Navajo Scholar Makes Effects of Uranium Mining Life’s Work

There are many reasons to choose a career, but for Navajo Monica Yellowhair it’s all about doing something positive for her tribe.

Yellowhair, 29 and a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona, has pledged to make researching the causes and prevention of cancer among the Navajo people that were allegedly caused by depleted uranium her life’s work.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, uranium was mined for decades on the Navajo Reservation; it was mainly used by the federal government to make weapons.

“Many of the Navajo men had been willing to work in the mines, but people were exposed to radiation and not told about the hazards. As a result, many miners got sick, and several have died of lung cancer,” Yellowhair said.

While the mines have been abandoned, hundreds of them were not cleaned and sealed. Thus environmental and health risks remain.

Growing up on the Navajo Reservation, which spans four states (Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico), Yellowhair has always been interested in science. Yet her motivation for pursuing a career in pharmacology and toxicology is very personal.

“In the past, I had heard stories from some of the older people in our community about the uranium mining and about a lot of the hardships that their families had to deal with because of the mining,” she said.

Yellowhair completed her undergraduate work at Northern Arizona University, earning a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and a master’s degree in chemistry. While her Ph.D. major is in pharmacology and toxicology, she is working toward a minor in cancer biology. For her research, she is studying depleted uranium to determine how exposure to it might cause the DNA damage that can increase vulnerability to cancer. Now in her last year of her Ph.D. program, she plans to become a professor at a university that is close to the reservation so that she can continue her research.

Although the S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields are challenging, Yellowhair said she would love to see more Native Americans pursuing these kinds of careers.

“There is funding available, no matter where you go,” she said.

Her undergraduate studies were paid for through tribal and private scholarships. As a Scholar of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Indigenous Graduate Partnership Program, which is administered and supported by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc. (NACME), she has the support needed to complete her Ph.D. program.

NACME, in fact, has played a role in getting more Native Americans into S.T.E.M. fields. Since 1974, it has supported more than 22,000 underrepresented minority students, American Indians/Alaska Natives among them, and has awarded more than $114 million in scholarships through a national network of leading corporate and university partners. It also offers several middle school and high school programs, including innovation grants for teachers and mentorship programs.