Yellow Dirt Reading Assignment

Hey Guys,

On this page are two links to articles we’d like you to read before our class discussion on Wednesday. On the next page are two graphs that simply help quantify the exposure to uranium that the Navajo people are facing.

1) “Yellow Dirt”: Radioactive Reservation

This link is to an article that does a good job contextualizing “Yellow Dirt”. Be sure to click the “Continue Reading” button if the article isn’t already expanded.

http://www.salon.com/2010/09/19/yellow_dirt/

*note from Prof. Low- I would also recommend looking at Church Rock, NM (mentioned at the beginning of the article) on google maps (click below). Be sure to zoom in and look at the remaining house "footprints" that were left behind after many of the houses were removed.


View Larger Map

2) “The Cold War Threat to the Navajo”
This link is to a very short article that briefly addresses a number of the players and factors that we’ll be discussing on Wednesday. You can even listen to it with 3 different accents..

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=3f087595-29f9-46bf-a347-71c98eba4574%40sessionmgr104&vid=4&hid=126&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=29377619

3) One table and one figure taken from:“Development of risk maps to minimize uranium exposures in the Navajo Churchrock mining district”
By:Jamie L deLemos

Full article available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714847/

Figure 3: Percent of participants hauling water from unregulated source, regulated source, and groceries.

*Primary, secondary, and tertiary hauling sources are the first three water sources reported by participants in the survey. N = number of participants that use a primary, secondary, and tertiary source.

Table 2: Environmental history self-reported by survey participants.