Black Mesa
"The Black Mesa region of northeastern Arizona is a land of sweeping beauty, deep colors, and thriving cultural roots. This area is the traditional land base and home to both the Navajo and Hopi peoples. The area is full of life, wild sagebrush and grass valleys spread between mesa covered in pinion and juniper trees. Among the range of wildlife are lizards, coyotes, deer, and eagles.
"On this magnificent land, rich with so many beautiful creatures, water really is life.
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"An environmental and cultural tragedy is occuring on the Hopi and Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona. For over 30 years Peabody Coal Company has pumped 1.3 billion gallons annually of pure drinking water from the Navajo Aquifer beneathe Black Mesa." LEARN MORE
"On Dec. 31, our small Hopi grass-roots organization will have accomplished something quite extraordinary: We will have forced the world's largest coal company to end its plundering of our waters. When the pumps stop, a beautiful silence will descend upon our sacred land,and we will rejoice.."
Vernon Masayesva,
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"One day you will sell rain water
Springs will dry up, then,
Your exodus will begin,
With "tin-cups" in hand,
Looking for water,
Where springs once ran healthy,
Now dead.."
Hopi Wuuchim prophecy song as sung by Valgean Joshevema, Sr.
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"We ask that you consciously think about the sacredness of water—all water. If we all bear in our minds and hearts our need for and gratitude for water, we can generate hope and the energy that can inform the decisions that we will have to make to save our planet and ourselves from environmental degradation. This is what we at Black Mesa Trust hope to convey to our people and peoples throughout the world."
Vernon Masayesva, Executive Director of Black Mesa Trust
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"When I was a youth growing up in Hotevilla, I heard from the elders that some day Hopi will be caught in a struggle over land and water.
"It will be a paper war,’ they said. Stacks of documents will pile up arguing over who has superior rights. In the pile of papers, ‘reaching to the ceiling,’ choose the one at the very bottom to fight with. Not the one in the middle or on the top.
"Many years later, I came to realize that perhaps the legal document they were referring to is..
"an international law, superior to our federal law, that legally protected the property rights of Pueblo people, who were citizens of the Republic of Mexico, when a friendship treaty was signed between the U.S. and Mexico."
Vernon Masayesva, Executive Director of
Black Mesa Trust
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"Let us Purify All the Water on Earth with LOVE and THANKS."
Masaru Emoto, President of the
Project of Love and Thanks to Water
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"Somewhere far away from us, people have no understanding that their demand for cheap electricity, air conditioning and lights 24 hours a day have contributed to the imbalance of this very delicate place." — Nicole Horseherder, Dine'(Navajo), Black Mesa.
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View a Slideshow about Black Mesa
ACTION ALERT!
"All people deserve the right to clean and
accessible water. Yet while people throughout the world are fighting for
this right, Peabody Coal Company is shamefully wasting Navajo and Hopi
sole-source drinking water. The Indigenous Network supports the Navajo
and Hopi grassroots people in the protection of this sacred
element--Water."
Enei Begaye
