Boudart, Brown honored during Window Rock – Uranium Film Festival awards

The Window Rock Uranium Film Festival ended with the closing ceremony and the announcement of its 2025 Honorary Lifetime Achievement Awards. 

The 2025 winners in Window Rock are 89-year-old, longtime activist Jan Boudart from Chicago and Norman Patrick Brown, a distinguished Navajo warrior, filmmaker, actor and intellectual strategist who has devoted his life to addressing the profound challenges posed by nuclear issues since his pivotal involvement in the 1974 anti-nuclear conference.

Jan is a board member of the Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), a non-profit organization committed to ending nuclear power and advocating for sustainable ecologically sound and socially just energy solutions. At age 50, she reawakened her activist voice and began her anti-nuclear work in 2004. “With this award, we honor her tireless commitment to a better world for everyone, free from nuclear risks,” says festival executive director Marcia Gomes de Oliveira. “She traveled by train from Chicago to the festival and arrived full of energy to continue her work raising awareness about the risks and consequences of nuclear energy. We couldn’t resist giving her this year’s lifetime achievement award.”

“Renowned for his unwavering commitment and exceptional strategic acumen, Norman Patrick Brown has been both a cherished friend and steadfast collaborator for more than half a lifetime,” said Anna Marie Rondon, Project Director NMSJEI for the festival. “His influence has been far-reaching — he played a crucial role in the advancement of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, galvanized 800 participants in a landmark gathering of uranium miners, and was instrumental in the enactment of the Dineh Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, which decisively banned uranium mining within the Navajo Nation. Norman’s tireless efforts continue to safeguard the well-being of Navajo communities. In recognition of his lifelong dedication, the  International Uranium Film Festival honors him the festival’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The 4th edition of the International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) of Window Rock at the Navajo Nation Museum was also honored with the presence of filmmakers Shonie De La Rosa, Ella Warnick, Guy Morgan, Jeff Gipe and Lynda Williams, producer Sunny Dooley and honorable Crystalyne Curley, the 25th Navajo Nation Council Speaker.