NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Demanding legislators hear their cry, a group of Indigenous people from the Southwest, with generations of illnesses from radiation exposure, are headed to DC.
More than fifty members of the Navajo Nation, Laguna Pueblo, and Hopi Tribe set out to Washington DC on a roughly 30-hour bus ride.
They’re demanding legislators move on a bill that would compensate victims of radiation exposure, also known as “RECA.”
It’s been a fourteen-year fight for Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders and a first-hand experience of generational cancer.
“They thought maybe if we take a larger group, and we drum over there, and we lift up prayers and do our traditional sorts of things, maybe then we’ll get some support, maybe then we’ll get attention, maybe then someone will finally listen to us,” said Cordova.
A bipartisan bill had passed in the Senate but was allowed to expire by lack of action from Speaker Mike Johnson in June.
The group has plans to protest on the steps of the Capitol, march to Speaker Johnson’s office, and host a candlelight vigil in honor of the lives lost from the exposure.