Blood Money: Traditional Navajo and Hopi warned against strip mining Black Mesa

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Note by Hunterbear:

A couple of quick, early morning thoughts -- before I head off for some
domestic responsibilities:

I grew up within and immediately around the vast Navajo world in this
region -- and our family traditionally supports the Dine'.  When one cuts
through the many layers of obscuring complexity in this and related
situations -- generated by outside and hostile non-Indian forces -- one
finds ignorant media and self-serving Anglo politicians and, most of all of
course, utterly calculating Machiavellian corporate interests.  These
predators hover from their regional bases in the Western cities -- e.g., Los
Angeles and Salt Lake and Denver -- but their home trails go into the
thickets of very far-flung global interests indeed. And these nefarious
forces and their allies have always sought to divide the Indian people
whenever and wherever they can -- but they're having an ever-more difficult
time these days as, increasingly, Native grassroots people and many leaders
join together across tribal lines in common Cause, against the common Enemy.

What's happening here is following the same basic course as that of the
ever-continuing River of Death generated in the Navajo country [and that of
the nearby Lagunas] -- and environs -- in the lethal uranium tragedy that
began more than a half a century ago, and which has poisoned much earth and
air and water -- and which has claimed a vast number of lives, mostly
Native, and will take many, many more.

The traditional Navajo and the traditional Hopi long ago found common cause
via the compelling urgency of these and comparable hideous Dangers.  Here is
simply one example of several of which I'm personally aware:

During one of the periods where the Navajo / Hopi land dispute in the JUA
region [Joint Use Area] had become extremely heated via non-Indian corporate
conniving -- late '70s into the '80s -- it was not unusual at all for the
always very traditional Navajo medicine men and their Hopi counterparts to
meet in common cause.  I know they did because these gatherings often
occurred at the main Navajo Community College [now Dine' College] campus,at
Tsaile, in the large office used by a number of Navajo medicine men based at
the College.  I knew these men [and a number of other Dine' medicine men]
well indeed -- and their college office was immediately adjacent to mine.
Hopi traditional leaders often came there and, too, on occasion, these
congenial joint meetings sometimes moved into a large classroom which I
traditionally used and in which I was occasionally present.  During this
very time, much United States mainline news media were constantly talking
about allegedly "irreconcilable" divisions between the two tribal nations.

And increasingly, these kinds of joint gatherings -- with effective
action -- are very much continuing in the lands of the Navajo and the Hopi.

More on all of this later.

Hunter [Hunterbear]


This week: Oct. 23, 2002
http://www.headwatersnews.org/perspective.html

Blood money


Traditional Navajo and Hopi warned against strip mining Black Mesa

By Marley Shebala for Headwaters News

I try to start each day with the dawn. I take a palm-size amount of coarse
ground white corn and quietly step outside my home. I face the east
direction and sprinkle my offering of white corn from the north to the south
and then from Mother Earth upwards to Father Sky.

My prayer to the Creator, Talking God, the Dawn People, Grandfather Eagle
and all the Holy Ones is simple and often repetitious. I thank them for all
the blessings they have given me, especially my daughter, three
grandchildren and Eagle Woman, a traditional medicine woman, who has become
my friend and sister.

I also ask them to bless my in-laws, my five-fingered relatives, the
Four-Leggeds, the Ones That Fly, the Ones That Crawl, the Ones That live in
the Water, Mother Earth and all of life, especially the children.

And I always ask for guidance, patience, intelligence and wisdom.

We cannot survive without earth, fire, air and water. And they cannot
survive without us. We take care of them and they take care of us. This
philosophy also holds true for traditional Zunis and other indigenous
people.

I'm Dine' (Di 'neh) and Ashiwii (A'shi'we). The English word for Dine' is
Navajo and for Ashiwii, it's Zuni. My mom was Navajo and my dad was Zuni.
And so I'm also To'aheedliini (Where the Water Flows Together clan) and born
for Naasht'ezhi (Zuni). My dad's clan was Frog.

That is who I am. I know who I am because I know my history, and it is not
myths or legends. The history of the Navajos and Zunis are retold in the
numerous traditional ceremonies that are still practiced. These ceremonies
can be an afternoon, two days and nights, or nine days and nights. Certain
ceremonies are only done during the winter or summer.

The Navajos came from perfect ears of white corn and yellow corn. The white
corn was First Man and the yellow corn was First Woman. The Holy Ones
created them side by side and with prayers and ceremony. We are taught in
the traditional Navajo way that we are born from earth, fire, air and water.
These four elements of life are Holy Ones. That is how we are connected to
life, to the environment.

We cannot survive without earth, fire, air and water. And they cannot
survive without us. We take care of them and they take care of us. This
philosophy also holds true for traditional Zunis and other indigenous
people.

In the early 1970s, before the arrival of corporate public relations people
on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, who spewed propaganda of Navajos and
Hopis warring with each other, the Navajo and Hopi people lived together.

They even held hands and stood in front of gigantic coal strip-mining
machines to save a traditional female shrine, the Black Mesa, which blessed
the land with water.


Their story, which never changed and is carried by their children, who are
now adults, is that the coal is the liver of Black Mesa. They knew, without
operating on each other or exhuming each other's bodies, that the liver
filters out toxins so blood remains pure and the body is kept healthy. They
said the blood of Black Mesa was the water.

These Navajo and Hopi elders also talked about a huge pure lake that lay
deep under the liver of Black Mesa. They told the elected leaders of the
Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe that if they signed a lease with Peabody Coal
company to rip out Black Mesa's liver, her blood would become polluted, that
it would stop raining, that the streams and land would dry up, that life
would suffer.

Today, many of the Navajo and Hopi people live as they did before their
governments signed a lease with Peabody. But it's a struggle because the
streams where they made their prayer offerings for their farms, livestock,
children, rain, Mother Earth and all of life have disappeared.

This past summer, both tribal government declared a reservation-wide drought
emergency. In past years, only the western portion of the 25,000-square-mile
Navajo reservation experienced drought. Cameron, a small Navajo community in
western Navajo that is about an hour and 30-minute drive from Black Mesa had
its worst drought in years.

For the past 30 years, Peabody has pumped 1.3 billion gallons of pristine
water from the lake beneath Black Mesa, mixed it with coal and transported
it through a 273-mile pipeline to Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin,
Nev., which provides electricity to California, Arizona and Nevada.

Carl Bighorse, 73, who chairs the Cameron Grazing Committee, remembered that
they used to receive a lot of rain and snow. But it stopped in the late
1990s.

Bighorse was born and raised on top of Gray Mountain, which is west of
Cameron. He kicked at the earth with his worn-out boots and the dust rose
like smoke. He pointed to his birthplace and said four ponds dried up on top
of the mountain.

At ponds below the mountain, even those with water, several dead cows and
calves laid in the dust. Bighorse said the cows and calves were so thirsty,
they'd drink too much water, sink into the mud and die. He said people would
try to pull them out. The ones that they got out would just hobble around,
drop and never get up, said Bighorse.

An elk cow got stuck in a sewer pond near Cameron and when people tried to
save her, she fought wildly against them. Navajo fish and wildlife ranger
removed her carcass several days later.

In July, people started sighting bears around residences and in the Canyon
de Chelley park. One bear slaughtered 45 sheep before being shot and killed
by the owner. Five other bears that were also spotted in the area were
scared away by Navajo fish and wildlife rangers and their dogs.

The rangers said the bears were hungry and thirsty. Ranger Eddie Benally
said he'd prefer to scare away a bear than kill it. Benally said if he had
to kill a bear, he'd have to have a major ceremony. In the traditional
Navajo way, the bear is our grandfather.

Traditional medicine people of the Navajos and Hopis said they're having a
hard time finding the herbs they need for the traditional prayers and
ceremonies. The herbs are not growing in their usual places because there's
no rain and there's not enough moisture from the underground lake to nourish
the plants.

For the past 30 years, Peabody has pumped 1.3 billion gallons of pristine
water from the lake beneath Black Mesa, mixed it with coal and transported
it through a 273-mile pipeline to Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin,
Nev., which provides electricity to California, Arizona and Nevada.

The water from this lake had a subtle sweetness and nourished huge cedar
trees that had trunks five feet wide. Wild flowers, yucca, sage and pinon
and juniper trees grew in abundance.

Marshall Johnson, a tall, lanky, rodeo bull rider who wears his long, black
hair tied in the traditional Navajo way, attended a public hearing by the
California Public Utilities Commission in Tuba City on Oct. 11. Tuba City is
in western Navajo and about an hour's drive from Black Mesa. CPUC was taking
public comment on Southern California Edison's request for CPUC to recognize
the end of Mohave Generating Station's operations in 2005 or to authorize
Edison to spend about $58 million in 2003 on pollution-control measures at
Mohave.

The pollution from Mohave cut visibility at Grand Canyon by 30 percent to 50
percent, which prompted the Sierra Club to sue Mohave in 1998. The
Environmental Protection Agency also got involved and found that Mohave was
releasing 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air each year. Edison,
which is Mohave's owner, agreed to install $1.1 billion worth of pollution
control equipment by 2005.

Johnson was at the CPUC hearing to save what remained of the lake beneath
Black Mesa. He smiled and said he was given two minutes to present his
information, which he usually did in his language, Dine', and took at least
an hour. Johnson smiled again, looked at his wife, Nicole Horseherder, and
baby daughter, and said they'd be in Window Rock, Az., next week when the
Navajo Nation Council has its five-day winter session.

As Johnson was leaving, he said the CPUC didn't have interpreters for the
Navajo and Hopi elders that testified. He represented To'nizh Oni'Ani',
which means Beautiful Springs Speak. The members are the people that live
around Black Mesa. They organized after asking how their Hopi neighbors
created their group, the Black Mesa Trust.

Black Mesa Trust also wants to save the lake beneath Black Mesa, which is
called the Navajo Aquifer and they pressured their government, the Hopi
Tribe, to support them. The Hopi Tribe has threatened Peabody with
non-renewal of their coal lease in 2005. The Navajo Nation also testified.

The Navajo leaders said Peabody's two coal mines on Black Mesa employ 350 of
their people and that 21 percent of the tribal budget comes from its coal.

The 2003 tribal budget is about $113 million. And so the tribal leaders said
they opposed the closure of Mohave but they wanted an alternative source of
water for Peabody's slurry pipeline and a fair price for the coal.

Before the Navajo Nation and Hopi governments signed a lease with Peabody in
the 1970s, the elders from Navajo and Hopi also warned their tribal leaders
about becoming addicted to the money from Black Mesa's liver and blood.

Marley Shebala is a reporter at the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'




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