#bigcoal — Public Fediverse posts

#Wikipedia - Origin of the concept of a #SacrificeZone

"According to the United Nations Human Rights Council [#UNHRC], the term Sacrifice zone emerged in the #ColdWar period when #NuclearTesting, conducted by #colonial powers, such as the #UnitedStates, #France, the #UnitedKingdom, and the #SovietUnion transformed sections of land into #uninhabitable and highly #radioactive areas. Sacrifice zones can be defined as communities that experience dangerous levels of hazardous contamination and waste exposure. Sacrifice zones are linked to #racism, #oppression, #patriarchy, and #colonialism, as they are hubs of #pollution that disproportionately target and harm the physical and mental health of marginalized groups who face overlapping forms of #oppressions.

According to Helen Huntington Smith, the term was first used in the U.S. discussing the long-term effects of #StripMining #coal in the American West in the 1970s. The National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering Study Committee on the Potential for Rehabilitating Lands Surface Mined for Coal in the Western United States produced a 1973 report that introduced the term, finding:

In each zone the probability of rehabilitating an area depends upon the land use objectives, the characteristics of the site, the technology available, and the skill with which this technology is applied. At the extremes, if surface mined lands are declared national sacrifice areas, all ecological zones have a high probability of being successfully rehabilitated. If, however, complete restoration is the objective, rehabilitation in each zone has no probability of success.

Similarly in 1975, Genevieve Atwood wrote in Scientific American:

Surface mining without #reclamation removes the land forever from #productive use; such land can best be classified as a #NationalSacrifice area. With successful reclamation, however, surface mining can become just one of a series of land uses that merely interrupt a current use and then return the land to an equivalent potential productivity or an even higher one.

Huntington Smith wrote in 1975, "The Panel that issued the cautious and scholarly National Academy of Sciences report unwittingly touched off a verbal bombshell" with the phrase National Sacrifice Area; "The words exploded in the Western press overnight. Seized upon by a people who felt themselves being served up as 'national sacrifices', they became a watchword and a rallying cry." The term sparked public debate, including among #environmentalists and politicians such as future Colorado governor Richard Lamm.

The term continued to be used in the context of strip mining until at least 1999: '#WestVirginia has become an environmental sacrifice zone'."

#JoeManchin #BigOil #BigCoal #StripMining #EnvironmentalRacism #CoalMining #Appalachia #PollutionSacrificeZones #CorporateColonialism

WTF! #Navajo Reporter #MarleyShebala Violently Arrested by #NavajoPolice, After Filing Ethics Complaint on Navajo President #BuuNygren

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, October 16, 2025

WINDOW ROCK, Navajo Nation -- "Navajo Police were sent today to evict Marley Shebala, Dine' Zuni Pueblo reporter, from her home. Marley, 73, screamed in pain as she was arrested by police. Marley had filed an ethics complaint against Navajo President Buu Nygren, and was reporting on the ongoing #corruption in the Navajo tribal government.

" 'I am 73 years old, and they have me handcuffed in my home with my daughter, our Navajo police, to
serve and protect' Marley says, as she continues to livestream. Navajo police used a locksmith to enter her home, before the violent arrest."

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/10/navajo-reporter-marley-shebala.html

#Diné #Dineh #ACAB #Journalists #ReaderSupportedNews #Journalism #BuuNygrenSoldOutHisPeople #UraniumMining #NavajoNation #IndigenousNews #SilencingDissent #CoalMining #TrumpSucks #BeautifulCleanCoal #Cancer #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #EnergyFuels
#Dineteh #NukingTheNavajo
#Havasupai #UraniumMines
#EnvironmentalRacism #WhiteMesaMill #NukingTheNavajo #NukingTheUte #Ute #Paiute #Hopi #BidiiRoots #DineCARE #PinyonPlainUraniumMine #AirIsLife #UraniumMine #UraniumTransport #RadioactiveDust #RememberKleeBenally #BigCoal #DishonoringTheMemoryOfKleeBenally
#HaulNo #NoMiningWithoutConsent

International Survey Shows 81% Back Forcing #BigOil to Pay for #Climate Destruction

"People are no longer buying the lies. They see the fingerprints of #FossilFuel giants all over the #storms, #floods, #droughts, and #wildfires devastating their lives, and they want accountability," said the head of one green group.

by Eloise Goldsmith, Jun 19, 2025

"Large majorities of people around the world support both taxing #oil, #gas, and #coal companies for the #EnvironmentalDamage made worse by fossil fuels and using higher taxes on #polluters to support communities most impacted by the #ClimateCrisis, according to the results of an international survey released Thursday.

"The study, which was jointly commissioned by #Greenpeace International and #Oxfam International, surveyed roughly 1,200 people in each of these 13 countries: #Brazil, #Canada, #France, #Germany, #India, #Italy, #Kenya, #Mexico, #Philippines, #SouthAfrica, #Spain, #UnitedKingdom, and the #UnitedStates. The research was conducted by the data company Dynata, and field work was done between May 9-28, 2025. Greenpeace noted that, taken together, the countries represent close to 50% of the globe's population.

"The results of the survey showed a whopping 81% of those surveyed would support taxes fossil fuel companies to pay for damages wrought by 'fossil-fuel driven climate disasters.'

"These survey results send a clear message: people are no longer buying the lies. They see the fingerprints of fossil fuel giants all over the storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastating their lives, and they want accountability," said #MadsChristensen, the executive director of #GreenpeaceInternational.

" 'It's only fair that those who caused the crisis should pay for the damage, not those suffering from it,' he added.

Read more / listen:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/international-survey-shows-81-back-forcing-big-oil-to-pay-for-climate-destruction

#BigOilAndGas #BigCoal #BigOilLied #BigOilKnew #Sunoco #BP #Chevron #Capitalism #Oiligarchy #Oligarchy #AmericanPetroleumInstitute #ShellOil #ExxonLied #ExtremeWeather #BPLied #ClimateCrisis #TaxThePolluters #CorporateColonialism #OilCompanies #ChevronDoctrine #MakePollutersPay #Pollution #WateIsLife #AirIsLife

Dine' tell Navajo Council 'NO COAL!'

The Monster has returned, and it is even more grotesque than the one before. Dine' remember forced relocation, the loss of water and medicine plants, and the loss of loved ones. Navajos say 'No!; to Trump and Navajo President Nygren's push for coal.

By #BrendaNorrell, @bsnorrell.blogspot.com June 1, 2025

#ForestLake, #NavajoNation -- "Dine' told the #NavajoNationCouncil that the #CoalIndustry has cost them their aquifer water, and their health. Combined with #UraniumMining, they have lost their loved ones to widespread #cancer and #BlackLungDisease killing their people.

"Dine' remembered #ForcedRelocation and the stripping of the #forest by #PeabodyCoal, during a hearing on Friday. The Navajo Council was told to stand up for #FutureGenerations, or step aside.

" 'The Navajo Nation has provided coal to the big cities for decades, while the people of #BlackMesa have nothing to show for it," Dine' from Black Mesa told the Council.

" 'We are supposed to be the Protectors of the Earth.'

"#LouiseBenally [#KleeBenally's aunt] of Big Mountain told the hearing that you can't trust what #Trump is telling you because he'll change whatever he says in the next sentence. Louise said he has no concept of what being a human is.

" 'Keep your prayers and your language, those are the things that really matter for us #IndigenousPeople,' said Louise. She and her family spent their lives resisting forced relocation brought by Peabody Coal's mining on Black Mesa.

" 'Everyone was opposed to another #CoalMining, it's not good for anything, and it is causing #GreenhouseGases to continue to rise,' Louise told Censored News.

" 'Doctor Nygren doesn't know that. He needs a hogan level of education.'

" '#ClimateChange is so, important to every living thing, we need to be finding solutions not making things worse.' "

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/05/live-navajo-hearing-on-revitalizing.html

#EO14241 #Diné #Dineh #Dineteh #NavajoNation #WaterIsLife #DirtyCoal #TrumpSucks #AirIsLife #NoCoalMining
#BigCoal #USPol #NativeAmericanNews #CorporateColonialism #RememberKleeBenally
#BuuNygrenSoldOutHisPeople

Now Showing Online! #BigMountain Film Featured at Tokyo Global Film Festival

By NaBahii Keediniihii, via @bsnorrell.blogspot.com, May 28, 2:33 PM

"Greetings All.

I hope your late Spring is going well.

The ONLY film festival so far that
selected the Big Mountain Film is Tokyo Liff Off Global Film Festival.

Big Mountain feature documentary will end streaming on June 1st which is night time Saturday in the U.S., 5/31.

https://liftoff.network/tokyo-lift-off-film-festival-2025/

Sorry that you have to purchase a Ticket (cost is $12), in order to Vote. GO DOWN TO THE 'FEATURES' Category. Find the title: "BIG MOUNTAIN LEGACY, LAST STORIES OF DÍNEH." More Votes = More Exposure about Big Mountain Legacy!!

Let's hope that other Film Fests judge to select this Big Mountain Legacy film.

What more can I say, this documentary is not about myself. Understand that I am only the MessenJah.

Thank you, again.

Sincerely,

Kat Bahe"

Watch the film trailer
https://vimeo.com/848932137

Big Mountain Legacy Film: SYNOPSIS / Re-enactments / A Dream of a Man
Director: Bahe (Naabaahii) Katenay (Keediniihii), October 2023 (75 minute featured documentary)

Background:

"In the 1970s, Dineh (Navajo) families around Big Mountain were notified that their communities would be uprooted and that they may never see their ancestral homelands ever again. Now 50 years later, less than 20 home sites remain and the once strong #resistance leaders like #PaulineWhitesinger, #HaastinNiizBegay, #JohnKatenay, and #RobertaBlackgoat (#KleeBenally's grandmother) have all passed on.

How should the future remember the legacies of such wise teachers? What gave their community the will to defy U.S.

Congressional Legislations that were nothing but anti-Indian which was forcing them to give up hundreds of years of cultural existence?

The Congress of the United States passed Public Law 93-531 in 1974 and it was signed by the President. It is an Executive Order, a declaration to exterminate, a declaration of war. The justification for this law was to “resolve” a supposed “land-dispute” among the Hopis and Dineh, and the lands were divided.

The 2023 Video Documentary:
The original impetus for resisting the federal mandate was the sacredness of the lands, ancestral ties and natural features which were dwelling places of Deities. The elder interviewees knew the future will not be the same way as they had lived and the same childhood experience. The video put aside much of the effective resistance against the most powerful, #capitalistic country in the world, instead the video presents stories about their ancestors’ teachings. A Dineh ritual existence which was basically daily living, ceremonies and nutrition. An indigenous atmosphere long before the Europeans’ arrival with its brutal conquest. The video narrowly touches on a 400-year history of cultural survival and maintaining identity. And how that history overlaps with so-called modern America.

One grandmother’s story become an intense chapter, and it is about her direct clan ancestry facing near annihilation as one little girl survives which resulted in re-establishing a Clan at Big Mountain.

"This story comes from a massacre site with two mass graves. Then stories about decades of intense state of fear and which lead into the US’s late 1800s war policy of random killing, starvation and captivity. The modern times the 1920s and 30s when these story tellers were born, a different state of fear had re-emerged, and then again at their elderhood in the late 1900s. All the stories in this documentary program are messages for the future because, as these elders have predicted, the lands maybe empty of indigenous culture which once thrived for centuries."

Continue reading at: Sheep Dog Nation Media
https://sheepdognationmediarockswisdom.blogspot.com/

Source:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/05/now-showing-online-big-mountain-film.html

#BigMountainResistance #Activism
#Dineh #Dineteh #Hopi #JohnMcCain #PeabodyCoal #BigCoal #PeabodyEnergy #Resistance #WaterIsLife #CorporateColonialism #HumanRights #LandDefenders #CulturalGenocide #EnvironmentalRacism #DirectAction #DefendTheSacred #IndigenousAction

via @bsnorrell.blogspot.com

#NavajoNation Targeted Again for Sacrifice Zone: '#Energy Companies Preying on the People'

#Diné ask: Why is the Navajo Nation allowing energy companies to prey on communities and individuals?

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, May 23, 2024

"Dine' on the Navajo Nation are now targeted with a push to revitalize dirty coal energy, and a hydropower project that would pump precious water from their aquifer. Dine' question why the Navajo Nation government is allowing energy companies to prey on the communities and individuals.

"#LouiseBenally of #BigMountain [#KleeBenally's aunt] said the bottom line is greed. 'They want to eat up everything but, don't know that even their lives depend on it too. Poisoning the natural cycle will come back and destroy them too.'

"The new stampede of parasitic energy companies to the Navajo Nation comes at the same time that #radioactive #uranium trucks, covered only with tarps, are traveling across the Navajo Nation, from the #GrandCanyon uranium mine to the mill in the #WhiteMesaUte community in Utah.

"At the same time, more than 500 #UraniumMines, and scattered radioactive debris, remain on the Navajo Nation, and was never cleaned up by the U.S. government. Dirty coal mines and power plants left the legacy of death and #ForcedRelocation.

Navajo Council Plans Meeting on Revitalizing Coal Industry

"Citing #Trump's push for new #CoalMining, the #NavajoNationCouncil plans to hold a public hearing on
revitalizing the coal industry.

"The Navajo Nation Council announced the public hearing, stating that on April 8 President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order entitled, 'Reinvigorating America’s #BeautifulCleanCoal Industry
and Amending Executive Order 14241' aimed at reversing past federal policies, to boost the coal industry and to strengthen the country’s national energy security, according to the White House.

"The public hearing is scheduled in Forest Lake Chapter on Friday, May 30. Louise Benally and her family spent their lives battling #PeabodyCoal and resisting forced relocation at Big Mountain on #BlackMesa. She said what Trump is doing is another chapter in the assault on the land and people.

" 'Pl 93-531 is a law created by #BarryGoldwater to target our rights to water and land base to be taken away. He developed that law so, with what Trump is trying to do is no different.'

" 'They want to eat up everything but, don't know that even their lives depend on it too. Poisoning the natural cycle will come back and destroy them too.'

" 'The American political system is not our government as traditional people which is where all our modern day problems come from in the form of an endless greed to keep eating up the earth and the natural resources.'

"Louise questioned Navajo Nation President #BuuNygren's support of Trump and coal mining in Washington, and Nygren's agreement for uranium trucks to cross the Navajo Nation. 'The Navajo Nation government is at a crossroads. Buu has been taken by Trump, and the people he is supposed to be responsible for are in question.'

" 'He has been taken into the bag of greed -- uranium and coal yet, there is no water. We want accountability.' "

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/05/navajo-nation-targeted-again-for.html

#Diné #Dineh #BuuNygrenSoldOutHisPeople
#WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #EnergyFuels
#Dineteh #NukingTheNavajo
#Havasupai #UraniumMines
#EnvironmentalRacism #WhiteMesaMill #NukingTheNavajo #NukingTheUte #Ute #Paiute #Hopi #BidiiRoots #DineCARE #Havasupai #PinyonPlainUraniumMine #AirIsLife #UraniumMine #UraniumTransport #RadioactiveDust #RememberKleeBenally #BigCoal #DishonoringTheMemoryOfKleeBenally
#HaulNo #NoMiningWithoutConsent