SONYA BEGAY
Ms. Begay is an enrolled member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. She attended Navajo Community College (presently known as Diné College) in Tsaile, Arizona. She earned her B.A. in Sociology from Eastern Kentucky University where she was awarded a Council of Three Rivers Native American scholarship for non-traditional students. She is currently enrolled in a Master's Program in Public Administration at the same university.
In her internship with the Institute, Ms. Begay is based at the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management/History Division in Washington D.C. Her research is focused on how the development of the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the time of the Manhattan Project from 1930 to 1950 affected neighboring Pueblo Indian communities. Ms. Begay is specifically researching the various ways in which the economies, social networks, and cultural practices of these tribes were altered, undermined, and enhanced.
From 1980 to 1992, Ms. Begay was a legal researcher for the U.S. Courts Library for the 9th Circuit in Los Angeles, CA where she worked with 9th Circuit, district, magistrates and bankruptcy judges and their staff. In order to pursue her educational endeavors, she left the Los Angeles area to attend Navajo Community College. At the college, she became interested in problems associated with uranium contamination on her homeland. This led her to pursue environmental issues in her education and career. As part of her subsequent studies at Eastern Kentucky University, Ms. Begay worked on independent studies and did field research in the area of health concerns affecting Navajo and Hopi people who lived close to uranium mill tailings sites in Tuba City, Arizona. In November 2000, Ms. Begay spoke in Tuba City and released the findings of her study that showed that families within a five-mile radius of the uranium mill tailings site suffered numerous types of cancers, birth defects, respiratory ailments and internal organ diseases at statistically high levels.