Today, hundreds of mines lie abandoned across New Mexico’s Indigenous lands. So do scores of eroding radioactive landfills meant to bury uranium mine waste.
COVID-19 ravaged Indigenous tribes in New Mexico. State and federal data reveal how a long legacy of uranium exposure may have made them uniquely vulnerable.
In a historic move, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made the trek from Washington D.C. all the way to western New Mexico on April 22 to meet with Navajo tribal members and leaders who desperately want uranium contamination off their lands. KUNM talked with New Mexico In Depth’s Marjorie Childress to find out what the community was saying.