In September, 1990, a meeting was held at the Cove Chapter house of the Navajo Indian Nation. In the 1940's and 1950's, American Indians from the local community mined uranium ore from the hills around Cove for the atomic weapons program of the United States. Now the area is the location of a cluster of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases related to uranium.
For two days inside the Chapter house the Navajo's listened to testimony from former miners and relatives of miners who had died. The United States Congress had just passed a law authorizing cash payments to some of the miners or their family members who could prove the miners had received a certain level of exposure to radiation in the mines and who then subsequently developed lung cancer or one of several other respiratory diseases.
The meeting was conducted almost entirely in the Navajo language. In addition to testimony from surviving miners, there were also presentations by the Navajo Nation's Abandoned Minelands Reclamation Project and also the tribe's Office of Navajo Uranium Workers. They were attempting to deal with the aftermath of uranium mining in the area, including identifying hundreds of mining sites in the area, compiling a registry of all tribal mine and mill workers, assisting with the complicated claims process for compensation, and improving health services for the many sick and injured people.
