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It's still kind of tough to be an Indian but at least the EPA is cleaning up some of the mess
By dwray in The nature of things
September 30, 2011

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So the EPA is cleaning up a Navajo reservation. It's hard to believe but even after all this time, it's kind of lousy to be an Indian.

I've got blondish hair and blue eyes, but somewhere in the stuff that makes up me I've got a bit of Injun in me. My great grandmother spent her early years living in a cave and tending cattle, or so the family stories go.

My mom and her brothers and sister were known as 'the little half-breeds' back when political correctness was something about how you held you tea cup or responded to a dinner invitation. But, since then it has gotten cool to be a little Native American, and I grew up all proud of my bit of Native Americaness.

You probably know something about the history of Native Americans vs. the US. You know, it didn't end so well for the side of my family that passed down high cheekbones, an ability to tan and an appreciation of whiskey that seems built into my marrow. And also, Indians weren't saints - they were way more interesting and complicated than that. Read Empire of the Summer Moon to get a better idea about that. Or even just to read it, 'cause it's really good.

But I digress.

Indians lost the fight with the US so they ended up on reservations and then, at least in the case of the Navajo Nation, the land they live on on the reservation out near Santa Fe, New Mexico was then mined for uranium. But it's OK now, because the EPA is totally cleaning it up now. All 1.4 million tons of soil contaminated between 1967 and 1982.

I've got barely enough Native American in me to claim it, and the way of life that my great grandmother lived is a complete mystery to me. After all of this time, what with the scholarships and the people like me who are all proud, you'd that being Indian would be a good thing, because the real ones live in their own nations and all of the fun that goes along with that.

I wonder what the people who have been living on that contaminated land think of this.