Navajo Nation Says No To More Uranium Mining Development
By Gwynne Ann Unruh, The Paper.
Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining(ENDAUM) just said No! to the U.S. government to further uranium development. Finally, after drawing that line 10 years ago, their case alleging the U.S. violated the human rights of Navajo communities will be heard by the International Human Rights Body, an independent commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) based in Washington, D.C.
The hearing of ENDAUM et al. v. United States of America is only the second time that the human rights body has found a case of environmental justice against the United States admissible. The Commission’s decision to hear a case involving environmental racism in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” petitioned by Mossville Environmental Action Now was the first time.
The ENDAUM petition alleges that the United States “by its acts and omissions that have contaminated and will continue to contaminate natural resources in the Diné communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock … has violated Petitioners’ human rights and breached its obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.” The full petition can be accessed here: bit.ly/37cpFi9
ENDAUM is a grassroots nonprofit organization formed in 1994 when the community realized the proposed in situ leach (ISL) uranium mines by Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI)—now owned by Canadian mining company Laramide Resources Inc.—would contaminate the waters of Crownpoint and Church Rock. The National Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a source and byproduct materials license to HRI (now Laramide) to conduct uranium mining using ISL technology at four sites in the Navajo communities of Church Rock and Crownpoint in northwestern New Mexico. …