The project led Bahn to host a panel called "Bodies of evidence using archives to give voice to the Hanford Downwinders" at the
Pacific Northwest History Conference Oct. 21. The panel was co-presented by
Eastern Washington University Professor of History Ann Le Bar, Ph.D., and students Brianna Humphreys, Anika Martin, Alex Mikinaak, and Miles Ormsby, all of whom currently work with the Hanford Health Information Archives (HHIA).
The panel explored a few of the stories uncovered during their research. The bodies of Hanford Downwinders bear witness, in the form of myriad debilitating diseases, to the U.S. Government's malfeasance, deception, and skewing of scientific research on Hanford radiation emissions, perpetrated across decades in the name of national security.
After finally learning about the emissions and the coverup in 1986, hundreds of Downwinders recorded their oral histories to be part of the HHIA. They illustrate the accounts of otherwise healthy people suddenly beset with extreme, mysterious symptoms for which doctors could find no cause and often misdiagnosed. Some Downwinders lost parents early to cancers and heart attacks, or had siblings who were stillborn or congenitally disabled.
Interpreting these oral histories has expanded our students' notions of what constitutes historical accuracy, how to account for the narrator's subjectivity, and how to represent each Downwinder's anger, distrust, and sadness.
