Oases in Navajo desert contained nuclear 'a witch's brew'

[Fledermaus]

Cameron, Ariz. — In all her years of tending sheep in the western reaches of the Navajo range, Lois Neztsosie had never seen anything so odd.

New lakes had appeared as if by magic in the arid scrublands. Instead of hunting for puddles in the sandstone, she could lead her 100 animals to drink their fill. She would quench her own thirst as well, parting the film on the water's surface with her hands and leaning down to swallow.

Despite the abundant water, an unexpected blessing, her flock failed to thrive. The birthrate dropped, and the few new lambs that did appear had a hard time walking. Some were born without eyes.

Lois' husband, David, wondered whether the sheepdogs were mating with their charges. A medicine man, he also suspected witchcraft. He tried to fight the spell by burning cedar and herbs and gathering the sheep around the fire to inhale the healing smoke.

The livestock were not his only worry. A mysterious sickness was affecting the couple's two youngest daughters.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-navajo20nov20,0,1812957.story

[Sonoman]

1. This should be required reading.

And fuck El Paso.

Sonoman

[RKP5637]

2. Recommend!!! n/t

[femrap]

3. I wish

the Native Americans ruled our land.

[NNadir]

5. Um, they ran the Kayenta coal mines and coal fired plant for many decades.

Never heard of it?

Why am I not surprised?

The, um, Navajo contract with Peabody:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2010/06/22/20100622johnson22.html

Couldn't care less?

I thought so.

The idea that native American health is mostly impacted by uranium mining is a fantasy on the part of people who have never opened an epidemiology paper in their pathetic lives.

It's um, anti-science. Two million people could die dead as a doornail every year from air pollution - most related to so called "renewable" biomass burning - and the scientifically illiterate will still be talking about a few sheep.

How do I know? http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/index.html">Because it happens year after year after year after year, decade after decade after decade.

And the scientifically illiterate anti-nukes?

They want to talk about sheep.

Why?

Because, um, they are sheep. If you look, you will see that there is NOT ONE scientifically illiterate anti-nuke who is talking about anything that didn't happen decades ago. Since they not even remotely connected to the present, and live in a fantasy past, they are, well, conservatives. A conservative is by definition someone who believes that their own concerns, immutable, dogmatic, and unyielding, is the only way to see things.

Ignorance kills, which is why conservatives kill.

[Confusious]

6. Your idea that the Native Americans were a peaceful people

is sadly misplaced. My grandfather wrote about a war party that was almost entirely killed and scalped except for one, who was scalped alive.

[tavalon]

4. It's always the same tactics

And that's really all I will say about it on DU. There are certain topics, such as heavy metal poisoning, that DUers tend to be very closed minded about.

It's really interesting how you don't find environmental causes unless you look and many were studiously not looking in this case and in the one I'm involved in. At least my child won't die. I can be grateful for that. But I will curse the CDC/Geberding and the lying Dr.Verstaedten to the end of my days.

[Nihil]

7. Sad. Just sad.

That story was a tragic compendium of ignorance supported by both greed
and the straitjacket of establishment science (prior conviction, suppression
and expectancy biases).

Ignorance:

> Lois' husband, David, wondered whether the sheepdogs were mating with
> their charges.

> A medicine man, he also suspected witchcraft. He tried to fight the spell by burning
> cedar and herbs and gathering the sheep around the fire to inhale the healing smoke.


The official line became calcified:
> In the years to come, researchers would pronounce in more and more certain
> terms that the illness was purely hereditary. They called it "Navajo neuropathy."
> There was no cure.


It took years for the "official line" to be questioned:
> In reports to the tribal government, he wrote that "the Indian Health Service,
> as the primary public health providers for the Navajo people" should "make every
> effort" to warn residents not to drink from the shallow wells or let their
> livestock drink from the pits.
> The tribe, Payne wrote, "must mount a concerted program to restrict access of
> livestock to the heavily contaminated pits and impoundments."

... but then the solution fell foul of greed again:
> Reaux was reluctant to commit his agency's resources to uranium-related health
> hazards because the cost seemed open-ended. But on reading Payne's findings, he
> recommended that the health service "get involved in determining if there are
> contaminated water sites in Cameron … and other areas," adding that the IHS
> "may also have to support this effort financially."
> The suggestion died quietly.

> Neither the tribe nor the IHS mounted the educational campaign urged by Payne.


> Navajos who were drinking from the pits or watering their animals there had no
> reason to stop.


Finally, you return to stupidity: even when the person concerned has gone through
years of education and personal experience of the truth of that education, they
continue with the same stupid behaviour ...

> But old habits hang on. One day, on her way to visit Linnie's grave on the
> sagebrush plain, Lois pulled over at a familiar spot. While Laura waited in the
> truck, the mother walked a short way from the dirt road and lifted boards that
> had been placed over a natural watering hole to keep coyotes away.
> Lois was thirsty and didn't hesitate. She leaned down and drank deeply from
> the spring.

:-(

[jpak]

8. Centuries in the future, when spent fuel repositories are breached and the fission products migrate

Future medicine men will again proclaim "witchcraft" has caused the "new plague".

and they will be right...

yup

[Nihil]

9. Considering how defensive some people get when ...

... members of the anti-nuke brigade are accused of being superstitious & ignorant,
it's quite funny to see it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak) ...

> Future medicine men will again proclaim "witchcraft" has caused the "new plague".
> and they will be right...
> yup

:evilgrin: