One Woman's Brave Battle with Breast Cancer

Brown hills rise on either side of us, revealing ancient forms - many of them female - in their shadows. These giants are best picked out of the landscape by the intimate contour of their breasts, the smooth curve of their thighs. Their stories are shared in the memories of our three closely-related tribes. They are from a time before cancer ripped apart our bodies, before radiation leached from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, before our fishermen told daylight stories about salmon that glowed.

On the Umatilla Reservation outside Pendleton, Ore., eight cancer survivors, all women, gather in an empty room at the fire station to talk. Where are the men survivors, I wonder. Those gathered have battled cancers of the lungs, the breast, the ovaries and the thyroid. Everyone present can name at least one other person who should be there.

Each takes a turn telling their story. Cancer struck them at all different ages. Chemotherapy left one woman with diabetes. Another has had reoccurrences. She fears for her daughter, who eventually seems to get every medical problem that she has.

Although these families have lived side by side since time immemorial, these stories of bravery aren't told. Not many generations ago we would have regaled each other with tales of how we triumphed in battle or in hunt. But the healthy don't want to hear these harrowing stories of cunning in the face of this mortal foe. It reminds them, and us, of our vulnerability.

The husband of one survivor wondered if, "between being 'downwinders' and the secondhand smoke at the casino," any of us have a chance.

Hanford's "downwinders" were exposed to airborne radioactive iodine, released while plutonium was made for bombs from 1945 - 1972. Seven reservations, including Umatilla's, surround Hanford, a once beautiful place where our tribes used to gather food.

For Native women in the Northern Plains, exposure to agricultural chemicals is often mentioned as one possible reason for the high incidence of breast cancer. Even something as little as smoke from someone else's cigarette could be a cause. The day of our Umatilla meeting, the influential California Air Resources Board reported that women who have been exposed to secondhand smoke have a 90 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer, putting younger women particularly at risk.