MISSION: Southwest Research and Information Center is a multi-cultural organization working to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and secure environmental and social justice now and for future generations

Laguna and Acoma Pueblos

"How many more deaths must it take to make people understand that uranium mining is hazardous? We are in a state of emergency. We can no longer close our eyes to the fact that our Mother Earth is suffering. We have the obligation to spread our stories so that others may learn from them."

– Carletta Garcia

Carletta Garcia
My name is Carletta Garcia and I am here representing the people of Laguna and Acoma Pueblos. The reservations of the Laguna and Acoma people are located in the western area of New Mexico. As a child I was raised on the Laguna reservation. The village of Paguate is one of seven villages located in Laguna. Paguate is where the world’s largest open pit uranium mine in North America once existed. The Anaconda Jackpile uranium mine began operations in 1953 at the start of the nuclear age. The western part of New Mexico had one of the richest uranium ore deposits. The Jackpile mine was just one of many located in the Grants Mineral Belt in the New Mexico and Arizona desert. Twenty-four million tons of ore was mined over thirty-year period at Jackpile. It was a 24-hour a day operation that lasted until it ceased operation in March of 1982. The Atomic Energy Commission was the primary buyer of uranium ore from the Jackpile mine, so there was a high probability that this ore was used to build the nuclear arsenal of the United States of America.

I grew up in the peak of the mining operation – our house sits on top of the sandstone mesa with a view of the mine directly below. The view of the mine goes on for miles and miles. I vividly remember my childhood. Living in Paguate was similar to living in a war. Everyday at noon and again at dinnertime, a dynamite explosion would occur and violently shake the homes upon the sandstone mesa. Our families would be sitting down to eat and a siren would go off, warning us that an explosion was about to take place. The children would leave the table and run outside to view the explosion. The adults would go outside because they feared that their homes were unsafe. If the wind was blowing just right, a fine layer of sand would envelop the village, and the lingering smell of sulfur would permeate our homes for hours. As a child, I never realized that uranium was a dangerous mineral that would impact my life forever.

Uranium is a dense mineral that is used in the nuclear power industry. It is also used in military weapons. There are three uranium levels, Uranium-234, -235, and -238. Uranium-238 is the most common isotope. It can be converted to Plutonium-239, which is a fissionable material used as fuel in nuclear reactors. Because all uranium isotopes are primary alpha-admitters, they are only hazardous if ingested or inhaled. However, because several of the radioactive uranium decay products are gamma-admitters, workers in a vicinity of large quantities of uranium in storage or processing facilities can be exposed to low-level of external radiation.

My mother was a single parent who began working at the mine in 1975. Jobs on the reservation were very scarce, especially if you were a woman, so she jumped at the chance to work at the mine, not knowing that it was dangerous and it would turn her world upside down. While employed at the Jackpile mine, mom would drive the large trucks containing high-grade uranium ore to the different dumpsites. She and her colleagues would eat their meals on top of the piles of uranium ore. No one told them it was dangerous. My mother was employed until 1982, when the Jackpile mine closed their operations. The price of uranium had plummeted to an all time low, and suddenly the people in the villages of Acoma and Laguna were in turmoil. Many people employed by the mine had taken out car and home loans because of the high salaries obtained at the mine. Much of their property was repossessed, and people filed for bankruptcy. The younger generation such as I didn’t plan for our future because of the high salaries the uranium mine provided.

I worked at the mine for two years. I ceased working because I decided to get married. In August of 1981 I married a wonderful man from the Acoma village named Myron Garcia. My husband was raised on the Acoma reservation in a little house along the train tracks. This railway transported the uranium ore from the Anaconda Jackpile mine to the Grants mill site. My husband’s older brothers both worked in the underground mines near Grants for several years. Every day they would come home with their contaminated clothing, and have it laundered along with the family's.

Myron and I were blessed with two sons: Zachary and Spencer. We shared many joyous years as a family, never expecting the terrible tragedy that would await us. In the spring of 1993, my mother Dorothy Purley found two lumps in her right breast. Upon consultation with her doctor, we found out that my mom had contracted a rare case of lymphoma, which is a cancer of the immune system. She was sent to the UNM Cancer Center to receive chemotherapy treatments. In 1997 my husband was diagnosed with a rare from of skin cancer called Mycosis Fungoids, which is classified as a two-celled lymphoma. He too was sent to the UNM Cancer Center to receive full radiation treatments. I use to tease Mom and Myron that we should just rent room at the Cancer Center, since one or the other was there almost every day. Our family had a wicked sense of humor, which probably helped us get through the rough and stressed time.

My mother Dorothy was a feisty woman. Getting cancer was a turning point of my mother’s life. She began to notice that many people in the pueblo were becoming ill with cancer and wondered why. Even though Mom was gravely ill, she was determined to advocate against mining on indigenous land. Mom became very active and tried to carry her message wherever she traveled. I had the opportunity to travel with her on numerous occasions. In the summer of 1999, I attended the Hague Peace Conference in the Netherlands because she was hospitalized and too ill to attend. There I delivered her words, her thoughts, and her prayers. In the fall of 1999, my mother received the Nuclear Free Future Award at Los Alamos, New Mexico. My family and I are very proud of her accomplishments.

Sadly her cancer resurfaced, and because she was weakened by the chemotherapy treatments, she could not fight anymore. Before her death, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for the above ground mill workers was put into place. This is one of the areas that my mother tirelessly lobbied for. My mother died on December 2, 1999. My family and I have been through many joys and sorrows. I lost my beloved husband Myron last year. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died shortly afterward. I buried the love of my life on our 24th wedding anniversary. I don’t want to see this happen to anyone. It is important that we address these issues here. How many more deaths must it take to make people to understand that uranium mining is hazardous? We are in a state of emergency. We can no longer close our eyes to the fact that our Mother Earth is suffering. We have the obligation to spread our stories so that others may learn form them.

Al Waconda
My name is Al Waconda. I am a resident of the village of Paguate. I live pretty close to the mining area. Every morning when I come out the door I see the dumps and the mine. It is constantly with me, I see it all the time. I worked in the mines for 11 years – seven years in open-pit mining, and four underground.

It’s really been nice over the years to see a number of organizations and other people helping us in Laguna with so many different things. We tried to get educated about uranium issues. You hear about exposure, health impacts, social impacts, cultural impacts, and traditional impacts, all of the things affecting our community. And it is going to continue, because the mining has taken place already. We can’t seem to take any of our traditions back. We have lost some of them already. Yes, there is a lot of talk about trying to bring the language back and bringing back our traditional ways. But a lot of the elders have passed on already. What can we do?

I want to talk about my experiences in Paguate. Dorothy Purley and I used to approach our village members. We tried to educate them as much as we could about radiation and uranium, about how bad it was and why we should not continue with it. Dorothy used to really get frustrated, because our community member’s would listen, and they would agree with a lot of those things, but the people wouldn’t speak out for some reason. We are afraid to get up in front of people and talk about what is happening to us. When you talk to people one-on-one in our community, they pour everything out to you. They are hurt, but in public they don’t want to do that. It seems like when they are speaking in public, then we are talking against our tribal government. But it is our tribal government that should be taking the lead in guiding us back to where we should go.

We have tried to work with our tribal government and to do a house study. We have talked to them, had people come in, and tried a number of things. It has been hard to get this across, especially to our tribal government. In our village, it was just Dorothy and I speaking out. Dorothy was a great impact, as far as where we wanted to move. She was my support every time we spoke out. We lost that. We are now trying different ways get our information across.

When I went to Salzburg, I mentioned that I was going to try and get an education program started at our middle school. We were successful in doing that. We managed to obtain funds, and had some dedicated teachers that kept the program running for a number of years. Unfortunately, we lose teachers, and along with that we lose part o f the curriculum that they developed. It is hard to bring that back. A lot of our teachers live outside of our community – they don’t live in Laguna and Acoma. They were never impacted by the uranium mining, so they don’t understand why we do these things, or why it is so important to us that we talk about these things.

I believe that events like this bring us back together and energize us again. We are still educating our youth. We feel that this is a major part that we need to concentrate on, and continue networking with educators to get the programs into the elementary school. It is important for them to understand the history of Laguna.

How can other communities be assisted from the World Uranium Summit? It’s really hard to say, but when it comes from our own surrounding community, you need to understand the people there. You just can’t bring in a number of individuals and say, let’s do this. That’s not how our people operate; that is not how we work. We move at a slow pace. Unfortunately, that pace sometimes doesn’t work. The Havasupai tribe and the Navajo Nation are totally against uranium mining. I’m hoping that those tribal governments can talk to the other tribal governments that have uranium resources and discourage mining. Thank you.