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| Denver protest Peabody Coal. Photo by Mano Cockrum, Hopi-Navajo. |
Navajo President Ben Shelly plans to be in Geneva for the UN Human Rights Council report on sacred places.
Hopefully President Shelly will say that he will no longer push for another coal-fired power plant on Navajoland, and bring to an end those that are there. Coal-fired power plants in the US are a primary reason for the melting of Arctic ice. The result is that Native villages are dropping into the sea and polar bears and other wildlife are dying due to the loss of habitat.
President Shelly recently pushed for the building of another coal-fired power plant, Desert Rock, which would be the third on Navajoland in the Farmington, N.M., area, with another power plant at Page, Ariz. Peabody coal mines on Black Mesa have long desecrated the sacred places of Big Mountain and elsewhere on Black Mesa, poisoning the land, depleting the aquifer, poisoning and drying up the springs, polluting the air and causing respiratory diseases.
President Shelly, according to the news, will be at Special Rapporteur James Anaya's report on human rights and sacred places in Geneva. So hopefully someone will point out, as they usually do, that when it comes to protecting human rights, you can't pick and choose. When it comes to Mother Earth, that's like saying 'I only raped her a little.'
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