Uranium Legacy: Church Rock [by: Zachary Trischitta]
Channel: Jordan O. James
Date: 16/05/2022

Indigenous communities have dealt with the legacy of Uranium mines for over half a century. The mines were operated by ill informed native americans, and the same workers were left to deal with their freshly irradiated land, resulting in health problems from being exposed to extreme levels of radiation both in the mines, and on the surface. The Red Pond Water community, located in Church Rock New Mexico, has spent decades on land that is unfit for human inhabitants. The struggle that community members have made have been long lasting, and their pleas for change have always fallen on the deaf ears of the NRC. On April 25th, the Red Pond Water community was finally heard on their own land, for the first time in Navajo history. My project is the documentation of this struggle, told through the voices of community members who have been affected by this injustice. I have primarily structured this documentation through pictures and videos that I took over the course of a few days spent on their reservation. These pictures and videos tell a story of their own, but my narration and explanation of findings alongside them help to paint the whole picture of their story. The results of this project were overwhelmingly positive. I went into this thinking I would get a chance to speak to a few community members and share their stories, but instead I got to witness a historic moment for a community that so desperately needed to be heard. I was able to both gather information on the effects of nuclear waste on indigenous land, and watch the issue become a live look into their defining moment as a community. Above all else, I was accepted into the community not as an onlooker, but as an ally to their cause.