NAVAJOS
MAY BE COMPENSATED UNDER NEW BILL
By JIM
WOOLF , THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
MONUMENT VALLEY, Utah -Elouise Chee just shrugged her shoulders
when told that President Clinton signed legislation this month
making it easier for Navajos damaged by radiation to receive
federal compensation. "It takes more than a signature [on a
bill] to get things done out here," explained Chee, who runs
a makeshift stand selling beads, silver bracelets and bolo ties
along the highway near the turnoff to scenic red buttes of Monument
Valley Navajo Tribal Park.
She should know.
For nine years Chee has tried unsuccessfully to help her mother-in-law
qualify for a $100,000 government payment offered to uranium
miners damaged by radiation. That bill, sponsored by Utah Sen.
Orrin Hatch, passed in 1990.
Her father-in-law, Hite Chee, died 12 years ago of an illness
that family members believe was caused by work in the uranium
mines. They want his 88-year-old widow to enjoy the money before
her death. If it is forthcoming, they would drill a well so
they wouldn't have to make almost daily trips to the nearby
Gouldings Trading Post for drinking and irrigation water.
But convincing federal bureaucrats of the link between Hite
Chee's death and radiation has proved almost impossible. Medical
records are limited because much of his care was given by a
traditional medicine man. Proving that he worked in the mines
is tough because many of the old records have disappeared.
The latest challenge is to find the Social Security number
he used while working.
"There's always a holdup on the information we're trying to
get," said Jim Chee, Elouise's husband and the son of Hite Chee".
æ
Hatch this year convinced Congress and the president to approve
an overhaul of his 1990 bill aimed at making it easier for the
Chee family and thousands of other Americans to qualify for
compensation.
The original bill offered payments to two categories of people
injured in America's rush to perfect the atomic bomb: those
who developed radiation-related illnesses directly downwind
from nuclear weapons tests on the Nevada Test Site and people
who became sick from working in underground uranium mines, extracting
raw material for the bombs.
The new bill will make an extra 8,000 to 9,000 people eligible
for payments ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. It's aimed at
eliminating red tape that has prevented some from qualifying
in the past.
The legislation broadens eligibility to include new diseases;
reduces the amount of radiation exposure that miners need to
qualify; expands the downwind area where people can be compensated
for exposure to fallout; and offers money to those who became
sick from work in open-pit uranium mines, uranium mills and
transporting uranium ore.
The cost to the federal government over the next five years
could be about $750 million, according to the Congressional
Budget Office.
Most important for the Navajos, the measure directs federal
officials to take American Indian "custom and culture" into
account when deciding compensation.
"The U.S. purchased uranium ore and sponsored mining from 1942
to 1971, and the work was, for the most part, done by unskilled,
mostly Navajo miners," explained Hatch. He hoped to compensate
these miners with the 1990 bill, but some regulations the U.S.
Department of Justice developed to implement the law proved
difficult for American Indians to meet.
For example, federal officials required everyone seeking compensation
to submit birth certificates, marriage certificates and detailed
employment and medical records -- things most white workers
had available but few traditional Navajo miners could produce.
"Program requirements for the original bill did not take into
account cultural norms," said Hatch. "It became clear that the
very victims we thought to compassionately compensate with the
bill couldn't even apply. That was one of the reasons for this
year's amendments."
One Navajo who may benefit from the new law is Bernie Cly,
a 56-year-old Monument Valley resident who started coughing
up blood after seven years in the uranium mines and had part
of a lung removed.
Cly, who speaks little English, has no idea what was wrong
with his lung.
Despite the illness and detailed medical and work records,
he was denied compensation under the 1990 law because he once
told a government official he smoked. Under federal rules, smokers
face much tighter rules for compensation than non-smokers.
But he was never a cigarette smoker.
Cly, like many traditional Navajos, occasionally smoked what
tribal members call "mountain tobacco" as part of a healing
ritual. Such ceremonies are conducted infrequently -- perhaps
once a year for a person with serious health or emotional problems.
Once every five to 10 years would be more common.
So when a government agent who neither spoke the Navajo language
nor understood Navajo culture asked Cly whether he smoked, he
answered honestly. Somehow, Cly said, that "yes" answer was
later misinterpreted to mean that he smoked an average of seven
cigarettes a day.
"I have never bought a pack of cigarettes in my life," Cly
said through an interpreter. "My wife and children know I don't
smoke. They would have been able to smell it on my clothing."
Hatch's new bill contains a provision that should resolve this
problem. It says American Indians who smoke infrequently for
ceremonial purposes will be treated like non-smokers when decisions
about compensation are made.
Cly was featured in the documentary "The Return of Navajo Boy"
that premiered last winter at the Sundance Film Festival. The
film will be broadcast nationally on public television in November.
Marie Holiday, a Navajo woman who also lives in Monument Valley,
fears that even the new law may not go far enough to cover her
father, Bahe Stanley. He worked in underground uranium mines
for about 18 years and complained the rest of his life about
lung pain. One chest X-ray suggested some mining-related damage,
but that was never followed up. He eventually died from complications
of diabetes and a possible heart attack.
Attempts to get compensation for his widow were denied because
of the lack of medical proof.
"My dad was traditional," said Holiday, "and traditional people
didn't go to the clinic to be checked out."
Garry Holiday, Marie's husband, thanked Hatch for trying to
make the process easier for Navajos, but worries that this latest
attempt to assist American Indians could be thwarted by federal
bureaucrats who write the detailed rules implementing the law.
Expressing a sentiment common on the reservation, Holiday said:
"It's people who will interpret this law, and there might be
institutional racism."
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