Navajo Council Never Approved Secret Agreement with Energy Fuels for Uranium Transport

Navajo Council never approved secret agreement with Energy Fuels negotiated by Navajo President's office and the tribe's attorneys

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Updated Feb. 17, 2025
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd73YnP9xBE
Translated into French by Christine Prat
https://chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=8541

WINDOW ROCK, Navajo Nation -- A Navajo Nation Council committee questioned who was responsible for an agreement with Energy Fuels that allows radioactive uranium trucks to travel through the Navajo Nation, pointing out that the Navajo Nation Council was never consulted and never approved the agreement with Energy Fuels.

After going around in circles, and avoiding answering the questions, finally Navajo Nation attorneys said those responsible for negotiating the agreement were Ethel Branch, former Navajo Attorney General, Acting Attorney General Heather Claw, along with the Navajo Department of Justice, and Navajo Nation EPA.

Council delegates questioned why there was not even an attempt made to seek a waiver from a federal law that prevents uranium transport from being blocked on highways, so that the uranium transport could be halted on the Navajo Nation.

The probe into the agreement with Energy Fuels was during the Navajo Council's Naabik'íyáti’ Committee meeting on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025.

Earlier in the week, on Monday, the Navajo Council's Resources Committee said it was never consulted and never approved the agreement with Energy Fuels.

Radioactive trucks carrying uranium waste -- covered only with tarps -- now pass through the Navajo Nation every weekday, two trucks every weekday, traveling from the Havasupai's ancestral land in the Grand Canyon, where Energy Fuels Pinyon Plain uranium mine is operating, to Energy Fuels uranium mill in the White Mesa Ute community in Utah.

Already one radioactive uranium truck was photographed near Kayenta on the Navajo Nation driving recklessly. The trucks will be increasing. Two to four trucks are planned every day for the rest of the month. The agreement for the deadly hauling is for the next two to four years.

With little or no warning to Navajo communities, the trucks passed through Tuba City -- where Dine' are streaming live in opposition to the deadly truck transport -- between 11 am and noon. The trucks entered the Navajo Nation near Cameron.

During the Naabik'íyáti’ Committee session, Council Delegates said the Navajo Nation Council is the law-making body of the Navajo Nation, and they were never consulted about the agreement with Energy Fuels.

"Who negotiated these terms?" asked Shiprock, New Mexico, Council Delegate Eugenia Charles-Newton. She questioned who decided on the amount to be paid by Energy Fuels to the tribe.

"Who came up with the amount of $1.2 million?"

"We should have never even entered into this, because the last meeting that we had on the uranium, we all agreed that we would not allow the uranium to be hauled through our Navajo Nation because we're still fighting the federal government for what happened to our people, and they keep pushing it aside saying, 'Well, that happened years ago, that happened during World War II.'"

Charles-Newton questioned the legality of the agreement, and whether those negotiating the agreement had the authority to do it.

She said the $1.2 million from Energy Fuels to the tribe is not a lot of money, and that this would cover the cost of just one person who has to battle cancer.

A fact sheet about the agreement was finally released on the day of the committee session, after two days of the radioactive trucks passing through remote Navajo communities.

The fact sheet reveals an alarming agreement for the radioactive uranium haul trucks to pass through the Navajo Nation in New Mexico in the future, if uranium mining begins again near the Dine' Sacred Mountain of Mount Taylor.

Nearby Mount Taylor are Acoma and Laguna Pueblos already suffering from cancer and disease from longtime uranium mining there.

The haul route now endangers Havasuapi whose ancestral land is in the Grand Canyon, where the Pinyon Plain uranium mine is operating. Native people live all along the deadly haul route in Arizona: Havasupai, Hualapai, Paiute, Dine'/Navajo, Hopi and Ute. The radioactive trucks travel through the City of Flagstaff. The radioactive dumping ground is Energy Fuels uranium mill in the White Mesa Ute community in Southeastern Utah. Ute, suffering from health problems, continue to testify, and protest, for the mill to be shut down.

Havasupai, Navajo and Ute testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2024, urging an intervention to shut down Pinyon Plain mine in the Grand Canyon and shut down Energy Fuels uranium mill in the White Mesa Ute community in Utah. Navajos testified on the health problems that continue from more than 500 uranium mining sites, and strewn radioactive waste, on the Navajo Nation that the U.S. never cleaned up after the Cold War, and the deadly Church Rock uranium spill.

Read more at Censored News
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/02/live-navajo-council-committee-questions.html

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