Income+source

Lifestyles

Life on reservations in the Southwest is tough. Work is whatever and wherever people can get it. One Navajo, the director of the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers Timothy Benally Sr., tells the story about work :

"On the reservation back in the 1940s and 1950s, jobs were pretty scarce. In 1958, I had just returned from the Armed Services. I couldn't find a job and I had a chance to get into the mines. The first time, after about three months, I complained about the safety of the mines. The boss didn't like it, so he said at the end of the work week, "Don't come back on Monday." So I didn't. Then the mine ownership changed. Kerr-McGee took over, and I applied for a job and got work again. Again I complained, this time about the wages. I said the federal law requires that the workers be paid $1.25 an hour and these people are getting anywhere from 80 to 90 cents and hour for their labor. Again I got fired (Benally Sr., 1995)." Despite the fact that miners were not paid enough and that they worked in dangerous conditions, miners continued to mine uranium. In many cases, miners were forced to return to mines that had been blasted just half an hour before (Watson, 1996). These factors were not enough to stop Navajos from working, as they needed the money to support their families. The miners that worked in uranium filled mines have a very high incidence of cancer relative to the rest of the United States population. Though the Navajo workers and families noticed this in the 1950s, bureaucrats dragged their feet, and companies disregarded warnings. The miners, especially the Navajo miners, were kept from receiving compensation for the suffering they went through.
 * Requirements For Compensation**

In 1990 a law was passed known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 (RECA) (Eichstaedt, 1994). The law required $100,000 in "compassion payments" to uranium miners diagnosed with cancer or other respiratory ailments (Eichstaedt, 1994; Benally Sr., 1995). To qualify for compensation, a miner had to prove that s/he had worked in the mines and was now suffering from one of the diseases on the compensation list (Eichstaedt, 1994; Benally Sr. 1995).
 * Government Hinders Compensation**

Getting the money that was their due was very difficult for the Navajo uranium miners. The government imposed certain guidelines on claims to be filed that were dictates of the mainstream society. All medical records filed by claimants had to be certified (Eichstaedt, 1994). For the Navajo, the certification process immediately became a monumental and time-consuming barrier (Eichstaedt, 1994). The process of certification had little effect on non-Indian claimants, as records from private hospitals were being secured and certified in less than a week in most cases (Eichstaedt, 1994). Adding to the problems faced with the certification process, the justice department refused to recognize traditional Navajo marriages, because they did not include a piece of paper filed with the local county or tribal government (Eichstaedt, 1994). Establishing a work history was also exceedingly difficult for Native Americans. In many cases, Navajo people did not keep records, because wages were low and the amount earned was not enough to pay income tax on (Eichstaedt, 1994). Obtaining accurate readings on the radiation and radon levels in the mines years after mining had stopped was also difficult and slowed the application process for compensation even more. It is clear that without the help of attorneys capable of fighting government bureaucracy that few Navajos would ever be compensated (Eichstaedt, 1994).