It's crucial to understand that as a society, we can reorganize. We can reorganize socially, politically, and economically, and we can reorganize according to our values.
—REBECCA ADAMSON
ON THE NAVAJO RESERVATION in the 1980s, where I grew up, there were few lights in the dark night, other than the moon and the stars. Sitting outside and looking up upon the stars, my dad would tell me Diné winter stories of how First Woman and Coyote put the starlights in the sky. First Woman arranged with purpose and intention, while Coyote simply threw them randomly into the sky, the stars in the end creating their own pattern. The story reminds us of this world's many dualities and the struggle to balance them. Growing up, I would look out from the top of our small mountain and imagine the creation stories playing out across the dazzling points of starlight. On a moonless night, the sky became an endless dark canvas, and the brightly shining stars painted beautiful glittering images of men and women, animals and insects, and the worlds before this one. Where the dim shadow of the night sky touches the dark line of Black Mesa—the black mountain our home faces—that perfect set of intentional and random sparkling lights met a harsh glare of red and white illumination. These were the incandescent red and white bulbs flashing, unchanging atop the northern end of Black Mesa. The only artificial lights as far as I could see were these, the mine lights, Peabody Coal Company's mine lights to be exact. Still there today, they illuminate the coal mine's aircraft landing strip, then slide down Black Mesa's side, revealing the coal conveyor belt that strips our land of life and fuels madness elsewhere.
As a kid on our rural piece of “the rez” in northeastern Arizona, I used to think Peabody's lights were pretty amazing, glaring across a landscape of various shapes and shades of darkness. When you don't grow up surrounded by artificial lights and neon signs, these small flashy effects can really capture your attention. In my mind, it meant that one day we would have all the big city luxuries. Only later did I understand the beauty and power our culture carries regardless of these electric lights. Only later did I realize the full cost we pay for these flashing lights.
Since 1970, Peabody Western Coal Company, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the world, has operated two coal strip mines on Black Mesa. Together these mines made the Black Mesa operation one of the largest coal strip-mining operations in the United States. Coinciding with the mine opening, the United States Congress drew a line in the sand, deciding for the Navajo and Hopi people that our land would be put to use. To make way for mining, twelve thousand Navajos and sixty Hopis were forced to leave their homelands or forfeit rights. Navajo and Hopi communities who had long been good neighbors were pitted against one another for control of the “resources.” My family was lucky to have just missed the line of forced relocation. But many families on and around Black Mesa were not as lucky.
Then, as if we owed the coal company more, for decades Peabody took our region's sole source of drinking water, mixed it with coal, and sent it hundreds of miles away, into what is known as coal slurry transport. It remains the only slurry transport existing in the United States, as it is such a shameful use of water. With bulldozers and chains, Peabody stripped the land of pine and juniper trees, sagebrush and wildflowers. For decades they have disturbed the red healing clay, Chii, and turned the earth gray. To power the Southwest, Peabody has dynamited hundreds of feet into Black Mesa for coal and water. Our land will never be the same again.
I grew up into a land that has been torn apart physically, culturally, spiritually, and socially by America's need for energy. Black Mesa is a female: Her head is Navajo Mountain, north of my home. Her body is the mesa stretching across the northeastern corner of Arizona. The coal is her liver—that organ that filters poisons from our bodies. And the water is her lifeblood; this is what we are taught. Peabody has ripped her apart. As Diné people, we become a reflection of her, our mother—the Earth.
But in the 1960s, my people were promised riches in exchange for coal, jobs and electricity in exchange for our water. From an early age, I learned that coal meant jobs. Just about everyone I knew growing up had at least one relative that worked at the coal mine, yet I didn't see the promised riches. Like so many others, I grew up hauling water in fifty-five-gallon barrels over many miles to provide for my family's weekly water needs. With vehicles always breaking down from endless driving on dirt roads and bills that needed to be paid, the extreme lack of good-paying jobs is still a constant threat.
I'm thirty-two years old now, and most home sites still have no electricity or running water, no lights or refrigerators, just newer ice chests and fresh flashlight batteries. Navajo communities are disappearing as mothers and fathers are forced to leave their children with aging grandparents in order to find work in the cities off the reservation, while families living around the mine suffer from all sorts of respiratory illnesses.
So where are all the riches we were promised, the lights and income? The answer: Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles—we have been sending it by train and slurry line for decades. Today's reality on the reservation is a stark reminder of the fairly recent colonization of our lands, always for mineral wealth. We were forced into concentration camps by U.S. Cavalry in the 1860s so the U.S. leader Kit Carson could search for gold freely. In the 1920s when coal, oil, and gas were found beneath our lands, the Diné were persuaded to set up a Navajo government system reflecting the United States' so that mineral leases could be signed “legally.”
As I learned more about our history, connecting the dots with what I saw growing up, I knew it needed to be stopped and that I needed to act. There became no way to look at Black Mesa and be awed by Peabody's lights; seeing those flashing lights every night only made me angry and frustrated.
Going to college seemed the best way to learn how to fight these injustices and better understand them. But after several years and only one semester shy of graduating from Stanford University, I left it all behind to come home again and fight.
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I REMEMBER SUMMER 2002 LIKE IT WAS yesterday. Driving to the public hearing took ages, as if we were actually driving through the ancient millennia that formed the red rocks and painted dunes surrounding us. The destination that day was Tuba City, Arizona—one of the “big cities” of the reservation. The little grocery store sign reads YA'AT'EEH (Navajo for welcome). There were two traffic lights, a strip of four-lane road lined by gas stations and fast-food joints, a trading post, a hotel for tourists, and federal institutions aplenty.
Some people might see a third world community, right at the intersection of poverty and the potential for modern prosperity. I see “home.” I didn't grow up here, but it's fairly similar throughout the reservation—communities struggling, under the weight of McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, to find a balance between being Diné and being “American.”
That day, my car, full of friends and organizers, was heading to the Tuba City Chapter House—the local government office, which is essentially a large meeting room with linoleum floors and florescent lights. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC ), which regulates California utility companies, was holding a public hearing. The bigwigs had come out—commissioners and their staffers—and we rarely had visitors like that. This was a major meeting; they came to decide whether to give over a billion public dollars to keep one of Southern California's main power plants, the Mohave Generating Station, open. The plant provided power to the big cities of the Southwest. It is fed coal and water solely through a 275-mile (442.6-kilometer) long steel straw stretching all the way from my home, the Black Mesa region of the Navajo Nation.
Pulling up into the dirt parking lot of the Chapter House, we passed each other some of the stickers that read SHUT DOWN MOHAVE! in bold letters, slapping them on to our jackets and shirts. At first, nobody got out of the car; silently, we stared at the gate entrance. At the entrance stood a group of older Navajo men wearing Peabody Western Coal hats. This is gonna be ugly, I thought. I recognized a couple of the men as my friends' parents and clan relatives. We must have been pooling our strength silently in the car, because collectively we felt the push to keep going. Luckily, the worst we got as we squeezed through the gate's entrance were harsh stares and murmurs in Navajo. These were their jobs after all that we were threatening.
We arrived before the meeting began, but the list to speak had already filled three pages. I put my name down and my heart beat fast. When I looked at the list, it was filled with the names of Navajo employees of Peabody Coal Company. Where were all the community people we had urged to come? I wondered. We had spent days driving throughout the Black Mesa region, letting people know about this meeting, offering to pay peoples' gas expenses, telling them what's at stake. Many said they would come. My heart sank.
Inside the Chapter House, all the folding chairs were set out and filled; still more people stood against the walls. At the front of the room sat the commissioners, a professionally dressed group of older white men and women. The rest of the room was mostly Navajo with a few non-Navajo supporters mixed in. There were Navajo Peabody people, government people, grandmas and grandpas, and us—the only young people. We called ourselves the Black Mesa Water Coalition, a year-old group of which I was a leading member.
It turned out that more people opposed to the mine did show up, but in good Native time—late. We spent most of the morning listening to Peabody employees tell the CPUC commissioners why they had to keep the power plant open: jobs, college for their kids, a chance at the “American Dream.” The same story you hear from many continuously oppressed communities. I grew more and more irritated hearing it.
But when I heard my name called as one of the next on the list to speak, my palms began sweating and I wondered if it was normal for my heart to beat this fast. I waited against the wall below the podium for the speaker before me to complete his three minutes. The mother of a good friend of mine from high school had just finished speaking. She worked for the mine, and she spoke about needing the coal income for her kids' education.
Walking down from the podium, she made a beeline for me. I braced myself; this was going to be painful. I hadn't seen her since my high school graduation, and now to see her here like this with my sticker blaring on my chest. I prepared for the worst. But she didn't attack me with mean words; instead she came over, leaned in close to me, and whispered, “Enei, think about what you are doing, think about what you are saying, think about my son, his college education—don't take that away from him,” and then she left me.
Her words jabbed me harder than any insults could have. For a few seconds, I blinked back tears. Was I about to ruin people's lives? And then I got mad. Why did we have to be beholden to this exploiting corporation just to go to college? Peabody has already destroyed so much here. It was not me that was doing the harm.
When I found myself at the podium looking down at my notes, all I could see were indecipherable amounts of scribbles. I took a deep breath and just told the decision makers my truth from my heart:
I am “Red-Streak-Running-Through-The-Water” people, and I am born from “Bitter Water”; by these clans I am a Diné woman. I am from Shonto; I went to high school in Kayenta, both on Black Mesa's northern edge. And I went to college without Peabody's money. I am a member of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, and we represent young Navajo and Hopi people who say, “Shut down the Mohave Generating Station.” I have seen the coal company give our people little things here and there to keep us “nice”—money for the school, machines to keep the dirt roads smooth— but I have also seen what the coal company has taken away from us: our water, our lands, our choices, our dignity. I grew up drinking the soft, sweet Navajo Aquifer water. And I have seen where the coal company pulls this sacred source of water from the female Black Mesa. Huge pipes pulse with a heartbeat as they take this life force from her and mix it with coal. Our communities have become economic hostages to the coal company. There has to be a way where we are not the exploited and disposable waste of the megacities' power and luxuries, of the overconsuming and all-consuming American Dream.
That CPUC hearing went on late into the night. This was just the beginning for us, young people picking up the reins of community organizing from so many older and exhausted community leaders. And it was this meeting that put many of us face-to-face with our first challengers—our own people, friends, family members, and relatives. If I had been alone at that meeting, I might not have had the courage to step forward and confront it all. But we were together, and so we kept right on going. For the next few years we organized just about anything we could think of—spiritual runs, protests, community meetings and trainings, nonviolent direct actions. With no money in our pockets but with passion in our hearts and bullhorns in our hands, we worked to elevate our community's voices.
On January 1, 2006, due to the work of many Native and non-Native individuals and organizations, the mine, the pipeline, and the power plant all closed. It was a bittersweet victory, however; jobs and tribal income would be lost. Like weeds in a freshly watered and tended garden, new coal proposals began popping up as solutions to this Navajo economic “crisis.” It was no time to celebrate. I felt a crushing weight; we had helped do this, we had helped take away some of the few jobs on the rez and spur new desperate coal proposals. If we were ever going to be welcomed back to the community without side glares and distrust, we were going to have to do more. Our communities deserve a fair and just economic transition. Our work continued.
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ALMOST FOUR YEARS AFTER THE BLACK MESA mine had been shut down and numerous restarts have failed, I found myself in the summer of 2009 sitting in the visitors' section of our tribal council chambers. It was the second day of the Navajo Nation Council summer legislative session, our government's Senate. I was in Window Rock, Arizona, for the Navajo Green Jobs vote.
As with my many other visits to our tribal nation's capitol, I tried to calm my urge to leave this place and head home, back to my children. I had spent the past four years of my daughter's life dragging her to public hearings, community meetings, and board meetings or leaving her at home with my sister. I longed to be home with my children, enjoying picking corn or feeding the chickens. I must remind myself that those wanted simplicities are the reason I am here today.
Black Mesa Water Coalition has grown up since the CPUC hearing. And as the codirector, I'd learned many lessons, most of them the hard way. Reprimanded or embarrassed by elders in the community over and over again, I learned there are times when you should not sit back and just watch the debate and other times when you have to shut up and listen, listen, listen, and you better know how to tell when is when. I had to partially unlearn my whole way of thinking that I received from college and relearn how to see myself as a part of everything around me. Every day is a constant melding of two worldviews: individualism versus communalism.
Our group itself had spent the past years in coalition with many other groups advocating for a just transition off coal dependence and on to green jobs. For us, green jobs mean good-paying jobs that don't pollute. They also mean more than cloaking a broken capitalist system in a sexy green dress. The green economy we propose would enable local Navajo communities to have jobs which are not only sustainable, but also utilize our traditional skills and knowledge.
That day, the Navajo Nation Council, with all its Robert's Rules of Order and formalities, was once again considering our proposal, the “Navajo Nation Green Economy Commission and Fund.” This was more than bureaucratic political process; if the delegates supported this legislation, it would be the first step toward creating thousands of new, nonpolluting jobs on the reservation. The Commission and Fund would amass funding to provide communities with business and technical support. It would grant funds for job creation in everything from agriculture and green building initiatives to solar and wind community co-ops, as well as training programs for workforce development and management. It all boiled down to this.
We'd been to our capitol too many times to count, but that day was going to be different. We filled the visitors' section with green shirts and stickers. There were even some among the council delegates and staffers. Everything read NAVAJO GREEN JOBS NOW! I tried to look calm and composed while sweating in the July heat. My fingers blazed along my phone's tiny computer screen as I sent out emails and texts to volunteers and staff here and at our office. Finally the session started. The Speaker of the council entered the room. My dear friend and codirector, Wahleah Johns, and my clan brother, Tony Skrelunas, had been asked to join the Speaker to answer any delegate's questions. As they made their way to the front of the room, I could hardly contain my anticipation.
Before questions, the secretary read the legislation. As each line of the legislation was read, I thought about the almost two years we worked with just about everyone to build a policy that reflected the wide-ranging needs of a Navajo green economy. My mind flashed back to our first meeting with the Navajo legislative lawyer; on first sight, her only comment was, “You are going to need some older people with you.” We were, for the most part, a group of people in our twenties and thirties, and that worried some. Legislative processes after all don't normally see many people under the age of fifty head-butting their way into policy shifts. But it's my future and my children's future that politicians are screwing with. Every day they are making decisions on things that will affect us far into the future. So there we were again, a group of young people, filling the Navajo Nation Council with green, letting our council know that we were watching their decision. And at that moment, across the country, Navajo college students and those working in cities were faxing, emailing, and calling their council delegate, letting them know that they were watching as well.
Then before I knew it, the motion was made in Navajo to close discussion and vote. My breath caught as I turned my eyes up to watch the large electronic scoreboard that hangs above the chambers and dangled our fate. Each delegate's name appeared with a red or green light next to it to indicate his or her vote. Green, green, green, green, red, green. ... The seconds seemed like minutes, waiting for each to vote. But then there it was, the decision—62 to 1—it passed! For a second I looked around me, wondering to myself, did it really just pass? Anxious faces turned to huge smiles; we all jumped up and cheered. In this rural part of Arizona, the capitol of our Nation, where dirt roads are more abundant than paved ones and politics has often followed an unwavering commitment to coal and gas, this small victory felt like being at the center of a major seismic event.
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NOW, SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE —LAPTOP OPEN; dishes piling up; in between juggling phone calls, emails, and kid's meals—I think about how far we have come. And yet, there is still so much work to be done: a need for multiangled and multistakeholder campaigns, a need to build equity on the same “green” side. Black Mesa is still being mined today for coal, with numerous proposals igniting to reopen the closed parts. I remind myself that change is happening step by step. I have proudly stood side by side with so many courageous people as we are called idealists, radicals, or inexperienced young people. I realize it is we—the young, idealistic radicals—who are not only demanding but also building some of the wisest solutions in our communities.
One of the biggest honors I have received in my life was being asked to present at my old high school's Career Day. This community, which for so long has been sustained by the coal mine, dealt with mine layoffs, and received mine payoffs, asked me to speak, and I went. I worried I might need a bulletproof vest, but instead I was greeted with open arms and smiles. Everyone seemed eager to talk about the positive changes the community is making now, and rather than being constantly challenged, I was treated with respect and appreciation. It was these subtle exchanges that were some of the highest acknowledgments and rewards for me. Looking back now, I know that some of the hardest and most heartwarming work to do is in our own communities. It is the tough and scary work of challenging our own family, friends, and people we've grown up with and daring them to dream bigger than we've ever been taught.
Peabody's lights still blink over Black Mesa, but one day soon they will be turned off, and, shining brightly, the moon and stars will remain. The stories, values, and teachings embedded within the night sky remain alive, and we must remember them as we reshape the world we want to see.
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Enei Begaye stepped down from directing the Black Mesa Water Coalition to make room for younger leadership, but she remains a senior advisor and active member. She is currently living in Alaska with her husband, Evon Peter, who is also a strong advocate within Alaska Native communities. Enei is enjoying time with their four children, strategizing on campaigns, and writing her reflections on the past ten years of community organizing on the reservation.
PHOTO BY AARONHUEY
Twenty-five United States Climate Comedian
PHOTO BY STEFFEN THALEMANN