Paul Scott

Timothy Benally, a Navajo veteran and former uranium miner, walks back to his truck on this blue and white transfer-print platter. This work’s maker, Paul Scott, spent time on the Navajo Reservation with Benally, who explained that during the Cold War the US government exploited Navajo miners and lands in the pursuit of uranium for nuclear weapons. Scott writes that the Navajo people were “cheated out of huge tracts of land and employed on a fraction of the wages of the white Americans who supervised and profited from mine developments. . . . A whole generation of Navajo men subsequently lost their lives to cancers and leukemias linked to uranium exposure.”

–Sháńdíín Brown, Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art