by Brenda Norrell
The Narcosphere
19 September 2008
After
Arlene Hamilton purchased stocks in Lehman Brothers, so the
Navajo, Hopi and Lakota delegation could address stockholders in
2001, Arlene called me. Arlene said she had been threatened and
believed she would be killed. She also said authorities had rifled
through her papers at her Navajo weaving project office in
Flagstaff, Ariz. Shortly afterwards, Arlene was killed in a car
wreck near Kayenta, Arizona. Roberta Blackgoat, longtime Navajo
resister of relocation, died at Arlene's memorial in San
Francisco.
That same
year, 2001, Cate Gilles, longtime news reporter on Black Mesa, who
covered other Indigenous issues, was found hanged in Tucson. We
were all friends with the Navajo environmentalist Leroy Jackson,
cofounder of the Dine' Citizens Against Ruining our Environment.
Leroy was found dead in 1993, after his life was threatened for
protecting the grandmother pines from logging.
Since
that time, the Navajo Nation Council and Navajo President Joe
Shirley, Jr., have continued to press for mining leases, including
the controversial Desert Rock power plant. The energy leases and
revenues largely pay the salaries and travel expenses of the 88
council delegates and tribal president, while a large number of
Navajos, including elderly, live without running water and
electricity.
While
many Navajos live with the pollution of the power plants in and
around Navajoland on Black Mesa, Page and in the Four Corners
region, they haul water and their children and grandchildren read
by lantern light, when they can afford to buy it.
This is
one of the most censored stories. The US government formed the
Navajo and Hopi tribal councils to approve energy leases. Peabody
Coal orchestrated the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute. As a
result more than 12,000 Navajos were relocated to make way for
Peabody's coal mining. There were decades of suffering, with
Navajo elderly sick without medicines on Black Mesa. Some Navajos
died from broken hearts when they relocated.
It is
with gratitude that I publish this and recognize my Navajo and
Hopi friends who patiently educated me about these facts over the
past 29 years. For me, it began with a comment from my friend
Louise at Big Mountain, talking about Peabody Coal. "The
corporations lie you know."
Perhaps
we will never know exactly what led to the deaths of all these
heroes, our friends, but there is always justice in time.
Read more at Censored
News: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
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