WINDOW ROCK, Ariz.—Maggie Billiman devoted her career to nursing and serving others, offering compassionate care to terminally ill patients during their final days.
It was a journey filled with empathy and understanding. At the end of each patient’s life, Billiman held his or her hand and said a prayer to ease the suffering.
There would come a time when she, too, would face the daunting prospect of a serious illness—one that she had spent so many years helping others confront.
Recent medical imaging has indicated the presence of abnormal cysts on her liver, pancreas, and thyroid, and it appears that they may be growing.
“After retiring, this is what happened to me,” said Billiman, 62, a member of the Navajo Nation in Arizona.
“My latest [issue] is my kidney. They did a scan and thought it was a kidney stone—it’s not.”
On June 10, at a daylight vigil in Window Rock, Arizona—the political heart of the Navajo Nation—Billiman wore a vibrant yellow T-shirt adorned with images of her beloved parents.
Both lost their battles with cancer.
She said she worries that her past exposure to radiation from uranium mining and atomic bomb tests near Navajo lands during her childhood could lead to a cancer diagnosis.
The shadow of cancer has cast a heavy pall over her family for years. Her heart aches as she reflects on her father, Howard Billiman Jr., a former U.S. Marine and Navajo code talker during World War II.
Her father worked in a uranium mine in Kingman, Arizona, and passed away from stomach cancer in 2001 at age 78.
Now, she watches her brother, Daniel Billiman, 65, struggle with liver, thyroid, and lung issues, likely caused by the radiation exposure that has affected their family for generations.
Gathering of Voices
The gathering on June 10 was small, but the attendees were brought together by their shared experiences with health issues caused by radiation exposure, either direct or inherited from earlier generations.Before it expired, RECA provided one-time payments to individuals who developed cancer or other diseases as a result of atomic bomb testing and uranium mining across the United States.
He successfully pushed the passage of reauthorization bills in the Senate in July 2023 and March 2024, but these bills failed to pass in the House of Representatives.
The reauthorization bill would restore RECA for survivors, allowing claimants nationwide to receive critical support and ensuring that the program continues in future years.
The expanded RECA provision would allow Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska residents who developed cancer from contamination to receive RECA compensation.
The bill would include “downwind” areas and on-site participants, such as military personnel, in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, where uranium mining and atomic testing occurred during the Cold War.
Most of these tests, 928 in total, took place at the Nevada Test Site, an area of 1,375 square miles about 65 miles north of Las Vegas.
Of the tests at this site, 828 were underground and 100 were atmospheric, releasing radioactive materials high into the atmosphere.
Hawley said RECA reauthorization would increase the benefits for atmospheric testing survivors to keep up with inflation.
It would also add uranium mine workers from 1971 to 1990, including core drillers, as eligible workers, and expand the list of covered diseases.
“These survivors sacrificed their health for our national security at the advent of the Manhattan Project, and their children and grandchildren have borne the burden of radiation-linked illness for generations since,” Hawley said in a statement.
The first atomic bomb exploded at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945. From 1951 to 1992, the Nevada Test Site was the central location for U.S. nuclear bomb tests.
People affected by the fallout from these tests are called “Downwinders.”
Those mining operations came with a heavy cost for many who worked in them, according to the EPA.
Although the mines are now closed, the EPA has identified uranium contamination as a critical issue that demands attention. More than 500 abandoned mines, along with homes and water sources, still exhibit dangerously high levels of radiation.
Cancer Clusters
A study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that Navajo men who worked as underground uranium miners had a much higher risk of lung cancer.
The research looked at lung cancer cases among Navajo men in New Mexico and Arizona from 1969 to 1993. It showed that 63 out of 94 lung cancer cases—about 67 percent—were among uranium miners.
The journal reads: “Smoking did not explain the strong link between lung cancer and uranium mining. The experience of the Navajo with uranium mining is a unique case where exposure in one job caused most lung cancers in an entire group.”
The EPA has secured more than $1.7 billion to reduce radiation risks from abandoned uranium mines to the Navajo people, enabling the cleanup of 230 out of 523 mines.
Leona Morgan, Navajo community organizer and co-founder of the Nuclear Issues Study Group, said at the gathering on June 10 that the government needs to be held accountable.
“They did not tell our people [about the dangers of radiation exposure] when they sent our people to war and then down into the mines,” Morgan said. “Now we’re dealing with cleanups.
“They are the entity that caused this problem. They need to pay not only for our health bills, but to [also] clean up all of the abandoned uranium mines.”
Focus on Nuclear Energy
On May 23, Trump signed an executive order to enhance and strengthen the nuclear workforce and supply chain for national security.The directive supports new uranium mining projects such as Velvet-Wood in San Juan County, Utah, the first expedited under Trump’s emergency declaration for U.S. energy independence.
The company said it would also remove up to 10,000 tons of uranium-bearing cleanup materials from abandoned mines in the Navajo Nation.
Danger Overblown?
“Uranium ore is not that dangerous,” Curtis Moore, Energy Fuels’ senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, told The Epoch Times. “It is natural uranium, which is unenriched, low radioactive uranium as it occurs in nature.“Uranium only becomes dangerous after it is enriched. You can stand next to a large pile of high-grade natural uranium ore with no shielding, and the radiation dose you would receive is tiny.”
Under normal circumstances, the public radiation dose from company trucks is “zero,” Moore said.
“If there were a spill due to an accident or other issue, and you were located right next to the spilled ore, you might receive a tiny dose that is not dangerous in the least,” he said. “If you stand about 50 feet away from the exposed ore, you will receive a radiation dose of zero.”
Moore suggested that community concerns about uranium transport are primarily driven by environmental activists who create unnecessary alarm.
“Nonetheless, we have added additional protections for Navajo citizens over already highly protective laws, regulations, and practices,” Moore said.
For Carol Oletcitty-Roger, 67, a member of the Navajo Nation from New Mexico, such reassurances offer little comfort or peace of mind.
She was one of the last to arrive at the gathering on June 10 and remained in her car, overcome by a sudden wave of fatigue.
“I feel sick,” Oletcitty-Roger said. “That’s why I’m just sitting in the car.”
Five years ago, Oletcitty-Roger was given a lymphoma diagnosis. The disease eventually spread to other parts of her body.
She suspects that her illness may stem from her father’s radiation exposure while working in a uranium mine in Cove, Arizona.
“My mom and I washed his clothes,” Oletcitty-Roger told The Epoch Times.
“When we washed his clothes, it was like gold coming off,” she said, describing the yellow cake uranium clinging to the fabric.
Her mother died of cancer at age 42.
“Then I got cancer,” she said. “And now my sister has lung cancer. She’s on oxygen 24 hours a day.”
These days, Oletcitty-Roger is constantly tired from the medication her doctor prescribed, and each pill costs thousands of dollars.
“My doctor said I'll need to keep taking it because lymphoma is just traveling on my body,” Oletcitty-Roger told The Epoch Times.
Since RECA ended in 2024, she said, her medical issues and those of many Navajo people have only worsened.
Oletcitty-Roger said she cannot afford expensive medications and doctor visits without help from RECA.
Fortunate Ones
Arlene Juanico Renico, 69, is a former truck driver from New Mexico with Navajo heritage. She worked at the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine at the Laguna Pueblo from the 1970s until it closed in 1982.The safety protocols were less strict back then, and she did not consider the safety concerns because no one informed her.
“All they did was give me a hard hat, safety glasses, and a respirator,” Renico told The Epoch Times. “It’s just a paper face mask. And that was it.
“They told us to buy our safety shoes. So that was our protective gear, supposedly.”
Renico said she is thankful for her life and is determined to improve her community’s health.
“We’re all fortunate,” she told the gathering. “We’re here—we can walk, talk, and breathe.”
