Compensation elusive for most Navajo radiation victims

For the better part of two decades, John Bill Maryboy was a driller in the uranium mines of southern Utah and northern Arizona, blasting holes into the soft red sandstone in search of uranium ore.

He had been born and raised in the redrock canyons. He had married and raised his family here on Navajo tribal lands, his lands.

Maryboy enjoyed his job, not worrying much whether the mines were ventilated or if the water inside the mines was safe to drink. Like the other miners, he believed the government and industry officials who promised there were no dangers.

Trust came easy, and with poverty running rampant on the reservation, John Bill was just glad to have a job that could provide the basics of life for his wife and seven children.

John Bill was 51 when he succumbed to lung cancer in 1977.

"All of a sudden he got sick," said his son, San Juan County Commissioner Mark Maryboy. "He certainly didn't expect to die so early."

There's not a shadow of doubt in Mark Maryboy's mind that his father was a victim — one of thousands on the Navajo Reservation — of a government conspiracy that sacrificed indigenous peoples in the name of Cold War nuclear superiority. It is a conspiracy that Congress has tacitly admitted by agreeing to compensate uranium miners and mill workers across the West who were deceived about the effects of uranium that sickened and killed them.

The Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee estimates 400 Navajo miners have already died of lung diseases caused by working in the 1,100 mines on tribal lands in the Four Corners area. Maryboy believes many times that number are sick and dying, all because the government decided Navajos were dispensable.

"Definitely, the government discriminated against us," he says. "The government knew the effects of radiation, but with the Navajo people, with any minority, they didn't see the need to provide the necessary equipment to protect them. And now you see suffering everywhere."

Maryboy, who also serves in the Navajo legislature, is one of many who now champion the cause of government compensation for Navajo uranium workers, not just those in Utah but those throughout the region who answered the siren call to work in the mines. Another is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who last year pushed through amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that allows more uranium miners to qualify for compensation.

"The next battle is for appropriate funding for the trust fund," Hatch said. "It's currently broke."