Article
The photography by Mary F. Calvert was supported by the Pulitzer Center and funding from the Lena Grant sponsored by HumanEYES USA and WPOW (Women Photojournalists of Washington)
If, as widely expected, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland survives her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday and is sworn in as secretary of the interior, she will make history as the first Native American ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet.
But representation is only half the battle. From day one, Haaland will also be expected to address a festering backlog of problems left behind by predecessors who lacked her perspective as a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, one of America’s 574 federally recognized tribes.
Helen Nez in her home in Blue Gap, Ariz. Image by Mary F. Calvert. United States, 2020.
Helen Nez was just a child when men from the mining companies asked her to carry around a small device that detects uranium while she was herding sheep near her home in Blue Gap, Ariz. When the device went off, she would put a stake in the ground at that location. The mining companies used the local Navajo people to detect the location of the uranium. All those stakes in the ground became the Claim 28 uranium mine site. She grew up a half mile from the mine.