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The Bush people in Washington, who had targeted Native American lands as ideal sites for the storage of toxic and radioactive wastes, didn't realize they were up against the "Woman of the Power of the Wind that Blows Up Before a Storm" (No Ten O Quah, Grace's Sac & Fox Nation name). Enraged, Grace set out upon a trek across Turtle Island to educate the tribal governments about the fatal consequences of storing the white man's wastes on sacred tribal lands. At her urging, a good thirty tribes from over seventy reservations – ranging from the Mojave in the West to the Onondaga in the East - declared themselves as Nuclear Free Zones.
"We must unite as people of the world to stop the nuclear industry that is dividing and contaminating us," Grace – the daughter of the American sports legend Jim Thorpe – says, adding, " radioactive waste is the most lethal poison known in the history of humankind"
The people in Washington didn't know who they were up against when they made their bid to circumvent state environmental laws by dumping radioactive waste on tribal lands. Maybe they should have sent someone out to scout a look at the Sac & Fox license plate of Grace's car: NONUKES.
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Like many members of the Laguna Pueblo, Dorothy Purley found work at Anaconda's Jackpile Mine – at the time, the largest open pit uranium mine in the Western hemisphere. For seven years she trucked ore and worked near Anaconda's crushers. In Dorothy's hometown of Paguate, New Mexico, uranium tailings were "disposed of" by being used as building material for streets and homes. At a time when uranium mining and milling was a matter of national security, information about the element's toxic nature was scarcer than gold.
Since 1993, Dorothy Purley has been fighting a debilitating battle with cancer. At the same time, undaunted, she has spoken at many national and international colloquiums, as well as travelled to Japan to share her own personal link to the devastation of the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As an outspoken activist and member of the Indiginous Environmental Network, she has informed tribal elders of numerous Indian nations about the damage and long-term consequences that shower from low-level radiation.
There is nothing easier to ignore than that which cannot be sensed. That's why it is so important that victims of radiation step forward to tell their stories. The powerful voice of Dorothy Purley will ring out far beyond her earthly while. Her personal account lends the invisible a human face.
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Grace Thorpe
† Dorothy Purley