Flagstaff Snowbowl Protesters Take to the Streets

By www.IndigenousAction.org

Protect the Peaks! Week of Action Takes to the Streets
By IndigenousAction.org
www.IndigenousAction.org

On Friday, August 5th, more than 50 people marched through the streets of downtown Flagstaff to raise awareness of Arizona Snowbowl’s eco-cide and desecration of the Holy San Francisco Peaks. The march was part of a week of action to bring community members together to protect the Peaks.

On May 25th 2011, authorized by the the Obama Administration’s Department of Agriculture and US Forest Service, owners of Arizona Snowbowl began further destruction and desecration of the Holy San Francisco Peaks. Since then Snowbowl’s crew of a handful of workers has laid over 5 miles of the planned 14.8 mile wastewater pipeline. They have cut a six foot wide and eight foot deep gash into the Holy Mountain. Snowbowl is currently in the process of clear-cutting more than 30,000 trees and burning slash-piles.

Before the march began Flagstaff Cops kicked protestors out of Hopi Square, demonstrators continued nearby flyering and engaging in a spontaneous community forum about the issue.

Carrying banners that read, “Stop Snowbowl Cultural Genocide” and chanting, “Community Health Over Corporate Wealth!” marchers walked and took the streets for more than two hours distributing flyers.

A member of Youth of the Peaks, an Indigenous youth organization, witnessed Flagstaff Police Department Officer Simpson badge #41 texting “dealing with mother f–kers.” A crowd erupted in protest as he was reprimanded by a superior officer. An “official” report of misconduct was later filed against him.

A 2-story banner reading, “Environmental Degradation, Cultural Genocide, Racism, Public Health Threat. Don’t Regret Today. Destroy Snowbowl,” was hung over the square where hundreds of people were gathered during Flagstaff’s monthly Art Walk.

At approximately 7:30PM, as the crowd of 50 marchers crossed Aspen St., a Flagstaff cop grabbed one person from behind and arrested him for “obstructing a public thoroughfare.”

officer. An “official” report of misconduct was later filed against him.
art to “Art Walk” by hanging signs that read, “I love eating poop snow.”

Messages such as, “Your Silence Doesn’t Stop the Truth” were also projected onto buildings along with images of Snowbowl’s recent clear-cutting of the Holy Mountain.

Indigenous youth also held a “Zombie March” with over two dozen young people dressed as Zombies symbolizing the public health threat sewage effluent snowmaking poses.

From August 4-9, 2011 events are planned in Flagstaff, Arizona to protest Snowbowl ski area and the Obama administration’s US Forest Service sanctioned desecration of the holy San Francisco Peaks.








Upcoming Events:
Sun. 7th – MARCH FOR THE PEAKS! – 12:30PM
Meet and start in Wheeler Park downtown Flagstaff, AZ. Bring banners and signs.
Mon. 8th – RALLY AT USFS OFFICE! – 12:30PM
At Coconino Forest Service Office – 1824 S. Thompson St. Flagstaff, AZ (Near AZ Daily Sun off of Old Rt. 66) Come on your lunch hour. Bring banners and signs.

Tues. 9th -PROTEST HIGH DESERT INVESTMENT &; CITY HALL!

PROTEST HIGH DESERT INVESTMENT – 12:30PM
504 E Butler Avenue (across from New Frontiers)

PROTEST CITY HALL – 4:00PM
Meet at Flagstaff City Hall on Rt 66 side. Bring banners and signs, drums and song.

BACKGROUND:
Although a current legal battle is under appeal, Snowbowl owners have chosen to undermine judicial process by rushing to construct the pipeline.
Encampments have been established on the holy Mountain in protest of the destruction and desecration.
All are welcome to camp and bear witness to Snowbowl’s desecration.
For more than a dozen years Indigenous Nations, environmental activists, and concerned community members have worked together to protect the holy site and surrounding area from further ecological destruction, public health threats, and spiritual desecration.
Arizona Snowbowl’s development plans include clear-cutting 74 acres of rare alpine habitat that is home to threatened species, making new runs and lifts, adding more parking lots and building a 14.8 mile buried pipeline to transport up to 180 million gallons (per season) of wastewater to make artificial snow on 205 acres. The Peaks are central to the ways of life of more than 13 Indigenous Nations. The use of wastewater undermines internationally recognized rights of Indigenous people; rights that the Forest Service and administration is obliged to protect.

TAKE ACTION NOW!
Converge on the Mountain!
Join an established base camp or start your own

More info: www.truesnow.org

Contact Flagstaff City Officials and urge them to RESPECT the environment, Indigenous culture, and protect public health by finding a way out of their contract to sell Snowbowl wastewater!
PHONE: (928) 779-7600
EMAIL: council@flagstaffaz.gov
Contact Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and express concern that there was no meaningful public process when the agency approved wastewater for snowmaking. File a complaint and demand full public review!
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality
1110 West Washington Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
(800) 234-5677 – Toll Free
Northern Regional Office
1801 West Route 66, Suite 117
Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
(877) 602-3675 – Toll Free
www.azdeq.gov/function/compliance/complaint.html
Contact the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which heads the Forest Service, and urge them to revoke the Special Use Permit for Arizona Snowbowl for greater public interest.
The USDA has been holding hearings on protection of sacred places due to the Peaks controversy. Urge the USDA to immediately place an administrative hold on all development on the San Francisco Peaks!
CALL CRAIG JOHNSON USFS TRIBAL LIASON IN FLAGSTAFF, AZ AT: 928 525 6578.
Tom Vilsack
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250
Phone: 202-720-3631
Email: TribalSacredSites@fs.fed.us
Send Letters to the Editor of your local papers.
Arizona Daily Sun: rwilson@azdailysun.com

Leonard Peltier attorney claims solitary confinement a ‘setup’

Leonard Peltier attorney claims solitary confinement a ‘setup’

By Jeff Armstrong
Contributing Writer
Published with permission

Imprisoned American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier has been held in solitary confinement under oppressively hot conditions since June 27 for minor prison disciplinary violations his attorney maintains he did not commit.

Peltier, age 66 and in declining health, now faces at least another month in what he describes as “a steel and concrete box with no ventilation.” Federal prison officials initially indicated that Peltier would serve six months in “the hole,” but reduced his penalty to 60 days (from the July 11 hearing date) after an outcry from his legal counsel and international supporters.

“These are very, very minor offenses that even if he did commit them are not significant,” said lead Peltier attorney Robert R. Bryan.

Serving consecutive life sentences for his alleged role in the slaying of two FBI agents after a June 26, 1975 shootout with AIM members on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Turtle Mountain, North Dakota native is viewed across the globe as a political prisoner. The shootout occurred in the context of a political struggle by grassroots Lakota traditionalists supported by AIM against a violently corrupt tribal dictatorship backed by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI. While the U.S. government itself has conceded it cannot prove who fired the fatal shots, it has denied Peltier parole in a classic Catch-22 scenario for refusing to admit personal responsibility for the killings.

Incident reports from the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania claim Peltier was punished for possessing Scottish currency and for having exposed wires in his cell. According to the prison report, “in the wall of the ceiling.” Bryan said Peltier could not have received the 20-pound note in the mail without the complicity of prison employees who carefully open and screen all outgoing and incoming letters and envelopes.

“They had to knowingly let the currency be delivered to my client. They open everything that comes through the mail room except my correspondence,” said Bryan. “Whoever it was that opened the letter set it up.”

Peltier attempted immediately to send the bill back out through the mail, but this time the bill was detected. His cell was searched and the exposed wires found. “He sent it out thinking he was doing the right thing,” said Bryan. During the search, Peltier’s “religious items were thrown around” by prison authorities, the attorney alleged.

Bryan said Peltier had confronted a previous cellmate over the electrical wires, which the cellmate had apparently used to improve his radio reception, and thought the issue resolved. The attorney added that the timing of the incident itself is rather suspect.

“It was the day after the anniversary of [the June 26, 1975 shootout at] Oglala and two days after the defeat of Custer [on June 25, 1876]. It seems a little coincidental.”

After 35 years in prison, Peltier scrupulously adheres to institutional rules and is noted for his role as an elder counselor to younger inmates. The only reason Peltier remains in Lewisburg, which began to transition into something of a supermax facility for problematic prisoners in 2008, is that he was assaulted by fellow Natives upon his transfer to Canaan federal penitentiary, also in Pennsylvania, on Jan. 13, 2009.

Peltier did not fight back and was placed in isolation for refusing to name his attackers. Prison authorities have refused to release videotapes or reports on the assault, or even admit that it occurred, despite requests from the North Dakota Associated Press, as well as Peltier’s defense. The indigenous activist suspected that the incident was staged in order to incite a disciplinary violation in advance of his parole hearing later that year, and it is difficult to otherwise explain why a respected, if not revered, Native warrior and freedom fighter would be brutally beaten by his own comrades in the absence of external instigation.

Peltier supporters were encouraged by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, but the president’s failure to quickly replace Drew Wrigley as U.S. Attorney for North Dakota helped deny Peltier a fair parole hearing. Wrigley hoped to ride the issue into the governor’s office but had to settle for lieutenant governor instead, by painting Peltier as a violent criminal whose release “would promote disrespect for the law.” This disingenuous argument helped persuade the U.S. Parole Commission to override its presumptive 30-year maximum sentence requirement, one by which no less a reformed prisoner than past and present Charles Manson adherent Squeaky Fromme was released shortly before Peltier was denied.

The respected human rights organization Amnesty International, however, has monitored the case for more than three decades and argues to the contrary that Peltier’s continued incarceration could have the same effect of diminishing respect for U.S. legal institutions. Amnesty International has recognized Peltier as a political prisoner and called for his “immediate and unconditional release,” while supporting his efforts toward executive clemency or parole.

In a 2000 press release calling for presidential clemency from Bill Clinton, Amnesty said it “believes that the evidence that Peltier shot the two FBI agents is far from conclusive. One of the organization’s pivotal concerns was that his extradition from Canada was on the basis of a testimony by an alleged eye-witness who was coerced by the FBI into making false statements. In a recent public hearing in Toronto, Canada, Myrtle Poor Bear again corrected the record saying that her original claim—that she was Peltier’s girlfriend and that she saw him shoot the agents—was false, and was a result of months of threats and harassment from FBI agents. She had also said that she had been 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the scene at the time of the shooting.”

“Amnesty International has repeatedly voiced serious concerns over the fairness of the legal proceedings which led to Leonard Peltier’s conviction and sentence, and believes that political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was conducted,” the organization said of the 1977 federal trial in Fargo.

In response to a recent Freedom of Information Request by Peltier attorneys, the FBI claimed it had misplaced and could not locate Myrtle Poor Bear’s files. Peltier attorneys say the suppressed FBI files are among more than 140,000 that have been denied release on privacy or national security grounds. The most recent suppression of documents came from a 2009 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a government decision to withhold, among 11,000 pages of files, “twenty-one volumes of what the FBI described as ‘informant information.’” Remarkably, the federal courts found no compelling public or historical interest in the documents sufficient to override the privacy interests of federal informants and their handlers, though U.S. v. Peltier will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most controversial cases of the 20th century and one of a long and growing list of legal injustices against Native peoples in the U.S.

Bryan says the defense will appeal the 2009 parole denial but that his legal efforts will ultimately go to the root of the problem. An internationally renowned human rights attorney who has helped save the lives of as many as 200 death row inmates, Bryan says Peltier’s current legal status amounts to a death sentence. Yet he firmly believes that the truth will set Peltier free.

“The elephant in the room is that Leonard is innocent,” says Bryan. “It’s very clear he did not kill the agents; he’s a political prisoner. All he wants now is to live out the rest of his days at Turtle Mountain, where he will be welcomed as a respected elder.”

Questions and comments: armstrong@i29.net

[Editor’s Note: Jeff Armstrong is former Communications Coordinator for the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee and is currently completing his Masters Thesis at NDSU on the political and legal history of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. At the time of printing, High Plains Reader has obtained updated information indicating pressure from the public already swaying outcomes for Peltier. However, attorney lead counsel for Peltier, Robert Ryan, cites continued mistreatment is threatening to kill his client based on discrimination of Native Americans. In Ryan’s own words, he put it best when he said: “My office now has the complete details regarding the punishment of Leonard Peltier for alleged prison rule infractions that he did not commit. The facts lead to the inescapable conclusion that he was set up in order for the government to impose even more retribution than the nearly 35 years of imprisonment and isolation from which he continues to suffer. Further, the draconian penalties are life threatening to my client who is nearly 67 years old, has a heart condition, diabetes, and other medical problems caused by the lengthy incarceration. Racism, politics and revenge appear to be the forces driving this unjust situation.” To see the full text of Lead Counsel Ryan’s argument and complaint on Peltier’s behalf go to http://tiny.cc/Peltier
]

Most Censored in Indian Country: The Corporate Polluters

Corporate destruction of Mother Earth most censored issue in Indian country

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Photo: Marisa Joseph, Yankton Sioux, stands with Gerald Danforth, Oneida Wisconsin, before the solar panels and wind generator providing power to the Earthcycles. Photo Brenda Norrell.

NEW TOWN, North Dakota -- The 16th Annual Protecting Mother Earth Gathering revealed the most censored issues in Indian country, including the corporate polluters who are protected and promoted, under the guise of economic development. From Peabody Coal in Arizona, to BP on the Gulf Coast, and tar sands profiteers in Alberta, Canada, corporations destroy the land, air and water.

The Gathering of the Indigenous Environmental Network attracted Native Americans from throughout the United States, First Nations in Canada, Wixirika from Mexico and Maya from Guatemala, July 28-31.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Cheyenne River Lakota, delivered a powerful address to Gathering of the Indigenous Environmental Network, as it opened its four day conference on the land of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations, now being destroyed by massive oil and gas wells.

Chief Looking Horse is the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Oyate. Chief Looking Horse spoke of his own early days and the guidance he was given for spiritual leaders. Although it is now a time of ceremonies for the Lakota Dakota Nakota Oyate, he said he came here to speak because of the importance.

“When I was young, we had no cancer or diabetes, and people kept their word. When they said they were going to do something, they kept their word. Today, the leadership is not good. People are speaking out of hurt and pain.”

Chief Looking Horse spoke of the pain and suffering of the people and of Mother Earth. While speaking of this difficult time, he shared his vision that the people, with the help of the Canupa, Sacred Pipe, and a return to a spiritual way of life, will make it through.

“We know that Grandmother Earth is sick right now," Chief Looking Horse said. (Read more at: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/07/chief-looking-horse-speaks-at.html )

Kandi Mossett, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, urged those attending to call the Fort Berthold BIA and oppose the finding of 'no significant impact' on the plan for 3,000 oil and gas wells here over the next five years. Mossett described the death of a 23-year-old friend killed due to the heavy truck traffic. She urged calling Earl Silk, Fort Berthold BIA, 701-627-4707, tell him the lands of the Three Affiliated Tribes, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, are already being destroyed by oil and gas drilling.

"I want my warriors back. I want our men back," said Wahleah Johns, Navajo, of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, as she described how Peabody Coal has drained the aquifers for coal mining and power plants in Arizona, and how the Navajo elected leaders cater to the corporations.

Further, coal fired power plants, including the Navajo Nation's coal fired power plants in Arizona and New Mexico, are a leading cause of global warming and climate change, now causing the ice in the Arctic to melt, with Alaskan villages crashing into the ocean and polar bears, walruses and other wildlife dying.

The devastation to both the environment and the local economies was described in the US and Canada, from New Town, North Dakota, to Alberta, Canada, as transit workers' high wages make food and housing unaffordable to local families.

The resistance to the dirty tar sands announced plans for civil disobedience in Washington to send a message to the Obama Administration to halt a plan for use of the dirtiest oil on the planet, which threatens natural resources and humanity in North America, including Indian country.

Clayton Thomas Muller, Cree, said civil disobedience is planned for Washington to challenge the Obama Administration and US State Department, now presiding over a key decision regarding dirty oil from the tar sands pipeline, the proposed TransCanada Corp. Keystone XL pipeline.

Muller said if this pipeline is allowed to proceed from Canada to the Gulf Coast, it would cross sacred lands and endanger Indian country resources, including the Lakota aquifer.

“It is an absolutely insane plan, especially in a time of climate change,” Muller said, adding that already Gulf Coast industries are getting ready for this dirty oil.

Shell and BP are among the corporate polluters pressing for more dirty oil. (Read more at: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/08/indigenous-peoples-civil-disobedience.html )

Native Americans in Alaska and Louisiana have both suffered from the nation's largest oil spills, which have devastated Native communities who depend on subsistence from the land and oceans to survive.

Faith Gemmill of REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) said oil spills and climate change should serve as a wakeup call in North America -- but this has not happened.

Gemmill is a Pit River/ Wintu and Neets'aii Gwich'in Athabascan from Arctic Village, Alaska.

Gemmill joined local Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara fighting massive oil and gas development here in North Dakota, and First Nations activists fighting dirty tar sands development in Alberta, Canada.

Gemmill spoke of the similarities between the devastating oil spills in Alaska and Louisiana. She pointed out that climate change further wrecks Native villages on both coasts, where land is caving into the ocean.

"We all have the same story."

Houma Nation Chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux  was among the presenters at the Protecting Mother Earth Gathering in North Dakota, July 28-31, 2011. The Houma were hard hit by both Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

Gemmill said when the oil spill devastated the Louisiana Gulf Coast, she was a member of a delegation from Alaska that traveled to Louisiana. They shared with the Houma, their own struggle in Alaska to recover from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Gemmill said she described to the Houma the years of litigation and the years of impacts for Alaska Natives, years of heartbreak that Louisiana Natives would now have to face.

"Years later we haven't recovered. The species haven’t recovered. There were a lot of similarities," Gemmill said. (Read more at: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/08/natives-in-alaska-and-louisiana.html )

Indian country leaders are now being courted with "greenwashing," as corporations attempt to profiteer from the Green Movement which seeks to halt global warming and create alternative energy sources. The scam of carbon credits, and waste incinerators disguised as renewable energy and recycling projects, are the latest corporate hoaxes.

Indian country has been targeted for decades as America's waste dump, with coal-fired power plants, massive oil and gas wells, uranium mining and toxic dumping.

Native Americans are now being duped into the carbon market, entering into the carbon credits scam, which allows the world's worst polluters to continue polluting. The carbon market scheme also seizes Indigenous Peoples forests and other resources around the world. Already Indian Nations in Idaho and Oregon have been duped by corporate propaganda to become part of the carbon market.

Bradley Angel of Greenaction described the latest Greenwashing scams. Angel said an action alert has been issued because of companies targeting Native Nations with proposed waste incinerators disguised as renewable energy and recycling projects.

On the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, the Oneida Seven Generations Corporation is promoting a project using pyrolysis technology. The pyrolysis incinerator is proposed in Green Bay, after their initial plan for a site on Oneida Indian Nation land was dropped.

"Not only does the Oneida Seven Generations Corp. want to have a facility in Green Bay, but it is also promoting this to other tribes, a potential disaster," Angel told Indigenous Peoples gathered from throughout the Americas.

Greenaction evaluated the project and advised the Oneidas to halt the Oneida Seven Generations Corporation Proposal in Wisconsin for a pyrolysis gasification facility. (Read more at: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/08/greenwashing-corporations-target-indian.html )

The Gathering began when Western Shoshone Chet Stevens brought the fire from the 15th Annual Gathering. Scott Baker, Hidatsa, accepted the Fire and lit the Sacred Fire for the 16th IEN Protecting Mother Earth Gathering. Keeper of the Calendar Mayan Tata Cecilio Tuyuc Sucuc from Guatemala was among those gathered for prayer. (Read more at: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/07/listen-live-today-ien-protecting-mother.html )

The four day Gathering was broadcast live and on the web in New Town, North Dakota, and rebroadcast on Crow Voices Radio at Wellknown Buffalo, Montana this week.

Listen to the Gathering on Censored News Blogtalk Radio:
Wixirika (Huicholes) fighting the First Majestic Silver Mine in Vancouver BC, demanding a halt to the destruction of their sacred mountains.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Oyate, describe the age in which we live and the teachings handed down.
Anishinabe Water Walker Josephine Mandamin describe her sacred walks around the Great Lakes and the preciousness of water.
Censored News Blogtalk Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/brenda-norrell
More info at the Indigenous Environmental Network:
http://www.ienearth.org

Navajo government ignores elderly without water

Navajo Nation government caters to coal mines and power plants, while Navajo elderly go without water

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Photo: Navajo elderly drinking contaminated water/Forgotten People

BIG MOUNTAIN, Ariz. -- While Peabody Coal and power plants use the precious aquifer water here, Navajo elderly go without.

Forgotten People shares the voices of Navajos resisting relocation, where Navajo elderly are forced to haul their water, elderly who are often ill and without transportation. The wells have been capped off and the springs are drying up.

Still, the Navajo Nation leaders only make an occasional, superficial gesture at caring about the suffering of Navajo elderly without water. Instead, the Navajo government continues to focus on polluting and disease producing industries.

By ignoring the suffering of Navajos on Black Mesa, and instead catering to the needs of Peabody Coal, the United States government and other mining and power plant operations, the Navajo Nation government has engaged in a crime against humanity. While providing the Southwest cities with electricity produced with large quantities of pure water, the Navajo government has neglected to provide water for their own people.

The media has been a complicit partner in this crime. While failing to expose the suffering and injustice on Black Mesa, the media has continued to promote the polluting industries on the Navajo Nation, even cheerleading for more coal-fired power plants.

Coal-fired power plants not only use excessive water, but they are the primary cause of global warming and the melting of the Arctic, now causing Native villages to crash into the waters. The pollution from coal-fired power plants has resulted in habitat change in the far north, causing the deaths of polar bears, walruses and other wildlife.

Black Mesa comments from Forgotten People:

Pauline Whitesinger, Big Mountain speaks: We want to participate in a water hauling project. The wells throughout HPL (Hopi Partitioned Lands) have been capped off, fenced off, bulldozed and the natural water source near me is contaminated and unregulated. When I drink the water it hurts my throat and I have a reaction when I swallow it and get sick. I have no vehicle and have no access to safe drinking water. My livestock are thirsty. We are living under a State of Emergency! We are endangered, denied access to water, forced to travel over unpassable dirt roads and endure violations during our ceremonies that the Hopi Tribe says requires a permit to conduct. There are other water sources near me and they are all denied to me for my use. When I was offering a sacrament to the water the Hopi told me to leave the water alone, it does not belong to me. I speak on behalf of my people. We have brought our case and our words (as attached) to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner (see link for UN OHCHR website), Congressional, federal, and tribal forums advocating for our human right to water and sanitation.

Caroline Tohannie, Black Mesa speaks: Our springs were our wetlands with cat tails and other wetlands growth. But they are no longer here. This is where we make offerings and get our healing medicine like cat tails or wreaths for ceremonial purposes. These are our sacred sites. The BIA made wells that had concrete covers and manual pumps. But BIA Rangers came around and disassembled them, taking the pumps out, unscrewing parts, taking off pipes. All the windmills in our region were capped off by the BIA. At first one windmill was capped off but we could reopen it at first but then found the BIA welded the cover shut with dirt over the well opening. There was no longer any way to get water from the well. At another windmill in the area, the BIA disassembled the windmill pump so it would not work. We have been fenced and capped off from access to water. This has created many problems for living things, even insects that need water, animals, birds and people. These tactics are being done to force us off our land so Peabody Coal Company can expand their mining operations.

Read more statements from Navajos on Black Mesa:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61460412/8-2-2011-FP-SUBMITTED-Comments-to-President-Shelly-HPL-Right-to-Water
.