Peabody Coal Company's massive coal mining expansion plans on the proposed Black Mesa Project outlines many harmful impacts to the ecological and cultural systems on Black Mesa. The Black Mesa Project has global repercussions particularly to the environment, Black Mesa Navajo, and Hopi communities.

Therefore, it is important to protect Black Mesa as a sacred (religious), cultural, and historic landscape by having the area designated as Traditional Cultural Property under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, and under the RFRA agreement.

Black Mesa has many religious shrines and offering places located on its landscape. However, it must be stressed that the whole Black Mesa region, including Navajo Mountain is a female goddess that is lying by her male mate the Chuska Mountains.

Both mountains are alive, they rule over different form of earth life within the sacred Dineh (Navajo) landscape of Dinétah. In the Navajo worldview, all life is divided into female and male, each with its special purpose of keeping life in balance and maintaining order in the universe.

In reference to Black Mesa, she is keeper of water and water creations. The female mountain has her head at Navajo Mountain, her upper body is the main portion northern Black Mesa, her arms are around the Shonto wash, and in one hand she holds a cane Aghaala' (tall black rock near Kayenta), in the other she holds a Navajo wedding basket. And finally her feet extend out at Balakai mesa near Dilkon.

Not only is the female goddess keeper of the Navajo Aquifer that is pumped for coal and road washing, but also her liver is the coal being dug up by Peabody Coal.

Formerly, Navajo residents were required to make special offerings if they wanted to dig and use the coal for special purposes, it was known that its' chemical properties were dangerous - just as our own liver processes waste from our bodies.

The Black Mesa Navajo communities have always made offerings at various special sites for different purposes, the living mountain must be protected, and more importantly, the female goddess must be kept alive.

If Peabody continues to disrupt and destroy the female life of Black Mesa by pumping water from within her and digging coal, they will not only destroy Navajo and Hopi communities, but also canyon lands, indigenous vegetation, shrines, and burial sites.

Furthermore, if Peabody continues to pump massive amounts of water, it depletes a precious and scarce resource - water that residents, animals, vegetation, and land depend on to survive. The blasting the land for coal also depletes the air quality, and increases the health risk of t he local residents and their livestock.

Moreover, families are removed from their ancestral homelands where the coal mining expansions are planned. The major concern as a result of Peabody extracting coal to use for producing electricity is the impact of accelerated global warming which will cause an ecological meltdown.

Marie Gladue 
Black Mesa, AZ