If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans [Hardcover]

Peter H. Eichstaedt (Author), Murrae Haynes (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

This book is an in-depth look at the mining on Navajo land in the Southwest over the course of three decades and the devastating effects.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

One of several recent publications that reveal the extent to which Americans were poisoned by radiation after World War II, this work describes mining on the Navajo reservation from the late 1940s and early 1950s and then pursues its consequences into the 1990s. Eichstaedt follows the miners' quest for truth and compensation for widespread radiation contamination. Routinely exposed to radiation far in excess of safe levels and never informed, the miners began dying from mining-related illness within a few years of working in the mines. After long and frustrating battles, Congress finally passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990. Eichstaedt offers a well-documented, emotional account of the plight of the Navajos that complements Stewart Udall's The Myths of August (LJ 5/15/94) and Carole Gallagher's American Ground Zero (LJ 4/15/93). Recom-mended.
Randy Dykhuis, OHIONET, Columbus, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This examination by a longtime reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican of the devastating consequences that the nation's love affair with the atom had for Native Americans in the Southwest provides further support for the grim story that Stewart Udall tells in The Myths of August (BKL Je 1 94). (Eichstaedt acknowledges Udall, a major player in Navajo uranium miners' long battle for compensation, as a source of both documents and "moral and spiritual guidance.") If You Poison Us effectively combines scientific, political, business, and tribal history, sketching "how uranium mining began on Indian lands . . . and how its deadly legacy still lingers. . . . " Although the suits that Udall and others brought on behalf of Native Americans ultimately failed, Congress in recent years has begun to take action. (Notably, legislation to date addresses compensation for uranium miners but not for those exposed to huge doses of radiation in uranium mills, and cleanup of uranium mills but not the hundreds of uranium mines scattered across Southwestern Native American land.) A cogent, powerful report on an unnecessary tragedy. Mary Carroll

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Red Crane Books; 1st edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878610406
• ISBN-13: 978-1878610409
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,146,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Every time you use a cell phone or computer, you could be contributing to the death toll in the world's most violent region: the eastern Congo.

In Consuming the Congo, War and Conflict Minerals in the World's Deadliest Place, Peter Eichstaedt goes into these killing fields to unearth what is behind the bloodshed of eastern Congo, where 5 million people have died in the past dozen years, traveling the countryside to hear the stories of those who live this nightmarish reality.

He talks with survivors of villages decimated by war and desperate miners slogging through muck while militias and renegade army units roam the jungles, killing and raping with impunity, taking the profits, and leaving villagers to grueling labor, brutality, and disease.

Millions of Congolese have died, and the bloodletting continues at a frightening pace.

Consuming the Congo not only reveals the story behind the headlines, but examines how we, as part of the problem, can become part of the solution.

Peter Eichstaedt is a journalist and author dedicated revealing the stories behind human rights abuses. Formerly senior editor for Uganda Radio Network and Africa editor for the Institute of war and Peace in Reporting in The Hague, Netherlands, Eichstaedt has traveled extensively in Africa to cover war crimes and trials.

He won the 2010 Colorado Book Award for history for his book First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.

Details of his most recent book, Pirate State: Inside Somalia's Terrorism at Sea can be found at www.piratestatesomalia.com.

In it, readers enter the world of piracy through encounters with pirates, their defenders, and those who chase and capture them. Readers meet Somali refugees who have fled the internecine violence that has wracked Somalia and who now struggle to survive in Kenyan refugee camps. The book includes chilling revelations of a former fighter of the deadly al-Shabaab Islamic militia that controls much of southern Somalia.

Eichstaedt's previous book, First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, (Lawrence Hill Books, February 2009), reveals the horrors behind 20 years of a rebel war in northern Uganda. Eichstaedt explains the origins of this vicious cult army responsible for an estimated 100,000 deaths and displacement of 2 million Ugandans. Although the rebel army has abandoned northern Uganda, it continues to kill, loot and abduct children in the Central Africa Republic and the western regions of South Sudan.

Eichstaedt's first book, If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Red Crane 1994), is a ground-breaking work of investigative journalism that exposed the human and environmental devastation of uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation. In this seminal study of environmental racism, Eichstaedt reveals that federal officials were aware of the deadly health risks that unregulated exposure to uranium posed to the largely Navajo miners. Rather than taking steps to mitigate the problem, federal health officials documented the decline and death of thousands of uranium miners.

He received a Fulbright grant in journalism in 1999 and has lived and worked in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the former Soviet Union. He makes his home base near Denver, Colorado, and is currently on assignment in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Environmental Justice, December 9, 1999

By 

claire (Arlington, Va) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Hardcover)

This book explains in great detail the injustices committed agains the Dineh (Navajo) people in the last century. The book explains the connection between Uranium mining and ill effects on the Dineh people. It explores issues like the health effects, environmental effects, and workers compensation for uranium mining. It has firsthand accounts of victims of radiation exposure. This book was very helpful for a paper I wrote for a college course. I would reccommend this book for those interested. It is well written and explains the uranium issue in a understandable way.