Testing: Book Three Navajo Uranium Miners
By Fred Hagstrom
[Albuquerque, New Mexico]: Strong Silent Type Press, 2024. Edition of 15.
15 x11.5”; 28 pages. Printed in relief. Font is Ariel. Quotes used with permission from the Navajo Nation Museum. Signed and numbered by the artist. Bound in illustrated boards with cloth spine.
Fred Hagstrom: “’Testing: Book Three- Navajo Uranium Miners’ tells the stories of the Navajo miners, and their families, as they dealt with the health consequences of their work in the mines. The quotes are all from the miners and their family members, documenting the poor health conditions in the mines, and the experiences of living close to the mines and the tailings piles. Quotes were used with permission from the Navajo Nation Museum.”
Quotes from miners:
Dan Benally: “My throat feel sore around here. It's like this. We use to drink the water down in the mines. The water use to run off the ceiling of the mines and we drink that. We use put containers under the water.”
Dorothy Mae Zohannie: “She (the doctor) told my dad that it's the uranium, you know, that the coughing up blood is from uranium. But this was never recorded into his medical records. And also his own X-ray were all destroyed… which we never knew about after they have been dead for, after they haven't been dead for five years.”
LeRoy Deal: “The only thing we got was earplugs. What was going down our throats, they did nothing about. We drank water that ran out of the cracks in the rocks. It must have been uranium water.”
George Tutt: “When work stopped at the end of the shift, they just got out of the mines and went straight home. They were not told to wash or anything like that.
“It was spread out, pure yellow. We transported it in wheelbarrows. It was called uranium. Our clothes we worked in were all washed at home. So they were exposed to it.”