IV. Introduction
In Black Mesa, a remote region of northern Arizona,
traditional Dineh struggle to continue their traditional way of life on
lands their families have lived on for thousands of years. On harsh
lands deemed worthless to the rest of America, they were allowed to live
unmolested carrying on their ancient societies based on dry-crop farming
and sheep herding. But late in the twentieth century, their lands
were discovered to hold the continent's richest supplies of mineral wealth.
There is an estimated twenty billion tons of high grade, low-sulfur coal underlying a stretch of Arizona desert known as Black Mesa. Rich veins of the mineral rest so near the surface that erosion has exposed them in many places. A veritable stripminer,s delight, the situation presents a lucrative potential to the corporate interests profiting from America,s spiraling energy consumption. The only fly in the ointment is that the land which would be destroyed in extracting the "black gold is inhabited by a sizable number of people who will not - indeed from their perspective - cannot leave. This problem has caused the federal government to engage in one of the more cynical and convoluted processes of legalized expropriation in its long and sordid history of Indian affairs.
Excerpt from "Struggle for the Land, Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary
North America , Part II-Genocide in Arizona?-,Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, In perspective by Ward Churchill, 1993,
Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME
To the Dineh people, most of whom do not speak, read or write English, the earth is sacred. They could not allow mining any more than they would tolerate the rape of their own mother. But the energy companies in the mid-1950,s used the US government to form tribal councils controlled by their own lawyers whose main purpose was to sign leases allowing them to take what they wanted. One of the main areas that they wanted was Black Mesa - the most sacred ground in the Hopi and Navajo religions. Hopi prophecy foretold that one day outsiders would want to devastate Black Mesa. All of the traditional Hopi leaders for the first time banded together and appealed to the U S court system to protect their sacred ground but the Supreme Court said that the Hopi people were not allowed to protest any actions of the tribal councils managed by Peabody Coal Company and other energy industries. Black Mesa became home to the largest strip mine in North America run by Peabody Coal Company.
The human right of indigenous people
to maintain their own way of life including the right to use lands to which
they have traditionally had access to for subsistence.
AGENDA 21, CHAPTER 26 |
In 1975, a political geographer studying the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute wrote, It now seems inevitable, however, that the mined areas will expand to the south and west of Peabody,s existing leases as new lease agreements are concluded with the Hopi and Navajo tribes. Production of coal might be facilitated by their removal of the human population from Black Mesa..,
Excerpt from Geopolitics of the Navajo Hopi Land Dispute by John Redhouse.
To use the coal the US Department of the Interior
in partnership with utility companies and private parties built the largest
power plants in the U S, whose air pollution is so great that it was
one of two man-made effects visible to the Apollo astronauts. To save
money shipping the coal, they constructed the only slurry line in
the U S - pumping over 1.4 billion gallons of pristine water each year.
Over 26 billion gallons have already been pumped, water that has accumulated
over thousands of years under the desert surface. Springs and groundwater
sources have dried up and all but the deepest wells in the region have gone
dry. This sole source aquifer is the only water supply for the Hopi and
much of the Navajo. It is estimated that several Hopi villages will
run dry three years from now at the present rate of usage. Others
will follow. Ironically, most Dineh people in the region live without
running water, electricity and telephones even though their lands supply
electricity for Las Vegas, southern California and much of the southwest.
Of the water wells that remain most have been fenced and capped off due
to either contamination or the US Government,s Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) policy to coerce the Dineh into abandoning their home and lands.
People must haul water for themselves and their livestock from up to forty
miles each way on unmaintained and poorly graded dirt roads that are often
unpassable for weeks at a time.
SOLE SOURCE AQUIFERS: SMCRA - SECTIONS 102 (b) AND 717 (b) FEDERAL REGULATIONS - 30CFR 715.17( I ) , 779.25 (a ) (10), 780.21-22, 800.14, 800.15, 816.41 (h ),816.62, 816.133 ( c ) ( 2 ) and 842.12 |
Many of their homes have been damaged by blasting
effects from the mine. No pre-blast survey were ever done as required by
law. Many of their sheep have died from drinking water poisoned by
mining operations. Many of the residents living near the mine suffer
health effects from excessive coal dust . No right to mine was ever granted
by them as required before any mining can be conducted. Black Mesa
region is the last traditional stronghold and must he preserved. The Dineh
presence continues to protect their sacred land from expanded mining activities.
The traditional people in the region need a voice in their destiny.
AN EPIC BATTLE IS TAKING PLACE BETWEEN HUGE CORPORATIONS
INVOLVED IN THE LARGEST ENERGY PROJECTS IN THE U S AND A SMALL
GROUP OF NATIVE PEOPLE.