Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

February 27, 2015

Bahe: The Big Mountain Dineh Resistance: Still a Cornerstone

The Big Mountain Dineh Resistance: Still A Cornerstone


By NaBahe (Bahe) Keediniihii (Katenay) 2015

Shared with permission at Censored News


Big Mountain, Dinehtah (Navajo Lands) – In this remote high desert which is mostly covered with juniper and pinon pine forest in northeastern Arizona lays a region known as Black Mesa. The region was once so pristine but in the 1960s, Peabody Energy acquired leases to begin mining, building highways and massive industrial infrastructures, and extracting an ancient aquifer. Dineh (means The Peoples) who inhabited the region and who kept an ancient form of eco-conscious practices were now confronted with destructive and political upheavals. Traditional and non-English speaking Dineh were soon notified that “a Law” was made that will divide these territories and one half of it will go to Dineh’s close neighbor, the Hopis. Immediate concern and oppositions grew among Dineh and traditional Hopis, but this also exposed that major utility companies who served sprawling southwest cities were behind the lobbying and financial power that boost the U. S. Congress’s passage of the “Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974.”
Read article at Sheep Dog Nation Rocks

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