‘Poison Wind’ presents oral history of uranium victims

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — It has been nearly two years to the day that Jenny Pond first came up for the idea of “Poison Wind,” an oral history on the effects uranium mining has had on indigenous people of the Southwest.

Co-produced by Pond and Navajo filmmaker Norman Patrick Brown, the documentary was screened last Saturday as the official selection of the 33rd Annual American Indian Film Institute Film Festival in San Francisco. It has aired in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado and twice in German, including Oct. 26 at the Nuclear-Free Future Award ceremony in Munich along with the acclaimed documentary, “The Return of Navajo Boy,” by Jeff Spitz of Chicago.

“Poison Wind” will be shown Saturday at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library Hall in Flagstaff.

Pond said she was inspired to make the film when she and her husband went down to the village of Supai to spend the weekend in the Grand Canyon for his 60th birthday. Supai, the tribal center for the Havasupai Tribe, is located in Havasu Canyon, a southwestern branch of the Grand Canyon accessible only by foot, horseback, or helicopter.

“At the end of the weekend we were waiting for the helicopter to take us out with a group of other people. I walked off in the middle of the village and as I was standing there, a man walked up to me and he said, ‘What do you do?’

“I said, ‘You mean for a living?’ He said yes. And I said, ‘Well, if I’m lucky I work in film and TV.’ He said, ‘I had a feeling I should speak with you. Did you know that there are leases being sold for uranium mining here at the Grand Canyon?’

“I live in Arizona, I read the news a lot, my dad was a news man, but I just never heard about this,” she said.

She gave Damon Watahomigie, or “Supai Waters,” her phone number, flew out of the Grand Canyon and called Manuel Pino, a long-time anti-nuclear activist from the Pueblo of Acoma, whom she has known for about 20 years.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to call Norman — Norman Patrick Brown.’ So I called him and we just followed it. It was like it was leading us, and it all started in the bottom of the Grand Canyon with Supai Waters saying to me, ‘What do you do?’” That was two years ago.

Brown, who also appears in “Poison Wind,” says he believes the film “gives an intimate look into the hardships of the people who mined underground, the cancers that they’ve contracted, the radiation exposure and how it has impacted their lives. Probably one of the strongest points of the film is having the people talk about what uranium mining has done to them and their families.”

Another important thing about “Poison Wind,” he said, “was letting industry know that regardless of their attempts to stop the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, it’s only going to make our resistance even stronger.

In a lot of ways, I think the film educates people who are not familiar with the nuclear process, that we’re at the ‘front end’ of the nuclear fuel chain.

“The thing about the video also is it seemed to develop itself. There was a spiritual aspect that permeated the film. It was with us all the time, this spiritual awareness that life is sacred. We looked at the land and we looked at the people and the cultures. There are different types of people in the video. There are pueblo miners, Navajo miners and Hispanic miners.”

Brown said attempts to stifle Navajo’s ban on uranium activities is secondary to the main point. “The ban is not really an act of sovereignty, it’s a declaration of independence. No matter what the courts say, no matter what the corporations say, those are all secondary. We already made a decision, no ifs, ands or buts. It’s ‘Hey, look, what part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?’”

If there is an attempt of physically bringing any type of uranium development on Navajo, he said, “I believe people will rise up. I believe they will not allow it.”

Pond acknowledges that the film, which was funded using her husband’s retirement money, is not very balanced as far as the uranium industry goes. “It’s really all one-sided. I figure if somebody else wants to make that film, they can, but I’m not going to do that. This is what I need to do.

“I don’t think there is any better way than to present these oral histories of people that are dying,” she said.