Following passage of the Radiation and Exposure and Compensation Act expansion, which includes post-1971 miners for the first time, Searchlight spoke with three tribal members whose lives were changed forever by a toxic industry.
Aviva Nathan
Aviva Nathan grew up in Santa Fe. As a high school student, she wrote for the Santa Fe New Mexican as part of a program for teenagers called Generation Next. She graduated from United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico, in 2023. After studying political philosophy and Spanish in Spain, she now attends Swarthmore College, where she’s majoring in Spanish and comparative literature. Aviva says she’s grateful to be back in the high desert interning for Searchlight; she appreciates the opportunity to learn more about the place she loves through journalism.
Posted inTribal Affairs
Frequently asked questions about a complicated process: RECA expansion
To get a sense of how the next wave of compensation will really work, Searchlight spoke with Julian Duque, communications director for Representative Teresa Leger Fernández
Posted inNuclear
“They didn’t want to see us”
New Mexican downwinders, receiving financial compensation for the first time, reckon with the ongoing tragedy of the Trinity bomb detonation — and fight to ensure remembrance