Yellow Dirt by Judy Pasternak

Author:Judy Pasternak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2011-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

The pit-lakes still rippled in the western desert in 1992 when a form letter arrived in the Neztsosie household. Who knew that a simple business solicitation arriving at their cinderblock home would loom so large over the rest of their lives? A Colorado attorney named Cherie Daut announced that she would soon visit the chapter house in nearby Tuba City. She was seeking clients among the former miners who were now eligible for compensation, charging a 10 percent commission to help them navigate the paperwork.

The Neztsosie sons and daughters who had been to boarding school could read the advertisement. They thought maybe they too could use a lawyer. Maybe this bilagáana lady could push the IHS to offer more aggressive treatment for their little sisters, the clawed and suffering girls. Maybe she could find them doctors who could cure this Navajo neuropathy.

On the appointed day, Daut appeared in the Tuba City chapter house to answer questions. She had expected the handful of wheezing miners who appeared, but soon enough she was faced with a surprise. The door to the chapter house opened and Laura Neztsosie entered. She struggled toward the lawyer in leg braces. Plump, pleasant Linnie followed in a wheelchair. Last came their older brother, David. They needed him to drive to town, but they didn’t need him to speak.

Laura slammed her frozen fingers on the table where Daut had set up shop. “Please help me!” she cried in her high, thin voice.

The sisters’ appearance shocked the lawyer. Daut was reminded of a photograph that she’d seen years before in Life magazine of a Japanese mother tenderly bathing a youngster with twisted, shriveled limbs. This deformed child, with hooks like Laura’s and Linnie’s, lived in Minimata, where the bay was contaminated with methylmercury. The American photographer W. Eugene Smith shot the tub scene and others like it while staying in Minimata, igniting scandalized reactions around the world.13

As the Neztsosies talked about their way of life, they mentioned the blessing of water from the pits. Once she realized that they were talking about old uranium mines, Daut leaped to a connection. Could the pit water have caused the warping of the figures before her, the way that Minimata Bay had sickened thousands? Soon she was seeking help from lawyers in Los Angeles and New York with experience in environmental litigation. She pried a registry of probable Navajo neuropathy cases out of the IHS. The list had forty-four names.

The Navajo Nation, the name that Diné bikeyah took when the new government was set up, included a system of tribal courts. Lawyers had to pass the Navajo Bar to practice, and they could appeal to the justices of the Supreme Court in Window Rock. In 1995, Cherie Daut filed suit in the tribe’s Tuba City District against El Paso Natural Gas Corporation, which had acquired Rare Metals.14

The other lawyers she consulted had recommended experts, and the experts tested the pits, for they had no idea that Don Payne and Steve Cinnamon had preceded them.

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