco for their walls, in houses used for generations. Radioactivity contaminated their groundwater. Children used the pliable ore as clay, forming animals or cigarettes! Our government studied them for declades without warning or helping! And the people paid the price in cancers and birth defects. This was not corrected, incredibly, until after 2000! This author is responsible for bringing much of this to light and bringing about cleanups and solutions. An important book, available at TGCL on CDs.
November 1, 2018
Really superb reporting in this account of the Navajo people's complicated and deadly relationship with uranium, from 1943 until 2009 -- and beyond. The people and their land were exploited and poisoned, with predictably lethal results, and neither state and federal governments, mining companies nor Native American advocates offered any help until the Navajo (and reporter Judy Pasternak) made a lot of noise. This is journalism at its best.
"They had little concept of its capacity to wreck their health until too late, when "yellow dirt" had crept into every aspect of their daily lives: their homes, their drinking water, their playgrounds, even their garbage dumps."
"This was the Navajo Way, the binding pact that wraps the whole world into one interconnected force -- spirits, humans, animals, plants, trees, water, rocks, and sky, all meant to bless and sustain one another."
"They had little concept of its capacity to wreck their health until too late, when "yellow dirt" had crept into every aspect of their daily lives: their homes, their drinking water, their playgrounds, even their garbage dumps."
"This was the Navajo Way, the binding pact that wraps the whole world into one interconnected force -- spirits, humans, animals, plants, trees, water, rocks, and sky, all meant to bless and sustain one another."
January 2, 2020
"Luke reclaimed the gulch that divided the South Rim from the North Rim at Monument 2. He planted an orchard of trees bearing green apricots, and he planted the Navajo staples: corn and melons and squash. The farm had a natural irrigation system; it caught water on both sides from the raised parts of the mesa. Every rain passed through the rubble littering the old mine site before it ran downhill to soak deep into the ground. The sun-dried soil took on a yellow tinge."
"Ben told his uncle that the farm's yellow dirt might be uranium. 'I don't think so,' Luke replied, and he shared his bounteous harvests with all the families in the valley. They were grateful: with the mining jobs and wages gone, they needed the food."
"Ben told his uncle that the farm's yellow dirt might be uranium. 'I don't think so,' Luke replied, and he shared his bounteous harvests with all the families in the valley. They were grateful: with the mining jobs and wages gone, they needed the food."
October 20, 2016
Disclaimer: I work as a researcher on the potential health effects on tribal members of chronic exposure to uranium mines and waste features on Navajo Nation.
I thought this was very well-done. It was deeply researched, and, though it was a little bit confusing at times, it does a more-than-admirable job of rolling the history, science, and human stories and context together. It has a bit of a dramatic tone/telling, and I can imagine the the book being told in a "Dateline" type voice. In general, this helps to keep the reader's attention, but sometimes grated on my nerves because it contrasts with the quiet power of Navajo community members' own storytelling.
I thought this was very well-done. It was deeply researched, and, though it was a little bit confusing at times, it does a more-than-admirable job of rolling the history, science, and human stories and context together. It has a bit of a dramatic tone/telling, and I can imagine the the book being told in a "Dateline" type voice. In general, this helps to keep the reader's attention, but sometimes grated on my nerves because it contrasts with the quiet power of Navajo community members' own storytelling.
January 27, 2019
“The stories were ceremony, to be told at just the right place and time”
Judy Pasternak is an extraordinary story teller and an investigative journalist. She has pieced together the legacy of uranium extraction on Navajo land and its aftermath. She beautifully and respectfully focuses on four generations of one family. She uncovers the stories of scientists and health professionals, Navajo and not, who tried to set off alarms and of governments and agencies that shuffled the reports and the blame.
The book ends at a hopeful time when, at last, meaningful cleanup and research is happening. But it is a lesson for all of us, Native and non-Native, to honor and preserve the land.
Judy Pasternak is an extraordinary story teller and an investigative journalist. She has pieced together the legacy of uranium extraction on Navajo land and its aftermath. She beautifully and respectfully focuses on four generations of one family. She uncovers the stories of scientists and health professionals, Navajo and not, who tried to set off alarms and of governments and agencies that shuffled the reports and the blame.
The book ends at a hopeful time when, at last, meaningful cleanup and research is happening. But it is a lesson for all of us, Native and non-Native, to honor and preserve the land.
January 14, 2011
Great reporting here, tragic story about the devastating effects of uranium mining on the Navajo people. I've seen enough of the area to picture everything she talks about. Such a collection of lessons about how wheels that don't squeak get no grease.
November 9, 2012
A disturbing account of one of the many terrible things done to the Navajo. The book is well-researched and reads easily. Some parts are just heart-wrenching, others beg the question "who the hell thought THAT was an okay thing to do?"
November 20, 2020
. “Yellow Dirt, An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed” by Judy Pasternak, published by Free Press.
Category - Investigative Journalism. Publication Date - September, 2010.
This is a true story of how once again the United States Government has betrayed the American Indian, in this case the Navajo.
The tragedy begins in 1930 and continues through the 1960’s. The United States Government needed large amounts of uranium as this was the key ingredient in the Atomic Bomb. Unfortunately a large cache of Uranium was found on the Navajo Reservation. Initially this proved to be a boon for the Navajo who desperately needed jobs and money.
The Navajo men began working, unprotected, in the mines and began to mine what they called, “yellow dirt”. The yellow dirt served the Navajo Nation well until the end of the Cold War when the Ned for uranium dwindled down to nothing. This caused the mines to be abandoned and left to decay.
Sometime during this period scientist began to study the increased rate of cancer on the reservation. Also they found an increase in deformities in children born on the reservation. They discovered that these conditions were brought on by mining uranium. A large portion of the Navajo Nation came under scrutiny because they were all drinking water from the old mining pits, they were living in houses constructed on and built from the abandoned ore, and were breathing in air containing radioactive dust from the waste piles.
Although many people tried to right this wrong they were met by stiff opposition from Government Bureau’s. They claimed it would be too expensive to clean up.
An excellent read that is well put together and documented.
Category - Investigative Journalism. Publication Date - September, 2010.
This is a true story of how once again the United States Government has betrayed the American Indian, in this case the Navajo.
The tragedy begins in 1930 and continues through the 1960’s. The United States Government needed large amounts of uranium as this was the key ingredient in the Atomic Bomb. Unfortunately a large cache of Uranium was found on the Navajo Reservation. Initially this proved to be a boon for the Navajo who desperately needed jobs and money.
The Navajo men began working, unprotected, in the mines and began to mine what they called, “yellow dirt”. The yellow dirt served the Navajo Nation well until the end of the Cold War when the Ned for uranium dwindled down to nothing. This caused the mines to be abandoned and left to decay.
Sometime during this period scientist began to study the increased rate of cancer on the reservation. Also they found an increase in deformities in children born on the reservation. They discovered that these conditions were brought on by mining uranium. A large portion of the Navajo Nation came under scrutiny because they were all drinking water from the old mining pits, they were living in houses constructed on and built from the abandoned ore, and were breathing in air containing radioactive dust from the waste piles.
Although many people tried to right this wrong they were met by stiff opposition from Government Bureau’s. They claimed it would be too expensive to clean up.
An excellent read that is well put together and documented.
November 16, 2025
Really thorough and fascinating read about the ongoing tragedy on the Navajo Nation - yet again betrayed by private companies and the US government
May 23, 2024
The book really puts into perspective the generational impact environment has. The story of the Navajo and their relationship to their land is still being written.
July 18, 2013
Judy Pasternak’s remarkable story of deceit, injury, racism and murder all built around the quest for uranium during WWII and the Cold War era is a masterful bit of research and writing. Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed follows the discovery of uranium on the Navajo reservation in the American West (really, the discovery by Whites as the Navajo knew it was there all along, they just generally did not understand what it represented in the modern age) and how the federal government, including those agencies tasked with protecting the Native American landholders, and a variety of ever-changing mining and defense related industries robbed and brutalized the land and the people on it. It is a horrifying story and journalist Judy Pasternak tells it without hesitation. This is a very good book and one that anyone interested in the environment should read but particularly anyone who is interested in protecting both indigenous peoples and natural places.
The level of deceit and the depth to which the people on the reservation suffered because of it is captured most vividly in a passage dealing with an effort (one of many over the years) to survey and test the poisoned water supply. The reaction of one woman - a mother - whose children and extended family were stricken after relying on that water source sums up the anguish that fills this book.
The toxicologist in the group calculated that for each day in the desert that Lois drank three liters from the ‘lakes [which were really untreated and abandoned uranium pit mines] she was exposed to uranium at levels nearly one hundred times the standard the U.S. government would impose. The water also contained high levels of arsenic, cadmium, and radiation. The heavy-metals expert on the research team was aghast. “Lois Neztsosie,” he thought was pumping a witch’s brew into her womb.”
Doo Shilbeehozindala(“I didn’t know”), Lois cried out when she heard this news.
May 11, 2017
Where do I begin? This book opened up a new understanding for me of the uranium mining tragedy on the Navajo Reservation. Told with exacting detail and covering a span of the over 60 years that this catastrophe continued, Judy Pasternak tells of the lack of communication to the Navajo people about the dangers of uranium mining and its aftermath on the Reservation, and about the hundreds of affected families...and what was NOT done by our government to rectify the situation, and eventually was WAS done. Sixty years of poisoning of a people who had no idea what was happening to them. It is one of the worst atrocities ever committed on American soil.
Two years ago we visited Monument Valley, one of the most beautiful sights in the West, and I loved it. It has been the backdrop in many a western movie, and tourists visit there every year and are amazed by the landscape. I had no idea that only a few years before (2011) the tragedy of the mining that had played out on this very soil was coming to a close. It broke my heart to have visited there, and not to have known that this valley and the one adjacent to it, played a pivotal part in the raping of the Navajo people and culture. The original digging was part of the Manhattan Project to create the nuclear bombs that destroyed so much of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....and yet the radiation levels the Navajos were exposed to were thousands of times greater than the people in those two Japanese cities endured. Thousands. And they weren't told.
This book should be read by every American. It is a morality tale of the highest sort....we have to learn from our mistakes. We have to care more.
Two years ago we visited Monument Valley, one of the most beautiful sights in the West, and I loved it. It has been the backdrop in many a western movie, and tourists visit there every year and are amazed by the landscape. I had no idea that only a few years before (2011) the tragedy of the mining that had played out on this very soil was coming to a close. It broke my heart to have visited there, and not to have known that this valley and the one adjacent to it, played a pivotal part in the raping of the Navajo people and culture. The original digging was part of the Manhattan Project to create the nuclear bombs that destroyed so much of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....and yet the radiation levels the Navajos were exposed to were thousands of times greater than the people in those two Japanese cities endured. Thousands. And they weren't told.
This book should be read by every American. It is a morality tale of the highest sort....we have to learn from our mistakes. We have to care more.
January 4, 2012
Insightfully observed investigative report of the human and cultural impacts of uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation. As you read you experience the stunning panoramas of the 4 Corners region. At the same time, you will feel the heartbreak of people losing their loved ones to lung cancer and other degenerative diseases associated with uranium and toxics of mining waste. Your outrage will grow chapter by chapter as the author leads you through the history in which mining companies are made to clean up waste piles outside the rez while waste inside the rez is repeatedly ignored and the Navajo people are bumped from federal agency to federal agency as they request action. Finally, you will gain a bit of insight into a reporter's mindset, and how sympathetic yet objective reporting can change not just individual lives, but the life of cultures and nations.
A few years ago I read some of Pasternak's series on this issue in the L.A.Times. I expected the book to simply rehash what the newspaper stories said. But the book is much more than that -- it is a narrative page-turner. The history of the A-bomb and Navajo contribution to USA security, the cold war and the arms race, and the beginnings of the EPA all figure in to this astounding tale of exploitation of Native Americans by the USA. Pasternak is not only an outstanding reporter, but a fabulous writer as well.
As an academic who reads with one finger in the footnotes, I assure you that she documents her facts exceeding well.
A few years ago I read some of Pasternak's series on this issue in the L.A.Times. I expected the book to simply rehash what the newspaper stories said. But the book is much more than that -- it is a narrative page-turner. The history of the A-bomb and Navajo contribution to USA security, the cold war and the arms race, and the beginnings of the EPA all figure in to this astounding tale of exploitation of Native Americans by the USA. Pasternak is not only an outstanding reporter, but a fabulous writer as well.
As an academic who reads with one finger in the footnotes, I assure you that she documents her facts exceeding well.
December 13, 2019
Just when you thought the Indians weren't pushed off of the last bit of survivable land. I guess they did get to stay there, but under what condition... Oh My God. Truth beats all Fiction, my friends.
January 26, 2016
Craig got me this book for Christmas several years ago. I knew it came from "The Tree" (the Dollar Tree) so I didn't just jump up and down for joy. I have a stigma against The Tree that I might need to work through. I only got around to reading it this summer. It is written in a very journalistic, history book way, so it's not the sort of book that will draw you in by it's delicious writing. But the story cannot be ignored. Native Americans have been regarded as disposable humans since the first pilgrim shared their corn and turkey and then decided they'd rather own it than share it.
Greed and unconcern for the effects of the hazardous remains of mining have left such a path of poison and tears.
The Navajos have just received a huge settlement from some of the sneaky chameleon like corporations who were responsible for leaving them with scarred contaminated land and water along with an additional settlement from the US Government to help with the near impossible sounding clean-up.
But almost simultaneously Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives.
But hey! That's the American way we fight to preserve.
Greed and unconcern for the effects of the hazardous remains of mining have left such a path of poison and tears.
The Navajos have just received a huge settlement from some of the sneaky chameleon like corporations who were responsible for leaving them with scarred contaminated land and water along with an additional settlement from the US Government to help with the near impossible sounding clean-up.
But almost simultaneously Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives.
But hey! That's the American way we fight to preserve.
June 13, 2012
If books were rated on the importance of the subject alone, this book would get 5 stars. I had the same response to it that I had to The New Jim Crow: how did I not know that this was happening?!? Especially given all the time that we have spent in the 4 Corners area! It is important for all of us to know the extent to which a people can be duped and, really, destroyed by our government. That said, I had problems with the writing. The author had a hard time telling a coherent story, especially in the first part of the book, when she was giving us the history of the development of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation. It is a complex story, so I'm sure that it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't enjoy feeling slightly confused about which mining company it was, which area was impacted, whose ponds were contaminated etc the entire time. Once she started exploring the long-term impacts of the radiation it all came together better, at least for me. Increased interest in nuclear power and the consequent need for uranium mean that this issue will continue to plague the Navajos. I hope that, thanks to this book, I can be better informed and more involved in the future.
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