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RANALDA TSOSIE: I live in a community called Tolikan, Arizona, and it is in the northeast corner of the Navajo Nation.
AARON SCOTT, HOST:
Ranalda Tsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation. They call themselves Dine.
TSOSIE: When the first uranium ore was found, then we got a lot of prospectors that were coming in and claiming different mine sites. And so without really, truly understanding the extent of damage that it could pose, the mining started.
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SCOTT: Thanks to the invention of atom bombs and nuclear energy, America was starving for uranium, and the area around the Navajo Nation was rich with it. From 1944 to the late ’80s, hundreds of mines sprouted up and ultimately removed millions of tons of uranium ore.
TSOSIE: And of course, this was really important to the community because it was close to home. It provided jobs for miners and local Dine citizens, but we didn’t really understand the dangers at that time.
SCOTT: And neither the US government nor the mine owners told them about those dangers, such as an increased risk of cancer or kidney damage, even long after the dangers were clear, so the miners breathed in radon, uranium dust and other contaminants without any protection.
TSOSIE: My great grandfather worked in uranium mines. He really had a lot of common health problems and symptoms that uranium miners typically had.
SCOTT: And the uranium and other contaminants went beyond the mines. In some cases, people built houses using radioactive rock from the tailing piles. And through the mining process, chemicals began to leach into the groundwater.
TSOSIE: I grew up in a home with no running water and no electricity. We would haul water from the nearest windmill or drinking water well. When we would come home, we would use it for bathing, food – like, cooking – cleaning, feeding our livestock, watering our plants. I want to say, in the ’80s, that well that we often used was decommissioned and shut down because of the extent of uranium contamination, as well as, most likely, arsenic.
SCOTT: Even the water from their public utility had groundwater contaminants in it up until 2015, when they started to pipe in water from Farmington, New Mexico. So what do you do when your community has been struggling with decades of environmental contamination? For Ranalda, the answer was become an environmental chemist.
TSOSIE: I wanted to be able to really understand the extent of contamination in my home community because I noticed that a lot of family members were and community members were really being impacted by various types of cancer, respiratory illnesses, as well as diabetes. I wanted to be able to focus on a research project that could understand the extent of contamination, but also to come back and provide some sort of, like, tangible device that they could use.
SCOTT: Today on the show, Ranalda Tsosie’s quest to use science to help her people – and her realization that blending Western and indigenous research practices can reimagine how that science is done. I’m Aaron Scott, and you’re listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR.
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SCOTT: One of the things you need to begin a study is a baseline, or a starting point for comparison. But when Ranalda started searching for past data on the water quality of unregulated water sources on the Navajo Nation – you know, like the well she and her family grew up using – she found there was very little data available.
TSOSIE: So there are two types of water systems on the reservation. We have regulated water, which our Navajo utility services will come in and test quarterly, or even monthly, to ensure that the quality of the water is meeting US EPA drinking water standards and guidelines. Unregulated water are systems that are meant – strictly meant for livestock watering purposes, agricultural purposes, cleaning – things like that – but it’s not intended for human consumption.
SCOTT: But historically, they have been used by many such humans, who don’t have access to regulated water. And many still don’t have running water in their homes.
TSOSIE: It used to be 30% when I started my research of Navajo households. But due to COVID-19, that percentage actually has come down to only – to about 15%, which is still quite a bit of households on the reservation, considering that there are about 170,000 people that currently live on the Navajo reservation. That was the main motivation for my research – what to focus on unregulated water systems.
SCOTT: You spent a couple of years sampling a number of wells, right? What did you find when you analyzed those samples?
TSOSIE: So I initially thought the biggest problem was going to be uranium because of all of the uranium mining that was happening. But once I started sampling and I started looking at all the data that was coming in, I realized that the biggest problem was not uranium, but arsenic and vanadium. Arsenic is linked to a number of different types of health issues – specifically, cancers. Vanadium is – normally, the biggest toxicity comes mainly from inhalation, as opposed to ingestion. But currently, in the United States, there is not a drinking water standard for vanadium. In some of these wells, I found more than 250 parts per billion vanadium. And so even though there’s not, I guess, a huge danger with respect to vanadium because it’s through ingestion – but if there is a link to toxicity through inhalation, that’s some – waving some red flags.
SCOTT: And from what I’ve read, you started out at University of Montana, and you were following kind of the traditional Western scientific method. And then, along the way, you started to incorporate Dine science and knowledge into your research approach. Can you describe a little bit the Dine scientific framework that you started to mate?
TSOSIE: So I was purely trained as a Western scientist. It wasn’t until I was able to attend an American Indigenous Research Association – or AIRA – meeting in 2013. I was exposed to Indigenous research methodologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and that really motivated me to start reimagining the way in which I was doing research.
SCOTT: So Ranalda started to draw on ideas developed at the Navajo Nation’s Dine College.
TSOSIE: I was introduced to their educational philosophy of nitsahakees, nahat’a, iina and sihasin. Nitsahakees means thinking. It represents critical thought. It represents your consciousness. With respect to the scientific method, it was really like making observations, asking yourself questions and so forth. Nahat’a is planning. It represents leadership, creativity, your ability to plan. And when you’re thinking about the scientific method, it’s like, similar to developing a hypothesis and then developing methodologies that you’re going to implement and use to answer the questions or the observations that you had made previously. Iina is implementation. It also represents the activation of thought or action. To me, this was similar to gathering data, doing the research, obtaining some sort of results. Then, sihasin is – represents reflection. It also represents your self-awareness, protection and guidance. It could be, as a scientist, that you’re developing, expanding or rejecting your hypotheses.
SCOTT: Ranalda says that she sees the Western scientific method as a more linear approach – projects have beginnings and ends. But the Dine scientific method is more cyclical. Even incorporating Dine science, Ranalda found it hard to return to the Navajo Nation as a Ph.D. student from the University of Montana.
TSOSIE: I still felt like that Western scientist coming into a community, saying, here, I’m going to help you with this problem, and then do the research and just go and never come back. I didn’t want to be that type of researcher, so I asked them – what type of concerns do you have for your water? And so they voiced a lot of different things that I never even thought about.
SCOTT: And from this research, I understand that you’ve also then moved into water remediation and trying to build a filter that can be used by people in the community. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
TSOSIE: So it’s just basically a water filtration unit for communities that are using unregulated water sources. It’s going to be a handheld device that could be used at the point of use that can be customized to either a community or a household. So it has materials inside the filter that can bind and remove elements of concern, like uranium, arsenic, vanadium, and a number of other elements.
SCOTT: So if a community needed to specifically remove, say, arsenic, they could use a filter cartridge specific for arsenic. But for Ranalda, the science and anything that comes out of it has to begin by working with the community.
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TSOSIE: If you have any project or any idea that you want to implement or share with an indigenous community – before you even pitch anything, you have to build relationships with that community. There are just some things that will not belong to you – and I’m speaking with regards to data. There – you have to be able to understand the concept of tribal sovereignty and that you might not be able to publish that data, especially if it sheds a negative light on that community. You have to respect the community’s wishes.
SCOTT: Ranalda, it’s been a joy and an honor getting to talk with you about your work.
TSOSIA: Thank you. I really love to share my research journey, and I’m always learning something new, and I’m so glad to have shared my knowledge with you.
SCOTT: Ranalda Tsosie is a postdoctoral scholar at Montana State University.
This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Gisele Grayson – who is also our senior supervising editor – and fact-checked by Katherine Sypher. The audio engineer was Natasha Branch. Andrea Kissack is the head of the science desk. Edith Chapin and Terence Samuel are the executive editors and vice presidents of news, and Nancy Barnes is our senior vice president of news. I’m Aaron Scott. Thank you for listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.
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