Yellow has long been a symbolically significant color within Diné (Navajo) culture, affiliated with Changing Woman, or Asdz ą ą Nádleehé, among the most important of the Diné Holy People, who is often given yellow corn pollen as an offering. She is in many ways a personification of Earth herself, responsible for the changing seasons; for the birth of the original clans from whom all Diné are descended; and for Diné women’s transition through puberty. Yellow is also aligned with one of the four sacred mountains that delineates the parameters of Dinétah, the Diné homelands.

But in the 20th and 21st centuries, the color yellow has taken on another association: the poisonous dust released by uranium mining and milling that took place on the Navajo Nation—a reservation located on portions of present-day Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah—between 1942 and 1986, initially under the auspices of the Manhattan Project, and subsequently the Atomic Energy Commission, established by passage of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act.

Enriched uranium oxide powder fuels nuclear power plants and, with additional processing, can also be used as the fissile core of nuclear bombs. The United States government therefore put a premium on locating domestic sources of uranium during the early years of the Cold War, and when significant ore deposits were found on Diné territory, federal officials pressured the Navajo Nation Council into leasing the land to mining corporations. Struggling with widespread poverty, misled into believing the mining operations would stimulate economic development, and given no information about the (known) health hazards of such extraction, council members agreed.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.