Navajo Prez Shelly: I oppose uranium mining

Here at International Uranium Film Festival at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz. The film festival is from Dec. 2 to 4, 2013. Live streaming at:
www.usstream.tv/channel/iuff-4you

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly repeated again that his administration opposes any uranium mining. Even before we talk about uranium mining, the Navajo Nation wants all the former uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation cleaned up.
Remediation of ground water is also a presidential concern.
Case studies of health risks.
Recommendations for new five-year plan: job, job training. Work force funding funnels thru states and I don’t support that. The funding shud go thru Bureau of Indian Affairs and directly to Navajo Nation.

The first film starts at 1 pm today, 12-2-13, at the museum. It is “Tailings”, which was filmed outside Grants, N.M., and is about a 200-acre heap of toxic uranium waste. After 30 years of failed cleanup, the waste has deeply contaminated the air and water near the former uranium capital of the world. The film is a cinematic investigation into the pile that is gravely shaping the lives of those who are stuck living in its shadow.

The second film is “Dii’go to Baahaane: Four Stories About Water, which is a four part meditation on the Navajo people’s problems with contaminated drinking water. Nearly one our of three people on the Navajo Reservation struggle with this issue. Four Stories About Water opens with a waterfall of people who reveal the scope of water contamination problems on Navajo lands, from the health problems that were likely caused by uranium tailings left uncovered to the view of water as a “spiritual element” to the fact that 30 percent of the Navajo people don’t have access to safe water.

The third film, “U: Uranium” is about waters and health of native and non-native communities near the Grand Canyon and across the Southwest have been contaminated by decades of uranium mining and milling. Today, thousands of new uranium mining claims have been filed on the Colorado River Watershed, and directly threaten the water supplies of 25 millin people. Join us in a conversation to help us understand more about uranium – what we know about it, its effects on people, and how to protect our future from any further harm from uranium.

“Sacred Poison” is the fourth film and is about the legacy of uranium mining which has left the Navajo people, who live where there is limited clean water, with contaminated water that is killing children with cancer.

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