Megan Vickery 07:41
Wow, yeah, that’s frightening.

Teracita Keyanna 07:42
Yeah, yeah. It was, yeah. It was.

Megan Vickery 07:47
Could you describe for me, kind of the layout, geography of your community and how they are connected to those mine and mill sites?

Teracita Keyanna 07:56
Yeah, so our community sits right between the Kerr-McGee mine and the United Nuclear mine. So think of how Moab is, how its placed, and how there’s kind of mountains everywhere. It’s almost like in a valley. That’s kind of how our community sits, it’s just not as big as Moab. But the community sits right between two of them [uranium sites]. So the largest one is the United Nuclear Corporation, and that one, it sits on the south — no north, northwest side of the community. No, it’s south, southwest side. And then the northeast side of the community is the Kerr-McGee mine, and so we sit right in there. And then half a mile south of the community is the mill. So that’s kind of just the proximity of where our community sits and and how, if you, if you listen to any of the weather reports and things like that, it tells you where the wind’s coming from and where the storms are coming from. And you start to understand that the community was just downwind of one of the mines, and you could, you can kind of give that visualization of dust storms and things like that just passing through the community, and all that dust coming from a mine site and just flowing into the community. And also it was just — our community sits downstream from the same mine, the United Nuclear Corporation, which is now owned by GE.

Megan Vickery 10:01
It’s not still operating?

Teracita Keyanna 10:02
It’s not still operating. They are currently looking into the cleanup — and quotations on that “cleanup” — because it’s not really, for us as a community, it’s not really a cleanup, because the the waste will still be near the community. It’s just going right over the state highway, highway 566, and it’s quote unquote “on their property,” and quote unquote “off Indian land.” So we take that with a grain of salt, because yes, we did get clean up, but at the cost of not being able to actually say that it was out of the community.

Megan Vickery 10:50
I want to talk about your work now, but before we get there, I want to come back to a few more like memories from your time just growing up in that area. I’m curious about family members and community members that were working in the mines, and what you remember about them and how they thought about that work.

Teracita Keyanna 11:14
So because of the actual movement into the community, my grandmother made it a point that the mine actually had to hire the kids near the mine for summer jobs, and, you know, making sure that at least the community members were getting some type of compensation, even though they’re working there. And a lot of them, it was a summer job where they were kind of like the gopher of the office areas and things like that. They weren’t really working inside the mines until they became adults. And, you know, one of my aunts, she became a security guard, so she didn’t work exactly in the mines, but she was still exposed, because the trucks would pass by her security station, and she ended up passing away from cirrhosis of the liver. But she wasn’t a drinker. And another one of my aunts who did work, I believe she kind of did the same thing, not security work, but work nearby. I never heard of her stories of actually working in the mine, but she, as well, wasn’t — isn’t a heavy drinker, and she had cirrhosis of her liver as well, and she had to get a transplant. And so that’s one of the only reasons why she’s still alive, is because she did have a transplant, and she was able to get better from it. And so these impacts, you can tell, are still there, even though they didn’t work in the actual mine. My other aunt, she worked in the mine, but she also worked mostly up top, and she was a person who actually saw the grade of the ore by testing it. She had a little, she had a little mechanism. She called it the “pokey.” I was like, “Oh, that’s an interesting name,” but she kind of had it there, like, almost like a purse, but it was a wand where she would poke it near the ore to see what, what the grade would be, where it needed to be sent, things like that. So she, she was the one who tested the actual ore and then she ended up getting different types of cancers that she’s had to deal with. I have an uncle who used to work underground, and he’s — he has all kinds of different physical health issues. He does have cirrhosis, but he became a heavy drinker, especially after he noticed that his health was failing in general, where he was turning into a diabetic. He was — he had hypertension, different kind of heart issues, and now he has ulcers. And so those are things that he’s dealing with now, today. And so he actually lives with me, and so he could be near the hospital, because I moved closer to the hospital area because of my kids. They weren’t miners, but one was born with a hole in his heart, and the other continues to get different bumps that have to be removed by dermatologists, sent to pathology, and then we play the waiting game of, “Is it cancer or not?” And so those are the things that even the next generation after myself are dealing with. Even though they weren’t miners, they weren’t there for extended periods of time, they didn’t play on the mine sites. So it kind of just tells you the dangers of having to be exposed on a daily basis. And with the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, which is part of a UNM and Southwest Research Information Center partnership and health project, that they’re looking at the effects of uranium or being near mine sites and being pregnant, and they’re seeing that even though these babies are not miners, they are still being born with uranium in their body, and so there is still that movement of the radiation going from mom and into baby. And so they’re seeing that, and they’re also seeing different types of impacts, and it’s mostly dealing with their emotional mental health, but also their learning capabilities. My youngest has dyslexia, and that’s something that other people, other communities, who have never been part of the Birth Cohort Study, that I have met that have these types of issues. And I’m like, “huh, did you know..?” That’s when it comes down to, “Did you know with the Birth Cohort Study, we’re seeing this?” And then they’re like, “Well, maybe that’s why my whole family’s like that.” And so we’re seeing these correlations, but it’s not just on Navajo. This new one that I discovered was in Laguna Acoma, and they’re dealing with different types of just impacts and exposures, either not being a miner, like our community, or being a miner straight up. So it’s kind of, you see it, but you can’t really say anything, because nobody’s ever really done these health studies until now.