This is how resource colonialism operates.
Excerpts from Covid-19, Resource Colonialism & Indigenous Resistance by Klee Benally
Approximately 33% of Diné have no running water or electricity.
For 41 years coal mining operations on Black Mesa consumed 1.2 billion gallons a year of water from the Navajo aquifer beneath the area. Although the mines are now closed and the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) coal-fired power plant they fed is also shuttered, the impacts to health, the environment, and vital water sources in the area have been severe.
Since 1974 US congress has attempted to forcibly relocate Diné from this area.
The NGS project was initially established with the purpose of providing power to pump water to the massive metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson.
For decades, while powerlines criss-crossed over Diné family’s homes and water was pumped hundreds of miles away for swimming pools and golf courses, thousands of Diné went without running water and electricity.
Today there are currently more than 20,000 natural gas wells and thousands more proposed in and near the Navajo Nation in the San Juan Basin.
The US EPA identifies the San Juan Basin as “the most productive coalbed methane basin in North America.” In 2007 alone, corporations extracted 1.32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from the area, making it the largest source in the United States.
Halliburton, who “pioneered” hydraulic fracturing in 1947, has initiated “refracturing” of wells in the area. Fracking also wastes and pollutes an extreme amount of water. A single coalbed methane well can use up to 350,000 gallons, while a single horizontal shale well can use up to 10 million gallons of water.
The Navajo Nation government supports these leases including around the sacred area of Chaco Canyon.
The San Juan Basin is also viewed as “the most prolific producer of uranium in the United States.”
In 1979 the single largest accidental release of radioactivity occurred on Diné Bikéyah at the Church Rock uranium mill. More than more than 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive tailings poured into the Puerco River when an earthen dam broke. Today, water in the downstream community of “Sanders, Arizona” is poisoned with radioactive contamination from the spill.
There are more than 2,000 estimated toxic abandoned uranium mines on & around the Navajo Nation. Twenty-two wells that provide water for more than 50,000 Diné have been closed by the EPA due to high levels of radioactive contamination.
There has never been a comprehensive human health study on the impacts of uranium mining in the area.
In 2015 the EPA accidentally released more than 3 million gallons of toxic waste from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River. The toxic spill flowed throughout Diné communities polluting the “San Juan” river which many Diné farmers rely on. Crops were spoiled that year. As a measure of relief for the water crisis, the EPA initially sent rinsed out fracking barrels.
Diné have been fighting on multiple fronts against the US & our own colonially imposed government for generations to defend the sacred.
While some celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision on ICWA as an affirmation of “Tribal sovereignty” we knew that the colonizer’s justice only serves to further colonial power.
If capitalism & colonialism got us into this mess, it won’t get us out of it. When we stop begging politicians for change and expecting voting or anything to change a system that is anti-Earth and anti-Indigenous by design, then we’ll be moving towards liberation.
Recall when the vice president of the World Bank stated that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” There are consequences for waging war against another Earth & it’s only going to get a whole lot worse. Respect existence or expect resistance.
Read the full piece here: https://www.indigenousaction.org/covid-19-resource-colonialism-indigenous-resistance/
Support autonomous Diné water projects!
Tó Nizhóní Ání: www.tonizhoniani.org
DINE’ LAND & WATER: facebook.com/dinelandnwater
(beware the large non-profit$)
