Environmental stalwart Stewart Udall celebrated in new documentary

Udall saw firsthand discrimination against Native Americans with whom he grew up in the Arizona desert. Later, he became the first federal official since the 1860s to name a Native American as commissioner to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, when he appointed Robert Bennett to that role. 

“Stewart was with us in heart, mind and spirit,” Rebecca Adamson, a Cherokee activist, says in the film.

Another kind of public service

After leaving government service in the 1970s, Udall devoted his life to righting the wrongs done to the Navajo people, downwinders of the atomic testing and victims of uranium mining in the Southwest.

The consequences of the United States’ Cold War development of nuclear power, and the coverup of its health dangers to millions, were covered in The Myths of August, one of Udall’s nine books. 

Redress for the victims of atomic radiation, still not fully accomplished, is one under-appreciated issue he championed. The blockbuster movie Oppenheimer, winner of seven Oscars, failed to even mention the real human scars of the Trinity test and atomic ground testing, argues activist Tina Cordova of New Mexico.

“The first people in the world who were ever exposed to an atomic bomb have never been compensated,” Cordova told Cascade PBS, noting that New Mexico was omitted from the states compensated for downwinders under the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. “People are still dying and getting diagnosed, all the time.”

RECA was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. It offered “an apology” and compensated uranium miners, ranchers and others exposed to nuclear radiation from mining or above-ground atomic tests in certain counties in the late 1940s through the 1960s. Since 1992, when the fund was created, more than $2.6 billion in claims have been paid, according to the Department of Justice.

“Stewart Udall was the godfather of RECA, and if everybody had the same moral compass as Udall, Congress would have added us to the compensation,” said Cordova.

Were he alive today, what would he be speaking out about? Francis told Cascade PBS that Udall might be critical of the climate movement for not being loud enough. “He’d be railing against the willful destructiveness of too-wealthy people who’d rather continue with our petroleum-based, plastics-based economy than save the planet upon which we all depend.”

Many closest to Udall stress that Udall’s legacy ultimately comes down to his dogged courage and caring for the land as well as his fellow human beings.

Former National Park Service director Stanton, reached by phone, insists there’s a need to elevate his courage and leadership as a model for our times. “His life is a lesson, in itself, in how one can be courageous.”

“I’m sure he got pushback,” says Stanton. “‘You’re going to do what?’ Sometimes you’re out there by yourself.”

That’s a lesson for all of us, says Stanton, to have the conviction to stand up and be courageous even while others may not agree.

This story is adapted from a story published previously in the Society of Environmental Journalists Journal Online.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the quantity of trails that are part of the National Trails System. Due to an editing error, the introduction of the story originally incorrectly stated how many national parks Udall helped establish in Washington. This article has been corrected.