The Nidé Twins and The Giant Yeitso

The Navajo and Uranium
—The Nidé Twins and The Giant Yeitso,—
A Tragedy of the Nuclear Age.

Fides et Ratio

10 February 2006
Corpus Christi, Texas

We are an accident of Nature’s whim,
With mind of convolutions creased so strange,
Mélange of senses formed like bouillabaisse,
Cognitive dissonance rules our brain’s ways,—

We love gods that can act at distances,
Hurling lightning, spewing lava or hurt,
ICBM’s our closest approach yet,
To that divinity that Heaven dwells,—

We struggle to let go animism,
Old lore that was so reassuring strong,
A consolation for we understood,
All God’s intent for nature and for man,—

But no consoling credence lives here now,
It’s time for us construe Nature again,
With symbiosis and ecology,—
Lest man’s success become His final doom.

In Navajo folklore, the Nidé Twins, born of mother Earth, slay the Giant Yeitso, a monster that roamed Tsoodzil (Mt. Taylor), the sacred mountain, and harmed humans. The Twins had supernatural assistance to avoid Yeitso’s weapons and were given lightning bolts to kill him. The remnants of that battle can be seen in the molten lava flows on Tsoodzil’s side. Today, the Navajo have named a yellow monster, Leetso, uranium. , This new myth, created in the crux of health crisis, aids the Navajo battle a complex problem.

Man uses culture to expand his ecological niche. Culture amplifies reflex, instinct and emotion with a flexible tool that extends man’s domain over nature. Man’s ability to find and utilize new sources of energy permits his numbers to increase dramatically beyond any Malthusian prediction and to evolve complex economic ecologies. His success at placating hunger and lasciviousness for millions is truly amazing.

But, as modern man’s sophistication of explanation increases his predictive and manipulative power, he is caught with a concurrent decrease in his ability to use his physical senses to understand that revealed reality. His myths, religions and anthropomorphic explanations of the universe cannot protect him in the complex world he has created and will not prevent ecological tragedies; and, though without myth and religion perhaps he may be hopelessly adrift, their manipulation at the hands of ‘the faithful’ have often led to genocide. For those reasons Western Civilization developed philosophy and science, as creative myths, for dealing with the monster creating, teratogenic, capabilities of the modern world.

This short paper briefly explores some aspects of the interplay of myth and science in the 20th century ecological tragedy of the Nidé nation with uranium. An attempt to understand the effect of myth and science, of man as a deme and avatar (a reproductive and economic agent), is more than just a historical exercise, for as oil prices soar upwards and industrial nations look for other energy sources, nuclear power becomes more and more of a necessity; and, quite ominously, as nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, it will not be long before they are again used. This time, not in the hope of ending a world war, but of inciting the world’s demise.

The themes of conservation (saving for) and preservation (saving from) will be mentioned in a brief history of the Navajo that shows how they adapted and adopted new cultural forms in their quest for survival. Perhaps, the underlying deep question is, whether a creature that is rapidly changing culturally can exist in a homeostatic relationship with his environment (in holistic terms as an ecology including biology, economy, …); and, conversely, when economic and ecological pressures drive human migrations and cultural transformations, will those changes be accompanied by a culture of conservation?

It is probably likely, that conditions far from equilibrium (whether they be a result of ecological change or cultural change) will not promote an ethos of conservation or preservation (for man’s instinct for personal and tribal survival will be the pressing driver of human actions.) And, if an ecological perspective is required, is man’s intellect even capable of understanding the myriad interactions and relationships? Is myth, or religion, the only available method of approaching such a holistic endeavor? An attempt to sketch an answer to these questions is best left for another moment, for the time being let’s look at the history of the Navajo and Uranium.

The Navajo, and their close relatives the Apache, migrated to the American Southwest in the 1400’s. Navajo legends, however, all state that they were created and placed in their homeland in the mountainous area between Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. The first apparent problem is that Navajo legends were an oral tradition and were only written down in the middle of the twentieth century. The second problem is that the legends are an emic construct, not an etic explanation. They served to validate existence, not to formulate consistent causal explanations. The conditions of existence when the Navajo arrived were that the Pueblo Indians already had possession of the land; the need of the newcomers was, not for a history of their migration and arrival, but for myths to justify their presence.

The Navajo traded with the Pueblo Indians and learned many of their sedentary skills. Sheep and horses, introduced by the Spanish, allowed the Navajo to develop a lifestyle and system of wealth based on sheep. The Navajo throughout their history displayed a tremendous degree of cultural flexibility and ability to adopt and adapt to new ideas. Through difficult times in the 1900’s, including warfare with settlers and the U.S. Army, forced relocation to reservations and a vertiginous drop in their numbers, the Navajo eventually succeeded in rebounding in population and expanding their national territory to its current size.

The Navajo nation suffered the ravages of the early 20th century influenza epidemic; and, economically deprived times in the late 1930’s due to the depression that was exacerbated by U.S. government action to severely cull sheep herds to curb overgrazing causing heavy soil erosion. Even though oil was found in the Navajo nation in the 1920’s, during the depression many Diné men had to leave their homes to find work.

The war brought some economic respite to the Nidé. Navajos served valiantly as soldiers and the Navajo language was used as an unbreakable code. Additionally, uranium, which had been found in Navajo lands at the turn of the century, became a boom industry under government incentives that allowed many Navajo to work as miners closer to home.

But sometimes the invisible impacts human lives drastically. Man lives on the remnants of an exploded sun (a fusion reactor) that receives most of its energy from the sun (radiation) and whose radioactive core generates terawatts of energy. Some of those radioactive materials are dispersed in the earth’s mantle and when concentrated can combine to create either controlled or uncontrolled releases of radioactive emissions: nuclear reactors or bombs. And, even in their natural form and concentrations, these radioactive elements in rock or earth formations can be harmful to human health through chronic exposure.

The invisible hands of the global economy and war created the necessity to mine uranium. At stake was the very survival of America. There is little doubt that if the Nazi government had arrived at the atom bomb first, they would have used it on London and then on New York. And, that the deployment of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably saved at least a million allied casualties by precluding an invasion of a Japanese homeland controlled by an unswerving military clique. The Axis powers had all enshrined the irrational as their ultimate faith.

But neither science nor religion prepared Americans for the health impacts of radiation exposure or the devastation of atomic explosives. Myth, the precursor to science often serves man well. When conditions are stable and equilibrium is reached myth may be the most comforting and necessary of all beliefs; and, for times of change science with its predictive scheme can often provide a path of mastery for new domains. But, there are circumstances in time and confluences of events when neither cultural adaptation, emic or etic, serves man well. The mining of uranium was such a case.

In the middle of the twentieth century a cross-roads of national security, market forces, scientific ignorance and government inertia allowed several thousand Navajo (Nidé) miners to be exposed to higher than normal radioactivity (Radon) levels that led to the premature deaths of hundreds due to lung cancer. Almost as quickly the mines were abandoned, leaving deep shafts and redistributed potentially hazardous materials, to leach into ground waters and create a pocked landscape. Some of those hazardous materials were used in the construction of dwellings. Half a century later the Nidé nation passed laws forbidding the extraction of uranium from their lands. But, this all started innocently enough.

Uranium, coal, gas and oil were mined on Navajo lands for decades before the 1930’s. Vanadium was mined in the twentieth century for use in the processing of steel. As radium and atomic elements became discovered and studied they were introduced into society. Bright yellow and orange luminescent paints had radioactive components. Wine glasses that glowed in the dark and luminescent watch dials were all part of the marvel of the atomic age. Large doses of X-rays were used for diagnostics and the treatment of cancer, nuclear isotopes were used with few restraints in internal medicine, everywhere it seemed that the atom would provide unlimited benefits without exacting any costs. Eventually in the 1950’s the atomics of inheritance, DNA, was discovered along with the effects of radiation on those cellular processes. A new era of understanding dawned.

Exposure to radiation and radioactivity can have chronic or acute effects. Low doses exceeding tolerance thresholds over prolonged periods can lead to cancers or leukemia; while large doses in a short time span can kill. Ionizing radiation (X-rays and gamma rays) and radioactive particles [neutrons, protons, electrons, alpha (a Helium atom stripped of electrons)] energetically interact with biological processes. They can damage cellular walls, disrupt chemical reactions, damage DNA, create free radicals and in large doses cause lesions and burns, or even death.

The many mechanisms of biological damage are not the focus of this paper, the point is that radioactive materials radiate energy and emit energetic particles. To block high energy radiation and neutrons, shielding, such as lead sheets or concrete barriers, is required; and, to screen for large particles, such as alpha and beta (that have a low capacity to penetrate skin but can damage soft lung tissue) coveralls and masks are required.

In the case of mining activities the main problem is controlling the fine particulate that can become airborne. Radioactive material control processes (including ventilation) have to put in place to ensure the radioactive ore is only located where it is meant to be stored. And, monitoring and personnel exposure procedures have to be instituted. These procedures include appropriate garments, radiation detectors, filtered masks, control of dosage and appropriate decontamination procedures to ensure the radioactive material is not dispersed uncontrollably in the environment or taken home.

The U.S. Government, who for decades was the only purchaser of uranium, did not take any of these actions, as a consequence many miners suffered illnesses and premature death brought about by the lack of radiological control practices. But, as is normally the case, the story is more complicated than it appears at first glance; there were many rational individuals trying to do the right things.

The difference in the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) action with beryllium and uranium—acute vs. chronic effects,—poison vs. radioisotope,—points out some of the complexities. Democracies and their bureaucracies respond to abrupt crisis (like Yanomamö leaders they are only able to operate by consensus); but have a poor record of acting on perceived threats. Beryllium killed several persons in Massachusetts and was clearly a strong poison. The AEC’s New York Operations Office (NYOO) promptly placed into effect tolerance limits and further illness was avoided. But, the Division of Biology and Medicine (DBM) was opposed to the NYOO’s actions because they felt the AEC was not entitled to set health and safety regulations!

When the NYOO took the same position with uranium, that it had with beryllium, AEC headquarters took uranium purchasing responsibility away from the NYOO and created a new section to handle purchases. In effect, AEC headquarters caved in to DBM demands; and, uranium mining went unregulated for years. But, unlike beryllium, uranium mining was being done in the remote southwest and the effects of lung exposure to radon took decades to develop cancer.

And, many other things associated with uranium did not go as we would have hoped: revelations by the U.S. Government’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) of repeated poor judgment in conducting human radiation experiments with a disregard of ethical restrictions that existed in American scientific and medical circles are chilling. A sobering reminder, that unless strict and clear guidelines are publicly enforced, even the best intentions with unproven technologies can lead to disasters.

The additional facts that individuals used government security classifications to hide their actions from public scrutiny; that sick patients were used without their informed consent as part of experiments with radioactive substances; that 200,000 sailors and soldiers, the ‘atomic veterans,’ were exposed to atomic blasts to determine military abilities in a nuclear war environment without their informed participation; that children were exposed to non-therapeutic radiation doses for experiments; while, at the same time, the U.S. Government publicly tried German physicians for their callous disregard of prevailing medical ethical standards in the conduct of their human experiments, is also cause for sobering concern.

A concern that often eludes us as man changes his environment at a faster rate than human biological and cultural systems can evolve. Real dangers arise, including unintended effects of promised benefits. For example, new chemicals; thousands of artificial chemical agents are currently in use, and hundreds are invented yearly, without any screening for teratogenic effects. Because the etiology of cancer formation or growth of deformed embryos is so complex and can take many years to develop; and, the ethical implications of research on humans are inherently prohibitive in nature, modern society remains at the same crossroads that the Nidé encountered with uranium: invisible assailants and no weapons to fight them.

But leaving aside potential problems, even the remediation of physically realizable actions, like sealing mineshafts or disposing of hazardous materials, is extremely costly to do correctly after the fact. Of the roughly 1300 mines that were opened, about one half have been sealed. And, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (starting in 1997) radiation and radioactivity surveys of Navajo lands and waters give these preliminary results:
Out of 27 hogans (a Navajo hut) surveyed, 2 were found to have radiation levels significantly enough above background levels, that razing them was warranted;
Out of 226 water sources sampled, 90 were found to pose elevated health hazards (primarily unregulated water sources used for stock or by persons without running water); and,
Airborne radiation surveys indicated that there are 15 square miles of territory with elevated radiation readings. ,

There are many other reports of groundwater contamination or reposition of radioactive millings and other natural phenomena acting on uranium mine residue. In the meantime the Diné have implemented laws to stop uranium mining, have started environmental survey and educational programs, and are using the court and legislative processes to seek redress for the ills they have suffered.

The Navajo nation changed its governance after the discovery of oil on their lands. Oil leasing requirements and the increased complexity of their dealings with private and U.S. government agencies required adaptation. But, along with the adopting of ‘outside’ processes, the Navajo have also maintained many of their traditional cultural activities and values. These traditions emphasize the costs of excess, something that our larger American society is only starting to understand: all choices have costs and consequences that must be valued within a cultural context.

It has been a slow process for American society to start addressing the human and environmental legacy of uranium mining on Navajo lands. Over fifty years elapsed before surveys were commenced; it was only in 2000 that the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was signed; and, then it took one more year for it to be funded. As it was, the burden of proof was placed on the miners and any use of tobacco excluded compensation. Additionally, only one strain of lung cancer qualifies for relief under RECA.

Part of the justification given by some activists for stopping uranium mining is that defiling the Earth violates an existing tradition of respect for the sacred mountains passed down by their Nidé ancestors. This seems to go against the fact of historic land utilization patterns. But, perhaps denial of mining rights is the only realpolitik available to the Navajo in bargaining with the U.S. Government. For there is strong pressure to commence mining operations again, to build a uranium enrichment facility and to build a nuclear waste repository on Navajo lands.

All, perfectly feasible projects; and, all probably necessary in the long term. However, all will be required to provide a laborious technical assessment for long-term ecological and economic viability. So, who is going to read and understand these reports? Who is going to convince the Navajo community to proceed? Who is going create assurances that the U.S. Government is acting in good faith after decades of inaction? Who is going to make the final cost/benefit decision?

The recent Navajo creation of the yellow monster Leetso, uranium, an enemy that must be vanquished, with its devious nature (as well as the virtues of the heroes that must emerge to combat or tame Leetso) are a necessary step in assigning attributes and properties to a problem that they must contain. This emic explanation places the problem within a cultural context. And, in the long run if there is a ‘solution’ to this catastrophe it will take a flexible admixture of science and myth to fight the many monsters that must be subdued. All ‘hard’ facts presented by science need to be embedded in the ‘soft’ facts of values before a society will take action. The illusion of dichotomy is false.

The emphasis on one aspect of a multifaceted problem will lead to a dad end, just like reproduction without survival is an empty act. Securing economic resources will always be the final determinant of whether reproductive efforts succeed. Man, like all animals, acts as both an avatar (economic behavior) and as a deme (reproductive behavior in a population) that incorporates energy and DNA flows (ecology and genealogy.) It is the way that man describes his participation in these cycles that determines his approach to them. Psychology is a subset of biology is a subset of economy is a subset of ecology—they can be studied separately, but they are all irrevocably intertwined. In the meantime, the Navajo are involving science more and more in their approach. Their local Diné College has started a Uranium Education Program. And, ten million dollars worth of further studies on the impact of radiation have been initiated.

These are important steps for Navajo culture; for while man has at his disposal a broader range of cultural adaptations than any other animal he is not immune to self-delusion and deception. Culture, by its pliable nature, affords man the tools to find new energy sources as well as to guide behavior. In the western tradition man has struggled for centuries, with many bloody disputes, over what the correct balance between myth and science should be. Myth looks to the past, and relies of faith,—it has no predictive component. In a real sense it is like evolution: the historic remnants of what worked previously. Science, on the other hand, by its very structure is founded on reason; and, requires extrapolation and verification. Both have been seriously abused and misused; and, it seems almost by reflexive default, that any forced exclusive imposition of either ends up harming more than helping.

Communism, socialism, and republics have to greater or lesser degrees (usually directly proportional to the concentration of power) acted with disdain for individual lives and with a partial view to the total lifetime costs associated with decisions. Perhaps the Navajo have been more aware of costs because they have been geographically and socially circumscribed are a smaller nation. (Carneiro, Chagnon) Being surrounded reduces choices and increases the costs of the constrained choices that are available.

True costs, in an ecological sense, cannot be indefinitely postponed. There are many occasions like the fights over Kennewick Man, stem cell research, global warming, depleted uranium, nuclear power generation or genetically engineered foods where myth and science come into direct conflict; and, where there exists a mismatch between real and perceived costs. , Such clashes are difficult to resolve within current dichotomies (man vs. nature, male vs. female, objective vs. subjective, human vs. divine, etic vs. emic, maternalistic vs. paternalistic, material vs. ideal, right brain vs. left brain, cost vs. benefit, nature vs. nurture, etc.)

Although dualities help to highlight categories for analysis, in and of themselves they are insufficient to make judgments: values are required for synthesis and action to occur. On the one hand, it was in the neglect of values, that already existed in the American democratic tradition, from which the tragedy of the Navajo and uranium grew out of; and, which highlights a more pervasive problem. The continuing failure of America to reform a public education system that leaves 20% of Americans functionally illiterate; and, places more emphasis on compliance and attendance than on individuality and intellect is at the heart of the matter.

Complex technologically oriented societies require a vibrant political discourse and citizen participation in decision making to allow exploration of all the difficult choices. For culture adapts myth and science is part of culture, but it tries to avoid distortion in adaptation by basing explanations on observation and data. This does not mean that there are not disagreements about just what is observed and what it means, on the contrary, but it is precisely that disagreement and discussion that is required.

Man’s need to use human centered belief systems to understand, balanced with the use of reason to quantify and measure, is one route out of despair at the cataract of change that daily overwhelms his life. , Is it not too much to hope that man can find and implement systems and world-views that place him in a closer homeostatic balance to the ideals of ecological conservation and preservation of biological diversity: i.e., an ethos conservative of life and liberal of possibilities while respecting individual choice? Man’s flawed growth is exasperating, but should never dim hopes that Faith, Reason and Love can sustain humanity; or, dismiss the examples of effectively run organizations like the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program that has operated millions of nuclear reactor hours without an accident, or of individuals with moral backbone like Admiral H.G. Rickover that implemented the program.

Perhaps religion is the conservative counterweight to science’s liberal creation; but, more fundamentally an ecological perspective like John Holland’s Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) with all the detailed, interlaced strands, instead of Shepard Kresch’s vague hints of war and trade networks (without delving into the details of those networks) as drivers of behavioral change will become more and more a mandatory part of man’s thinking process. Although any system complex enough to describe man’s environment and his interactions with it will require dedicated effort to understand, many individuals and institutions have started on this holistic path.

And, there is hope of success, for complex systems like nuclear power generation are studied and comprehended; and, strict safety guidelines and procedures have proven to be effective (at least in democratic countries where the state must respond to its citizens.) Man need not retreat back to smoky fires in sandstone caves. The essential point being, that all attempts to broaden comprehension expand not only horizons of understanding and manipulation, but also empathetic vision. New models and vocabularies are created: metaphors that expand and enrich humanity’s cultural world.

For although man’s heritage, his evolutionary fitness, if you will, is to fill his gut, satiate his lust and watch his children grow; not, to look at long-term trends of even a few years or to delve into complex relationships and interactions. (One has only to briefly scan news headlines to see that humans build houses on beaches where tsunamis crash on them, where volcanoes erupt on them, where rivers flood them, where mountainsides slide down on them, etc.) Man does possess tremendous inherent capacities for observation, introspection and regeneration; and, for myth creation and elaboration. And, maybe storytelling of a hero’s battling insurmountable odds, that atavism of man’s huddling by a fire, is one key to successful adaptation.

One final thought: surprise is in the nature of the chaotic systems that drive human lives, whether they be energetic, biological, economical, or ecological linkages that bind us in complex ways. Albert Einstein’s thought that “men are like drifting sand, and one is never certain what tomorrow will lay above him,” should give man pause as he seeks solutions for a victory over nature. Migration, extinction or adaptation has always been the fate of all species. In that light, the continuing saga of the Navajo and Uranium, and their cultural adaptation in the face of adversity and continual change, leaves much to think about; especially, about what tales of horrible monsters, and how astutely and nobly they were battled, man will tell his children and grandchildren.