Mary Frank lost her husband Clifford to lung cancer, and then shortly afterwards, she losther home. In 1981, tribal contractors conducting environmental assessments in Oak Springs condemned 17 houses contaminated with mine uranium waste. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

David Neztsosie, who worked in the mines outside Tuba City, Arizona, lost one child to Navajo neuropathy, and has a second daughter who suffers from the disease. Some experts believe the uranium-tainted water that pregnant women drank affected their fetuses' brains and nervous systems. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Uranium for the U.S. arms race with the Soviet Union was chiseled and blasted from a desert reservation that spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Across the Navajo Indian reservation, the size of West Virginia, pieces of old mines and uranium processing mills are incorporated into daily life. The Holiday compound may be the most dramatic example of irradiated homes on the Navajo Nation. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Susan Black lost her son Sylvester Stanley to Navajo neuropathy, drank from the open pits during her pregnancy while sheep herding. The grazing territory had been so parched at times they drank from puddles in depressions of the sandstone less than a mile from the mine where uranium residue was everywhere. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Family members grieve the death of Emerson Litson, a former uranium miner. Their angry widows wonder if they and their children face health risks fromthe abandoned mills and mines. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Albert Jackson digs a grave for his stepfather, Emerson Litson, a former miner in Red Valley who, like many other Navajo miners, died of lung disease. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

In the 1960s, a friend of Mary Holiday's suggested using sand and rock from the old uranium mine to make a new floor for her hogan. "He said it made good concrete," Mary recalled. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

United Nuclear Corp. capped the mineshafts on the cliffs over-looking Red Water, (now known as Church Rock Mine) but left an array of concrete pillars and flat circles of blue metal that resemble an industrial Stonehenge. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

A dam failure released 93 million gallons of liquefied tailings from a uranium mill in Church Rock, N.M., on July 16, 1979. The radioactive waste roared through the channel of the Puerco River. The memory of the accident has helped stir opposition to new mining plans. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Ned Yazzie, who lives near an abandoned mine, opposes renewed efforts to extract uranium from Navajo land. This past August a heavy rain flushed radioactive material from the mine into an arroyo where his cattle graze. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

In this valley in Church Rock Mine where children have played for generations, and throughout the clusters of homes, they have discovered dangerously high levels of gamma rays. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

In this valley in Church Rock Mine where children have played for generations, and throughout the clusters of homes, they have discovered dangerously high levels of gamma rays. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

More than 180,000 people are scattered among the Navajo's four sacred peaks. The region is more than homeland; it's a holy land. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Elsie Begay believes a hogan that stood near this one caused her sons' deaths. Across the Navajo reservation, many hogans were built with uranium waste, the radioactive residue of the nuclear arms race. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Old cars and contaminated debris lie near the abandoned uranium mining site in the Navajos' Cane Valley, near the Arizona-Utah line. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Some habits never die, Lois Neztsosie is thirsty and she doesn't hesitate, even now after all that has happened, she leans over and drinks deeply from the spring even though it might be contaminated. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Laura Neztsosie, born in 1970 on the Navajo reservation, spent most of her first year in the hospital. As an adult she uses a respirator in the morning to help clear her lungs. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Laura Neztsosie, 36, is the oldest living person on the Indian Health Service's Navajo neuropathy registry. As the illness progresses, she loses more abilities. Her mother drank water contaminated by uranium when she was pregnant with Laura. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

First a stinging and pricking started up inside Laura Neztsosie's limbs, then her finger and toes stiffened into hooks. They would not unbend, and they haven't since. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

Laura Neztsosie wishes she were normal like other people. She enjoys getting out, but it's an ordeal and backbreaking for her cousin who carries her in and out of the car. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

No longer able to get into a bathtub or shower, Laura Neztsosie is bathed by her mother out of bucket on the kitchen floor. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times

"Why me? I have that question sometimes in my mind. I used to say like I'm a strong person, but that's fading away. So, I guess this is something that you have to live with," says Laura who struggles with Navajo Neuropathy. ©Gail Fisher Los Angeles Times