Sherman Alexie was a teenager when he first felt threatened by the uranium mines near his home on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
His grandmother had died from esophageal cancer in 1980. A few years later, his mother and some other tribal members took out a road map and began marking red dots on every home where someone had cancer.
The roads where the ore trucks rumbled by were pocked with red.
"I remember at that point knowing at some point in my life I'm certainly going to get sick," recalls Alexie, the acclaimed author who now lives in Seattle and recently won the National Book Award. "I have very little doubt that I'm going to get cancer."
Such is the legacy of the Northwest's only uranium mines. At least for those who even know they exist.
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