Environmental control: charting a course for the Navajo reservation through road construction, 1945–1978

Abstract

This article examines the history of road planning in the decades following the Second World War on the Navajo Nation. Federal highway planners and Navajo residents had conflicting ideas about the role of roads in the Nation's postwar development. The planners’ support for highways near uranium mines undermined efforts towards Navajo self-development and modernization. Federally planned and subsidized highways granted extractive industries control over large portions of the Nation. Those highways locked in a regime of environmental exploitation that caused severe and debilitating public health consequences for Navajo communities.