Picture this: You're navigating through the virtual landscape of Google Earth, trying to find your aunt's house on the Navajo Nation. As you toggle through aerial views of highways from memory, what you discover isn't just the path home to your family—but a scar on the land. A coal mine, stark and out of place, interrupts the landscape of your memories. A late night deep dive into researching the dangers of coal mining leads you to the devastating aftermath of the uranium mining industry. That jarring moment became the origin point for the Anti-Uranium Mapping Project. What started as a search for home transformed into a lifelong commitment to uncovering what has been buried—both physically and historically.

Since then, I’ve been following the threads of environmental violence and archival absence. And now, everything I feared—everything I warned—is accelerating. The defunding of the EPA, and the deliberate dismantling of environmental protections aren’t just political talking points. They are policies of erasure. Indigenous communities have known this strategy for generations.

My mission moves beyond traditional forms of education—it's about resistance, memory, and truth-telling. Through the Anti-Uranium Mapping Project (AUMP), I’m building an interactive digital platform that merges geospatial data, oral histories, and immersive storytelling to expose the ongoing impacts of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.

This isn’t just a map. It’s a counter-map. A refusal. A way to push back against the accelerated erasure of Indigenous land, voice, and evidence. In a time when entire ecosystems, agencies, and truths are being erased, this work stands as both archive and action.

Counter-mapping is the practice of using maps as a tool of resistance—reclaiming geospatial narratives from institutions of power and re-centering them in community knowledge, lived experience, and grassroots data. Through counter mapping, we challenge official versions of the land by making visible the harms of extraction, colonization, and erasure—and asserting our own histories, sovereignties, and futures. 

A few visuals have been listed below as inspiration and reference:

                                                                                                          

    

Project Description

The Anti-Uranium Mapping Project is an interactive digital platform that reveals the ongoing impact of uranium mining starting with the Navajo Nation. Through a map-based interface combining data and narrative, users can navigate a series of linear testimonies—each enriched with clickable layers that offer deeper context through supporting data.

Designed with a multimodal learning approach, the platform uses animation, video, text-to-speech, and immersive technologies to enhance both engagement and knowledge retention. These tools invite users into a nuanced understanding of environmental injustice, rooted in firsthand accounts.

The testimonies featured will reflect a range of perspectives—from nuclear scientists to tribal leadership—ensuring the project remains inclusive, accessible, and grounded in both lived experience and expert analysis.

Innovative Technology

What makes this project innovative is its blend of Indigenous knowledge, immersive media, and data science to challenge dominant narratives about land, safety, and sovereignty. AUMP centers lived experience while building an educational platform that can be used in classrooms, courtrooms, and communities. It puts tools of spatial analysis and storytelling in the hands of those most affected—creating a new model of environmental advocacy rooted in cultural preservation and self-determination.

Church Rock, NM

A central narrative focuses on the 1979 Church Rock Uranium Mill Spill—the largest radioactive release in U.S. history. Through data visualizations, historical documents, maps, photography, and video interviews, this narrative illustrates the enduring ecological and human cost of the spill on the land and surrounding communities. Additional testimonies will adopt this integrative approach, weaving visual and oral histories with interactive data to build a living archive of uranium's legacy across Indigenous lands.

Working alongside youth to gather testimonies will expand the archive and strengthen the project’s reach. This collaboration marks a shift toward a counter mapping experience—one that empowers marginalized communities to reclaim colonized land, challenge dominant narratives, and reframe how extraction is seen and felt.

By merging narrative and counter mapping, this work fosters empathy and drives systemic change. It reveals how extractive industries continue to rely on the land divisions and privatization policies established during colonization—such as the Dawes Act—to operate on and profit from Indigenous land.

Uranium Exposure

On the Navajo Nation, individuals may encounter uranium, radiation, or both through various means, such as residing near abandoned mines, living in homes constructed with materials from mining or milling areas, consuming water from unregulated sources, or neglecting proper water transportation protocols. Given that uranium naturally occurs in the environment, everyone experiences some level of exposure to it. However, heightened levels of uranium exposure can pose significant health risks.

While some risks remain under-researched, extensive studies already link uranium exposure to kidney damage and potentially elevate the risk of conditions like high blood pressure, autoimmune diseases, and reproductive issues. Radiation emitted from uranium and other natural elements also presents health concerns, including the possibility of developing lung or bone cancer and impairing kidney function.

Testimonies from the House of Representatives Committee Hearing on the Health and Environmental Impacts of Uranium Contamination in the Navajo Nation can be found HERE.

Urgency and Collaboration

With over 500 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo lands, the dangers are not abstract - they are immediate and generational. From environmental contamination to the health risks of ionizing radiation exposure, the toll is immense and ongoing. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, cleanup efforts have been slow, fragmented, and underfunded despite decades of advocacy. 
 
This is not just about the mines. It’s about memory—and who controls the narrative.

In a political moment when science is being politicized, and entire environmental agencies are being gutted, documentation becomes a form of resistance. Our photos, our maps, our films—these are protective acts that hold the line when institutions fail us.

I work with Indigenous elders and youth to amplify intergenerational knowledge and community-led stories through photography and filmmaking. Together, we are building a living photographic journal—a record of what has been lost, and a defense against ongoing harm.

Your Support Matters: As environmental protections are systematically dismantled, the burden of preservation is falling—once again—on frontline communities. The Anti-Uranium Mapping Project is more than a digital platform: it’s a frontline archive, a community tool, and a refusal to be erased. 

This isn't just about the past—it’s about who gets to shape the future. Together, we are a frontline intervention against environmental injustice and a tool for public reckoning, land defense, and cultural survival.

Artist Fees | $7,600
Admin Fees | $7,600

Video Production Expenses | $3,000

Audio/Photo Gear | $3,300

Advertising/Marketing | $400

Web Prototyping/Design | $7,000

Web User Testing | $2,000
Beta Testing/Refinement | $6,000

Fiscal Sponsorship | $3,600

Printing | $1,500

Framing| $3,000
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