Fifty years ago, cancer rates on the reservation were so low that a medical journal published an article titled "Cancer immunity in the Navajo." Back then, the contamination of the tribal homeland was just beginning. Mining companies were digging into one of the world's richest uranium deposits, in a reservation spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were chiseled and blasted from the mountains and plains. The mines provided uranium for the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort to develop an atomic bomb, and for the weapons stockpile built up during the arms race with the Soviet Union.

Over the decades, Navajos inhaled radioactive dust from the waste piles, borne aloft by fierce desert winds. They drank contaminated water from abandoned pit mines filled with rain. They watered their herds there, then butchered the animals and ate the meat. Many lived in homes silently pulsing with radiation. Today, there is no talk of cancer immunity in the Navajos.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-navajo19nov19-story.html

Photography by Gail Fisher | Los Angeles Times 

Story by Judy Pasternak | Times Staff Writer