White doves are released in Hiroshima every August 6 in the annual remembrance of those killed by the atomic bomb dropped to ensure Japan’s surrender in 1945. What most people don’t know is that they are now joined by the Dene First Nation of Eline, Northwest Territories. The village has been “village of widows” because of the high number of cancer-related deaths. The Dene join in to pay respect to the dead and to express remorse. The Sahtugot’ine Dene of Deline, a community of 700, are a people ridden by a terrible sense of responsibility for the atomic bombs dropped Japan. “The stuff they used to make the bombs, they got it here and then someone dropped bombs there, and so many people died,” said Rosie Dolphus, one of Deline’s widows – her husband died of bone cancer 10 years ago after years of hauling uranium out of a government-owned mine. “We want to offer comfort” to the Japanese “and explain we had no idea that rock was so dangerous to others, to ourselves.”
The Deline Dene played an obscure role in creating one the world’s deadliest weapon. Only now are they realizing they may have been the first victims of the atomic age. “Our own people are dying, too, because of that rock,” Dolphus said. In the late 1930s, the Dene were hired as ore carriers, lugging uranium and radium from the world’s first uranium mine, the Eldorado, a Canadian Crown industry, for shipment to a secret weapons program in the United States. The mine was closed in I960 and Ottawa has confirmed that uranium from the Eldorado deposit was used to make the world’s first atomic bombs, dropped by US warplanes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
The Deline Dene say they are troubled that their labour contributed to so much agony. This week they sent a delegation of six elders to Hiroshima to mark the 53rd anniversary of the atomic attack and to express sorrow to the Japanese. It was only in the last few years that the Dene learned how they played a small part in one of the tragedies of the modern era, say Dene leaders. The Elders were especially disturbed. “We want to express our sadness and compassion for the suffering the uranium from Great Bear Lake caused elsewhere,” said Cindy Kenny-Gilday, head of the Deline First Nation Ura-
nium Committee. But the Dene also want to draw international attention to what they describe as a plague of cancer that has ravaged their band. Most Dene still live by hunting, fishing and trapping.
Although no official health records were kept until 1989, it appears that an unusually high percentage of Dene have died of the disease, starting in the decades after the mine opened. Other First Nations in the Northwest Territories have given Dene the nickname “village of widows,” because so many men have died of cancer.
“In my grandmother’s time, our men regularly lived to be 80 or 90,” said Gina Bayha, a 35-year-old member of the Deline band council. “Now we hardly have any men past the age of 65. Nearly all have died of cancer.”
Only a handful of the men who actually worked in the Eldorado mine are still alive. Among them is Paul Baton, 83, who recalls bruising 12-hour shifts loading boats with 100-pound sacks of uranium ore for shipment across the huge lake and down the Mackenzie River. “The dust coated you like flour, it covered our clothes, our heads, our hands,” he recounted. “We would sleep on the sacks. No one told us anything about it being dangerous. No one told us about cancer. But over the past 25 years our people have known nothing but cancer.”
Officials say that there is no proven medical link between the deaths and the uranium operation. Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart said Ottawa is investigating the allegations of continuing radioactive leakage from the shuttered mine. “We need to work together … to get clear a common set of historical facts,” she told Dene leaders who appeared before Parliament last month.
The Dene say that even in the 1930s the government knew of the health risks. Non-native miners at the mine wore protective clothing and were required to shower off the uranium dust after every shift. These precautions didn’t apply to the Dene workers, who were known as “coolies.”
“If we bring this to the global stage, then perhaps the Canadian government will be movedto do the honorable thing for the Dene of Deline,” said Kenny-Gilday. Canada must takeresponsibility for the damage done to our people.”
