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Our Living Lands is a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Native Public Media.

Tribes share their struggles from radiation exposure as they fight for the renewal for RECA

Members of several tribes gathered in Washington, D.C., in late September 2024 to bring attention to the expiration of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and the effects radiation had on generations of families. RECA expired in the summer of 2024 and was the only means for those affected by nuclear testing to get some compensation for related medical problems.
Yvette Fernandez
/
KNPR
Members of several tribes gathered in Washington, D.C., in late September 2024 to bring attention to the expiration of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and the effects radiation had on generations of families. RECA expired in the summer of 2024 and was the only means for those affected by nuclear testing to get some compensation for related medical problems.

America is looking for new energy sources -- like nuclear power. But since the atomic bomb program began during World War II, countless Americans have been exposed to radiation, either from mining uranium or from the tests themselves. Compensation for the cancers and other medical problems caused by this exposure has been limited. This summer, Congress allowed the main way of paying for treatment — the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) — to expire. That’s been especially harmful to Indigenous people living in the Southwest.

In late September, members of several Tribes and others affected by radiation exposure traveled by bus to Washington to persuade lawmakers to revive and expand the compensation program. If RECA isn’t renewed under the new Trump administration, hundreds of thousands of people won’t get financial assistance for treatment.

“People who are living with the pain, living with the cancers, living with the diseases that were caused by the U.S. government's efforts to win these wars and to carry out these efforts should not have to get on a bus and travel across the country to get justice,” New Mexico Representative Melanie Stansbury said.

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