The Community Introduction was prepared by Las Mujeres Hablan, a network of women leaders from community organizations in Northern New Mexico. The perspectives and opinions expressed within the Community Introduction do not necessarily state or reflect the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the authors of this report.

Las Mujeres Hablan (The Women Speak), our colleagues, and community members are honored to present this Introduction to the Community Summary of CDC’s Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) Project. Las Mujeres Hablan is a network of women leaders from community organizations in Northern New Mexico. We came together in 2007 to address our common concerns about the environmental and health effects from the nuclear weapons industry at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) on downwind and downstream communities. Our shared values and beliefs are based on the truth that all people are inherently inter‐connected with the land. Our mountains, valleys, and river ecosystems must be respected and cared for so that our communities are healthy now and into the future.

As land‐based Peoples, we see how industry and technology developed by the modernized world have changed our present and future relationship to the land. The Peoples of this area have always understood their responsibility in a relational co‐existence as the caretakers of this Place, because we are this Place. For this reason, we must first speak of the Pajarito Plateau and the Jemez Mountains. This area is a dormant volcanic plateau located in north central New Mexico, the ancestral homelands of the Pueblo Peoples. This sacred plateau is bounded by the Valles Caldera to the west and consists of nineteen finger‐like mesas with cliffs and canyons that flow into the life‐giving Rio Grande to the east.

All discussion of the Pajarito Plateau and the Jemez Mountains must acknowledge that places have the ability to record multiple worldviews. These ancient mountains are a place that continues to nurture life as they have throughout millennia, recording cycles that are held in the sacred dimensions of time immemorial. We must listen to the stories of the Peoples and read the ageless recordings imprinted on the canyon walls. When the United States Government and the military began its operations at LANL in 1943, the land was seized under a set of values that separated the Peoples from the land. The sole purpose was to develop weapons of mass destruction. It was an unnatural occurrence that changed life as we know it. This culture of violence was forcibly incorporated into our story. The rocks recorded it. The water and air recorded it. Our DNA recorded it to be forever held by our children.

Of gravest concern is the LAHDRA documentation of past releases of man‐made radioactive materials, heavy metals, and toxic chemicals into the environment by LANL. For example, between 1948 and 1955 releases of airborne plutonium from twelve industrial stacks at LANL exceeded the routine releases from the Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Savannah River Sites since the beginning of their combined operations.