http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3764417&page=1When Ray Manygoats describes his childhood -- playing with marbles, messing around with his brother, visiting his father at work and grilling his family's livestock -- one might mistake his stories for fond memories of growing up in the Navajo Nation.
But today, these memories are nothing more than evidence of the damage done to him and his family by uranium mining on Navajo lands during the Cold War, all part of an effort to provide the federal government with the uranium yellowcake it needed for nuclear weapons.
"We cooked on grills my father brought back from the mill. These grills had been used to sift the yellowcake uranium," Manygoats told Congress at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.
"My brother Tommy and I would often bring lunch to my father at the mill. Yellow stuff was always everywhere. We would play in the yellowcake sand at the mill, jumping and rolling around in it. We also found small metal balls at the mill. The balls were used to crush and process the uranium. We played marbles with them and had contests to see how far we could throw them.
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