Artist Statement

My long-term project “Sacred Land, Scarred Land” is a critical examination of landscape change, environmental injustice & racism, wastelanding, settler colonialism, and the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation, a marginalized, indigenous community in the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. The Navajo Nation has experienced injustice and betrayal since the first miners arrived on their lands. Malpractice of depositing millions of tons of low-level radioactive mine waste near settlements continuously contaminated natural resources on which the Navajo depend.

This is the visual story of an underrepresented and vulnerable minority which suffers from a hazardous environment and increased cancer rates for almost eight decades due to lack of information, financial and legal support, and health protection from the invisible threat of uranium and radiation.

Uranium mines were operated on Navajo land between 1944 and 1962. In 2005 the Navajo government banned uranium mining. Mining waste was removed in joint remediation efforts by the U.S. and Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agencies. The clean-up, however, is ongoing, slow, and continuously underfunded. Permanent scars remain visible in the landscape, land that is sacred to the people of the Navajo Nation. Burials, springs, and ceremonial places were desecrated and permanently destroyed.

Wells and natural springs are polluted with unhealthy levels of heavy metals, nitrate, and radiation. Groundwater can no longer be used as drinking water. People must buy expensive bottled water and haul water for livestock from central water stations many miles away from their home. Many elderly people are traditional sheep herders and farmers who lack support from their families or the government. They depend on non-profit organizations to provide water. The Navajo Water Project estimates that 30% of families on the Navajo Nation live without running water.

My work is a reminder of the sorrow, grief, and anger, that economic greed and uranium mining brought to the people in this remote area of the United States. Very few miners from that time are still alive to tell the stories firsthand. The next generations of Navajo will have to deal with numerous disposal sites that threaten water ways and aquifers. The disposal sites on Navajo land are designed for 200 to 1,000 years, where half-life of Uranium is longer than 150,000 years. There is no alternative long-term storage plan available in 2024. [sf]