Category: Wilderness Defence

At the end of an excep­tion­al­ly hard win­ter of Nation­al Emer­gency sta­tus, and the begin­ning of a mud­dy spring, the Dine’ (Nava­jo) fam­i­lies of Big Moun­tain, and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties on Black Mesa con­tin­ue to stand strong on their ances­tral home­lands! For near­ly four decades the com­mu­ni­ties have faced the dev­as­ta­tion of the U.S gov­ern­ment and multi­na­tion­al coal min­ing cor­po­ra­tions exploit­ing their home­lands and vio­lent­ly frac­tur­ing their com­mu­ni­ties. Although the per­mit for the Black Mesa Mine expan­sion did­n’t pass, and hope­ful­ly nev­er will, fam­i­lies remain–resisting the Kayen­ta Mine and forced relo­ca­tion.

“The Big Moun­tain Dine’ elders have endured so much since the 1970s and at the same time, they have defend­ed and pre­served that human dig­ni­ty of nat­ur­al sur­vival, sub­sis­tence and reli­gious val­ues. They have resist­ed the U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s geno­cide poli­cies to vacate lands that Peabody Coal Com­pa­ny rec­og­nized as the Black Mesa coal fields. The Big Moun­tain matri­ar­chal lead­ers always believed that resist­ing forced relo­ca­tion will even­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit all eco­log­i­cal sys­tems, includ­ing the human race. Con­tin­ued res­i­den­cy by fam­i­lies through­out the Big Moun­tain region has a sig­nif­i­cant role in the inter­ven­tion to Peabody Coal’s future plan for Black Mesa coal to be the major source of elec­tri­cal ener­gy, increas­ing every­one’s depen­den­cy on fos­sil fuel and con­tribut­ing to glob­al warm­ing. We will con­tin­ue to fight to defend our home­lands.” –Bahe Kee­d­ini­ihii, Dine’ orga­niz­er and trans­la­tor.

Sup­port­ing these com­mu­ni­ties, whose very pres­ence stands in the way of large-scale coal min­ing, is one way to work on the front lines for cli­mate jus­tice and against a future of cli­mate chaos. There are also oppor­tu­ni­ties for long-term, com­mit­ted sup­port­ers and orga­niz­ers. Black Mesa Indige­nous Sup­port (BMIS) is look­ing for Region­al Coor­di­na­tors to orga­nize year-round sup­port and work towards move­ment build­ing, which would main­tain and enhance com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels between the Big Moun­tain resis­tance com­mu­ni­ties and net­works that are being estab­lished to sup­port the Big Moun­tain resis­tance as well as oth­er local forms of indige­nous resis­tance, while build­ing shared analy­sis, vision and move­ments for the lib­er­a­tion of all peo­ples and our plan­et. Please con­tact us for more infor­ma­tion if you are inter­est­ed.

The fam­i­lies are encour­ag­ing peo­ple to come to Black Mesa now! Sup­port is request­ed all year long!

BMIS is a grass­roots, all-vol­un­teer run col­lec­tive ded­i­cat­ed to work­ing with and sup­port­ing the indige­nous peo­ples of Black Mesa in their Strug­gle for Life and Land who are tar­get­ed by and resist­ing unjust moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing oper­a­tions and forced relo­ca­tion poli­cies of the U.S gov­ern­ment. One of the pri­ma­ry ways that we do this is to hon­or the direct requests of these fam­i­lies to extend their invi­ta­tion to all peo­ple inter­est­ed in sup­port­ing their resis­tance, to come to Black Mesa, to their threat­ened ances­tral home­lands, walk with their sheep, haul water and wood, what­ev­er they ask of us. By com­ing to The Land, we can assist the elders and their fam­i­lies in dai­ly chores, which helps us to engage with the sto­ry that they are telling as well as to claim a more per­son­al stake against envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, cli­mate change, and con­tin­ued lega­cies of colo­nial­ism and geno­cide. We can sup­port by being there so they can go to meet­ings, orga­nize, weave rugs, vis­it fam­i­ly mem­bers who have been hos­pi­tal­ized, rest after a dif­fi­cult win­ter and regain strength for the upcom­ing spring. With spring comes plant­i­ng crops,shearing sheep, and lamb­ing.
COME FOR A MONTH! Or Longer!

The elders on the land are very thank­ful for the sup­port of their resis­tance over the last three decades. We at BMIS are ask­ing those who have come before to con­tin­ue the work you have start­ed by com­ing back.
And for those of you who have nev­er come to the land, we encour­age you to start.
Deep thanks to all who made the Novem­ber Car­a­van hap­pen: let us con­tin­ue the sup­port through the year.

BMIS can assist you in the process of being self-suf­fi­cient on the land, which is vital. We are hap­py to speak with you over the phone or email and we offer impor­tant online resources like the Cul­tur­al Sen­si­tiv­i­ty and Pre­pared­ness Guide­book found on our web­site. Vol­un­teers must read the guide­book and reg­is­ter with BMIS to ensure your safe­ty and be account­able to the fam­i­lies. There are also plen­ty of great doc­u­ments about the cur­rent and back­ground infor­ma­tion found on our website–one of the only on-line resources doc­u­ment­ing this resis­tance.

“This land is being tak­en away because they’ve got pow­er in Wash­ing­ton. We were put here with our Four Sacred Moun­tains ~ and we were cre­at­ed to live here. We know the names of the moun­tains and we know the names of the oth­er sacred places. That is our pow­er. That is how we pray and this prayer has nev­er changed.” ~Kather­ine Smith, Big Moun­tain Elder

www.blackmesais.org
blackmesais@gmail.com — PO Box 23501 Flagstaff, AZ 86002 — 928–773-8086
BMIS can send letters/packages to fam­i­lies, how­ev­er we encour­age you to be in direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the fam­i­lies.

Tes­ti­mo­ny from a Sheep­herder:

I have just left after a four month stay on the Land. This was my 14th win­ter stay­ing with Dine’ fam­i­lies resid­ing on the so-called HPL and resist­ing the relo­ca­tion laws by con­tin­u­ing to live on the land of their grand­par­ents of gen­er­a­tions back. It has been an intense win­ter. The big snow­storm was a sight to see, and remind­ed the elders of storms 40 and 80 years past, when there were many more fam­i­lies out there, and most of the elders did­n’t live alone. And yes, the Nation­al Guard and US Army did come out to the fam­i­lies. I won­dered at the irony of the hay, water, and oth­er sup­plies, think­ing how the fam­i­lies have lived under the threat of the Guard com­ing in to take them from their homes.

The OSM Life of Mine per­mit get­ting denied was a pleas­ant sur­prise. I had been look­ing at the hills, mead­ows and rocks that I have come to know, as becom­ing ‘reclaimed’ land through the mine expan­sion, and think­ing of the long, hard fight to come. A sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Black Mesa min­er, and “HPL” res­i­dent stat­ed that he was glad about the per­mit, and ready to see a change back to the old ways of liv­ing and away from min­ing.

The Sup­port­er car­a­van at thanks­giv­ing was a fast and fes­tive, and abun­dant time. About 120 sup­port­ers for the week, but by the end of Jan­u­ary there were only a few sup­port­ers on the land, and a list of fam­i­lies ask­ing for a sheep­herder. We were des­per­ate­ly call­ing out for peo­ple to come, and a few did, but only a few. And I thought, this is where the real sup­port is need­ed- in the long haul, the deep snow.

Back in 1997, and again in 2000 the fam­i­lies were liv­ing under a threat­en­ing “dead­line”, and there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of sup­port­ers on the land for months. I am grate­ful that there is no dead­line as such now, but I do won­der what keeps us sup­port­ers from com­mit­ting to com­ing out, or com­ing back. I have per­son­al­ly placed sev­er­al hun­dred sup­port­ers in the last 12 years, and I mar­vel at how much we strug­gle to ‘get the word out ’ and ‘get sup­port to the Land’.

I am so hon­ored and hum­bled by the lov­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty I receive from the fam­i­lies. My sons are treat­ed as fam­i­ly, and are grow­ing up know­ing the elders, kids and sup­port­ers, and about fight­ing for and sup­port­ing what is right. I have been raised out there myself in many ways. The Dineh peo­ple have been my teach­ers and men­tors, my inspi­ra­tion. I believe in doing all that I can to hon­or their request and invi­ta­tion to come into the home, the land and the lives of the peo­ple indige­nous to the land ‑what that means and what they are fight­ing for and against. I believe it is at the heart of the most impor­tant work today.

And I am writ­ing this to remind us, you, that their door is open and there is a job to do- some­thing that we are need­ing to under­stand, a con­nec­tion that needs to be made and hon­ored. It is time to come. It is time to come back. Its time to give back.
Please help us do this.

–Tree, BMIS vol­un­teer and vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tor