Navajos and Hopis protest Peabody Coal in Denver photos

Photos and audio by Mano Cockrum, Hopi-Navajo, in Denver:

Navajos and Hopis in solidarity, protest Peabody Coal, outside the Office of Surface Mining in Denver today. Black Mesa Panel Discussion on Sunday, recorded by Mano Cockrum. Listen to audio:

http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-mesa-panel-denver.html

Navajo and Hopi: 'Black Mesa is not for sale'

By Brenda Norrell

DENVER -- Hopis and Navajos spoke out in solidarity to oppose a new life-of-mine permit on Black Mesa for the longstanding genocidal corporation Peabody Coal. Speaking out during a panel on Sunday, and protesting outside the Office of Surface Mining on Monday, Hopi and Navajo said their water is too precious to be used again for water slurry.

Wahleah Johns, Navajo from Forest Lake, Arizona, with the Black Mesa Water Coalition, comes from the area, close to the Peabody Coal operations. Johns said the latest push for Peabody Coal mining is part of the Bush legacy of targeting Indigenous lands with fossil fuel extractions all over the world.

Johns said the proposed life of mine would mean that Peabody can mine as much coal as they can, as long as they like, until all the coal is gone. "It hurts me. I have seen what actual strip mining looks like."

Peabody has been using the pristine aquifer water at the rate of 4,600 acre feet of water each year. "No where else could you find this type of abuse, no where else in the world."

Johns said the Black Mesa Water Coalition organized because of the abuse of sacred water. "Black Mesa is regarded as a female mountain of Black Mesa." She said every effort must be made to stop coal mining on Black Mesa.

During the panel discussion on Sunday, Enei Begaye moderated the discussion on what more coal mining and devastation would mean for the Navajo and Hopi people.

Dale Jackson, Hopi from Third Mesa, said Hopis made a difficult sacred run to Mexico, which required a great deal of sacrifice. He was happy to see the rain when they returned.

"We were happy to see we brought the rain back."

Jackson said the Hopi grandmothers are sad now and do not know what will happen to them. "They are here in spirit listening to us."

Maxine Wadsworth, Hopi, said the people came out of respect to protect the water. "We just had to put our prayers before us, and lay our prayers down to be here today."

She said the Hopi tribal government has provided misinformation about the draft environmental impact statement. She said the Hopi people are not in support of the EIS and have gained the support of Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, who has asked that the EIS be suspended. She said the Office of Surface Mining is pushing for passage of the EIS.

Wadsworth said Peabody Coal does not have permission to use C-Aquifer water.

"We are here to speak on our own behalf." She said the aquifer provides water for ceremonies at the springs. The springs are drying up.

"When I think about it, I just want to cry. It is that significant to us."

Wadsworth said the US government is failing to protect the religious beliefs of the Hopi people, but yet protect insects and fishes.

Wadsworth listed the federal laws being violated, included the Treaty of Guadalupe and laws created to protect American Indian religious freedoms.

Hopi and Navajo traveled 12 hours to reach Denver, many living in desperate conditions.

They said they came to Denver for their children, their future and the sacred ceremonies. The people are being abused by their own tribal officials and the officials of the Office of Surface Mining.

Navajos from Big Mountain said ceremonial plants are disappearing as the springs dry up.

"They are destroying this beautiful land," said John Benally from Big Mountain. "Because they don't live there, they don't care."

While the healing and ceremonial plants and clays are disappearing, Benally said burning fossil fuels is responsible for global climate change. The sun is now causing people to have blisters. He said Navajos do not want to give their young people contaminated air to breathe and land to live on.

Navajos have to travel long distances to haul water, while Peabody uses the water and tribal officials ignore the grassroots people, especially the elderly.

"We are threatened again with relocation," said Leonard Benally of Big Mountain. "Enough is enough. We need your help."

"Tell the OSM people, 'Black Mesa is not for sale! Go home!'"

More news articles on protest at Pechanga Net Native News:

http://www.pechanga.net/NativeNews.html

Bush Inc.: Maddog attack on Indian lands in final hours

Article and photo by Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SAN FRANCISCO -- From Black Mesa to the Western Shoshone's Mount Tenabo, the Bush extended corporation of thieves is seizing Indigenous lands in the final hours.
Barrick Gold is right now bulldozing the Western Shoshone's sacred Mount Tenabo, tearing the trees out by the roots as Barrick prepares to dig out the heart of the sacred mountain for an open pit gold mine with cyanide leaching. Barrick is targeting Indigenous lands around the world.
In Denver today, Navajos and Hopis in solidarity are protesting the latest threat to Black Mesa. A soon-to-be released environmental impact statement could reopen the Black Mesa Mine and more lands for coal strip mining. It could result in the relocation of more families from Black Mesa and give Peabody Coal Company a life-of-mine permit to mine Black Mesa. Peabody Coal could also be given the green light to suck dry the precious water of the Navajo Aquifer.
In the Arctic, the fight continues to protect the pristine region from oil drilling and the pollution of power plants. Black carbons from power plants, including those on Indian lands, and tailgate emissions are destroying the habitat for polar bear, walrus and seals in the melting Arctic.
The proposed Desert Rock power plant on the Navajo Nation is being pushed by elected Navajo officials who receive their salaries and travel funds primarily from energy profits.
Desert Rock is being fought by grassroots Navajos at Dooda Desert Rock who do not want a third power plant in this area on Navajo land, in northwestern New Mexico. Desert Rock's corporate schemer is Sithe Global, whose parent company was created by Stephen Schwarzman at Blackstone, a member of the Bush corporate band of Skull and Bones.
With the racist hype of television news and hate crimes rising, Indigenous borderlands are being seized by the U.S. Homeland Security. The ancestors graves have been dug up on the Tohono O'odham Nation by Boeing during construction of the border wall. Lipan Apache in Texas are fighting the seizure of their land by Homeland Security.
The seizure of borderlands will result in a profitable corridor of land for the US, while the militarization of the border results in deaths, harassments and rape. US soldiers and US border agents are smuggling drugs and carrying out murders, assaults and rapes.
Across America, Native American sacred places, from San Francisco Peaks to Bear Butte, are being pillaged and desecrated. Indian lands, including the Lakota and Navajo lands, already strewn with unreclaimed radioactive tailings from the Cold War, poisoned water and massive cancers and deaths from uranium mining, are targeted in the United States and Canada for more uranium mining and nuclear waste dumping.
At the northern border, Mohawk grandmothers have been beaten by Canadian border guards, resulting in the heart attack of Mohawk Nation News Publisher Kahentinetha Horn. MNN Editor Katenies was also beaten and jailed.
Just as the American Indian Movement said after the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder in Gordon, Neb., the battlecry is now "Never again!"
Related:

Related:
Video: Award-winning journalist Great Palast tells how Bush Sr. went to work for Barrick Gold after changing the laws before he left office, so Barrick could buy land for its gold mine in Nevada. Also described is how a subsidiary, which Barrick purchased, buried miners alive in Tanzania:
http://vimeo.com/1620121?pg=embed&sec=1620121

Israel's automatic killzone border towers could be future for US border
Barrick Gold: Sucking it dry
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Photo: During the last year of her life, Navajo relocation resister Roberta Blackgoat protesting Peabody Coal and the use of the Navajo Aquifer in Flagstaff, Ariz. Photo Brenda Norrell

Israeli's automatic kill zone border towers could be future for US border

Special thanks to Mohawk 'Splitting the Sky' for contributing to this report.

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

TUCSON -- Border towers and automatic killzones are already a reality in Israel and could be the next step for the US/Mexico border. Meanwhile, an unmanned and malfunctioning Predator drone is headed for the US/Canadian border from the US/Mexico border to endanger lives there.

The drones, unmanned spy planes, were discontinued for a while after one crashed near Nogales, Ariz., in 2006. Congress, however, brought back the drones, equipped with lasers, to endanger lives on the ground again. The Predators are also used by the US to kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan, computer operated by US soldiers in Arizona and Nevada.

Now, Noah Shachtman writes in WIRED that the US government has been trying with limited success to install a string of sensor-laden sentry towers at the US/Mexico border. In Israel, these towers have automatic weapons to spray death.

"On the U.S.-Mexico border, the American government has been trying, with limited success, to set up a string of sensor-laden sentry towers, which would watch out for illicit incursions. In Israel, they've got their own set of border towers. But the Sabras' model comes with automatic guns, operated from afar," Shachtman writes.

The Sentry Tech towers are basically remote weapons stations, stuck on top of silos. "As suspected hostile targets are detected and within range of Sentry-Tech positions, the weapons are slewing toward the designated target," David Eshel describes over at Ares. "As multiple stations can be operated by a single operator, one or more units can be used to engage the target, following identification and verification by the commander."

Wired said it flagged the towers last year, as the Israeli Defense Forces were setting up the systems, designed to create 1500-meter deep "automated kill zones" along the Gaza border.

Meanwhile, the US now has a Predator drone on the way to patrol the northern US border. It comes as no surprise that the first Predator drones for the US/Mexico border were purchased from Israel defense contractor Elbit Systems, the Apartheid maker who also worked on spy systems for Boeing at the US/Mexico border.

The southern drones have been stationed at Fort Huachuca in southern, Arizona, the site of recent protests over US Army training that resulted in torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Fort Huachuca was also the site of production of the School of the Americas torture manual, made public in 1996, which resulted in tens of thousands of murders, rapes and tortures in the Americas in the 70s and 80s.

With so many US soldiers arrested and sentenced for smuggling drugs recently, from the border at Nogales to Phoenix, it would be good to know if anyone has checked to see if the unmanned drones are being used by the US military to smuggle drugs.

The FBI had to shut down the sting Operation Lively Green, because so many Army, Marine, Airforce and National Guard soldiers in Tucson, along with police and prison guards, wanted to smuggle cocaine from the Arizona border north. A similar sting resulted in the arrests of soldiers in Oklahoma, smuggling drugs north from the Texas border.

Drone headed to US northern border:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/drone-to-keep-w.html

Navajo Give Back, To Be So Blessed

Photos and song documenting the annual Thanksgiving Food and Supply Run to the Dine people of Big Mountain in resistance to forced relocation from their land in north eastern Arizona. The song, "To Be So Blessed" is by Somer Moon, performed by Somer Moon and Clan Dyken at Paradise studio in Sacramento California. Recording, mix and keyboards by Jeff "Fingers" Crawford.

http://www.clandyken.com/cd/index.php