ABSTRACT
According to a traditional Navajo origin story, people were given a choice between two yellow powders when they emerged from the earlier third world into the fourth world of today. One powder was yellow dust from the rocks and the other was yellow pollen from corn. The people chose the corn pollen and the gods were pleased. But the gods also issued a warning. The yellow dust was to stay in the ground or terrible evil would be unleashed.26 In Navajo society, write tribal member Esther Yazzie-Lewis and lawyer and author Jim Zion: “every evil-each monster-has a name. Uranium has a name in Navajo. It is leetso, which means ‘yellow brown’ or ‘yellow dirt’.”27 Covering over 27,000 square miles, the Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States. Diné Bikéyah-the Navajo homeland-was also the site of the most intense uranium rush the world has ever seen.
