A New York Times article a couple of weeks ago about abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation reported about 638 uranium mines that were active on the Navajo Nation from the 1940s to the 1980s. Street Artist Jetsonorama writes to say that “Fewer than 10% of the mines have been capped and contained and, as a consequence, uranium tailings circulate with wind and have contaminated ground water supplies affecting livestock and humans. The rates of liver, bone, breast and lung cancer are high on the rez.” The Times article quotes Doug Brugge, a public health professor at Tufts University medical school and an expert on uranium, “If this level of radioactivity were found in a middle-class suburb, the response would be immediate and aggressive.”
Jetsonorma “Owen Dreams of Atomic Sheep” Flagstaff, AZ (photo © Jetsonorama)
According to The Guardian this year, “In the final years of the George Bush presidency, when uranium prices were rising worldwide, mining companies filed thousands of new claims in northern Arizona, on lands near the Grand Canyon. They also proposed reopening old mines adjacent to the canyon.”
As recently as this January, the Obama Administration acted to protect a 1-million acre area around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining with a 20-year ban, despite pressure from mining advocates. But that won’t prevent the current requests on record to mine the area from progressing.
Wanting to draw attention to this situation, artist Jetsonorama did this installation in Flagstaff, AZ over the weekend called “Owen Dreams of Atomic Sheep,” and one called “JC at the Reservation”. With infants as their spokespeople these new pieces on water storage containers spotlight the next generation, the inheritors of whatever we decide to do with the earth and it’s resources. American Indian tribes in the region — Havasupai, Hualapai, Kaibab-Paiute, Navajo and Hopi — have banned uranium mining on their lands, according to the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club, and it makes you wonder if environmental defense will become the preeminent issue that this generation will seize as their own.
Jetsonorma “Owen Dreams of Atomic Sheep” Flagstaff, AZ (photo © Jetsonorama)
JC in C0w Springs. (photo © Jetsonorama)
JC in Cow Springs. (photo © Jetsonorama)
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Monsters, whales, deer, dragons, dogs, birds, fictional creatures from the woods, very surprised looking people; these are the figures who appear in the murals of Italian Street Artist Mr. Fijordor. A...
Meat eaters look away! NemO'S. Vedriano - Italy for "Sagra della Street Art". August, 2014. (photo © NemO'S) Shield thine eyes from the delightful and disgusting; this new acrylic depiction of our...
Phlegm. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo) It’s over a year old, but this mural by UK's Phlegm along rail tracks in Miami has a certain timeless quality. Maybe it is the illustrator’s monochroma...
50+ years of taking photos of artists at work means you have thousands of images of graffiti writers straddling trains, street artists leaning off ladders, muralists hovering 20 stories above the str...
The marauding crowd, faceless and multi-podel, rumbling with half ideas and mislead missions. If you have lived in cities you know the feeling of being swept along inside one as it hurtles down the s...