In July of 1979, a breached dam at Church Rock, New Mexico, sent more than a thousand tons of radioactive waste tumbling into the Puerco River. Despite being the largest release of radioactive material in US history, the incident received almost no media coverage. Many residents who used the river for irrigation weren’t even notified, and the governor denied local requests to declare Church Rock a federal disaster area.
Nearly three decades later, a team of public-health researchers linked the negligence to racism. The Puerco River flows through what settlers call the Navajo Nation—known in the Diné language as Dinétah—and the spill primarily affected rural communities on the reservation.
Today, abandoned uranium mines dot the landscape like open wounds along what was once Route 66, lit up by garish neon signs advertising “Indian jewelry” to non-indigenous tourists. Many of these sites have not been cleaned up, and probably won’t be cleaned up.