#indigenousanarchy — Public Fediverse posts

#NavajoNation Dishonors Legacy of #KleeBenally: Agrees to #Uranium Transport Through #Navajo Communities

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, February 3, 2025

"The Navajo Nation dishonored the memory and legacy of Klee Benally by agreeing to allow radioactive uranium trucks to travel through the Navajo Nation. It was what Klee spent the last years of his life fighting against.

"The deadly trucks from the #EnergyFuels #PinyonPlain uranium mine in the #GrandCanyon will pass through the #Havasupai's homeland, and then past the homes of #Paiute, #Dine' and #Hopi in Arizona before reaching the dumping ground: The Energy Fuels #UraniumMill in the #WhiteMesaUte Community in Southern #Utah.

"Klee is being honored with a #NuclearFreeFutures Award in New York in March.

"Nuclear Free Futures said, in announcing the award, 'Klee Benally was a Navajo activist and musician and member of the Navajo #Tódichiinii Clan and the #Nakai #Diné Clan. In addition to a
musical career with his siblings in the band #Blackfire,

"'Klee was a passionate campaigner and filmmaker exposing the #colonialist legacy of uranium mines and working for the cleanup of the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that continue to contaminate the Navajo Nation. A month before his death on December 30, 2023, Klee published his book, '#NoSpiritualSurrender: #IndigenousAnarchy in Defense of the Sacred.'

"The award will be accepted by his mother Berta Benally.

"Klee, co-founder of #HaulNo!, warned of the danger to the water and rivers from the uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, and the planned deadly transport of radioactive ore, before he passed in
December 2023: 'There is possible radioactive contamination to land, water, and air from the #CanyonMine, White
Mesa Mill, and transport of uranium would impact northern Arizona, southeast Utah, the #ColoradoRiver, #MoenkopiWash, the #SanJuanRiver, and the lands and cultural resources of the #Havasupai, Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Paiute peoples.'"

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/02/navajo-nation-dishonors-legacy-of-klee.html
#WhiteMesaUte #EnergyFuels #HaulNo #BuuNygren #IndigenousAction #IndigenousResistance #NuclearColonialism #ReaderSupportedNews #Dine #RestInPowerKleeBenally #NoUraniumTransport #DefendTheSacred #ProtectTheSacred #UraniumMine #NoNukes #NuclearFreeWorld #NoNuclear #NoWar #NuclearWaste #NoMoreTransportationOfUranium
#NoNuclearWeapons #NoNuclearPowerPlants #NoUraniumMining #UteNation #NoUraniumMining #Navajo #Havasupai #GrandCanyon #NuclearWeapons #InformedConsent
#EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife

Going to the #ShiprockFair, #KleeBenally Remembered the #UraniumDump on the Banks of the #SanJuanRiver

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, August 29, 2024

SHIPROCK, #NavajoNation -- "In his book published shortly before his passing, Klee Benally writes of going to the #NorthernNavajoFair and the #UraniumDump in #Shiprock that no one talks about. It is along the San Juan River, the same river that flooded this week, now eight months after Klee's passing.

"'The Northern Navajo Fair at Tsé Bit A'í (#ShiprockNewMexico) has been held for more than one hundred years,' Klee writes in 'No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.'

"Klee describes how the fair each fall marks the changing of the seasons and the #harvest. He describes the neon glow of the carnival in the cold, dusty nights, and the #uniper fires that burn.

"All of this revelry is held right on #UraniumBoulevard just a couple miles from a massive 105-acre #Radioactive dump containing 2.5 million tons of #RadioactiveWaste on a site that was a former #UraniumMill (which is just 600 feet from the San Juan River.)'

"The Shiprock Uranium Disposal Cell studies showed that more than 1.8 million liters of #groundwater were contaminated with uranium, #selenium, #radium, #cadmium, #sulfate, and #nitrate.

"Now the #NavajoNation again is targeted by the #Nuclear Industry and #DebHaaland's radioactive agenda is being ignored.

"Speaking in Farmington, Interior Sec. Haaland said the transition to green energy in the #FourCorners region will be led by the #AtomicBomb industry, #LosAlamos National Laboratory, which has already poisoned #Pueblo lands in northern #NewMexico.

"There is no mention of the fact that there is no safe way to store #NuclearWaste.
Now, adding to the layers of deception, the U.S. #EPA is deceiving the public. The EPA doesn't actually clean up the uranium dumps and strewn #RadioactiveTailings from #ColdWar #UraniumMining on the Navajo Nation -- it only announces plans and promises to do it.

"#EricJantz, legal director of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, told the Inter-American Commission on #HumanRights in March that the #EPA has not completed any of the cleanups.

"There are 524 uranium mine sites waiting to be cleaned up on the Navajo Nation. Zero -- none of these -- have been fully cleaned up, Jantz told the international commission.
The truth is people seldom talk about the uranium dump at Shiprock because there is so much strewn radioactive waste, and so many unreclaimed uranium mines, with radioactive waste strewn from Cameron to #MonumentValley, and across the Four Corners region.

"During the 1990s, on assignment for USA Today, I talked with #Dine' in #RedValley and Cove, south of Shiprock, down the mountain from where I lived. In every family, there was cancer. In every family, someone was dying of #cancer, or had already died, from cancer because of the uranium mining.

"One Dine' grandmother in her 80s was living in a stone home built of radioactive rock. We had a Geiger counter with us."

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/08/going-to-shiprock-fair-klee-benally.html

#KleeBenallyRIP #KleeBenallyRestInPower #UraniumMining #NoSpiritualSurrender #IndigenousAnarchy #DefendingTheSacred #IndigenousActivism #HaulNo #CorporateColonialism #WaterIsLife #NoLithiumMining #CorporateColonialism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #CopperMining #Greenwashng #NuclearWeapons #NoNukes #NoWar #NoNuclearWeapons

[Thread] The next installment from #KleeBenally 's book, #NoSpiritualSurrender

“The devastation of #NuclearColonialism, which permanently destroys #Indigenous communities throughout the world, is outright ignored by some of the most devout #ClimateJustice advocates. They claim #NuclearEnergy production is also a #GreenSolution to the #ClimateCrisis. More than 15,000 abandoned #UraniumMines are located within the so-called US, mostly in and around Indigenous communities, permanently poisoning #SacredLands and waters with little to no action being taken to clean up their deadly toxic legacy. There are currently 93 operating #NuclearReactors in the so-called US that supply 20% of the country’s electricity. There are 60,000 tons of #HighlyRadioactive spent waste store in concrete dams at #NuclearPowerPlants throughout the country with the waste increasing at a rate of 2,000 tons per year.

“In 1987 the ‘US’ Congress initiated a controversial project to transport and store almost all of the US’s #ToxicWaste at #YuccaMountain located about 100 miles northwest of so-called #LasVegas, #Nevada. Yucca Mountan has been held holy to the #Paiute and #WesternShoshone Nations since time immemorial. In January 2010 the #ObamaAdminstration approved a $54 billion taxpayer loan in a guarantee program for new nuclear reactor construction, three times what Bush previously promised in 2005. In April 2022, the #BidenAdministration government bailout to ‘rescue’ nuclear power plants at risk for closing. A #Colonial government representative stated, ‘US nuclear power contributes more than half of our #CarbonFree electricity, and President Biden is committed to keeping these plants active to reach our #CleanEnergy goals.’

“They, along with Climate Justice activiists, cite nuclear energy as necessary to combat #GlobalWarming, all while ignoring the devastating percent impacts #IndigenousPeoples have faced. There is nothing clean about energy produced from nuclear colonialism. From its weapons (including #DepletedUranium) to its #Mining and its waste; Indigenous bodies, lands, and waters continue to be sacrificed to heat water with radioactive materials which creates steam that moves generators to change batteries made from #Lithium extracted from other Indigenous sacred lands so #Teslas can mo you forward into a ‘just’ climate future.

“A green economy sustains and advances colonial progress, which means mitigated selective and ongoing destruction of #MotherEarth.”

Pages 139-140

#IndigenousAnarchy
#Ecosystem #HaulNo #DefendTheSacred
#CorporateColonialism #NoDAPL #CriminalizingDissent #WaterIsLife #ClimateDefenders #NoCopperMiningWithoutConsent #NoLithiumMining #CorporateColonialism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #LithiumMining #CopperMining #Greenwashng #NuclearWeapons #RestInPowerKleeBenally #RIPKleeBenally #StopCanyonMine

[Thread] The next installment from #KleeBenally 's book, #NoSpiritualSurrender.

“The proposition of unplugging from a ‘dirty’ power source and plugging into a ‘green’ one does nothing to address the underlying power relations. It reinforces them.

“‘#GreenEnergy’ sustaining a Green Economy still demands resource #colonialism. From sacred #OakFlat in so-called Arizona where #SanCarlosApache are resisting a massive mine that is estimated to contain enough #copper ore to produce 275 million electric vehicles [#EVs], to sacred #ThackerPass in so-called Nevada where #Shoshone are resisting #LithiumMining, which is necessary for electric vehicle and ‘green’ energy battery production. A single car #LithiumIon battery pack contains 18 pounds of lithium. To electrify every vehicle throughout the world, an estimated 10.4 billion tons of lithium is needed, that is approximately 13 times the existing lithium reserves. The Thacker Pass lithium one is mismated to produce 60,000 tons annually. The proposed project spans approximately 28 square miles that would hold an #OpenPit and a #sulfuricacid processing plant to extract lithium from mined ore.

"The operation is estimated to release 152,713 tons of #CarbonDioxide [#CO2] annually and 400,000 gallons of #water is required for each ton of lithium meaning it will use 1.7 billion gallons annual. The Thacker Pass sulfuric acid processing plant will convert sulfur to leech lithium from raw ore, turned in from sources such as the #AlbertaTarSands, which are 1,500 miles away. The tar sands, located in so-called Canada, are known as the world’s most destructive oil operation.”

Page 138-139

#IndigenousAnarchy
#Ecosystem #DefendTheSacred
#CorporateColonialism #NoDAPL #CriminalizingDissent #WaterIsLife #ClimateDefenders #NoCopperMiningWithoutConsent #NoLithiumMining #CorporateColonialism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #LithiumMining #CopperMining #Greenwashing

[Thread] More from #KleeBenally 's book, #NoSpiritualSurrender. This may be a hard read for some folks, but I felt it was necessary to continue where I left off, where Klee states how many "convince themselves" that "killing the Earth just a little bit less is an appropriate response."

"This is exemplified with #ClimateJustice movement organizing, where grand proposals of a ‘GreenEconomy’ or a less #ecologically devastating form of #capitalism is the means to achieve human survival with a habitable planet.

"‘#BigGreen’ non-profit #corporations and so-called non-governmental organizations [#NGOs] (yes even the smaller #Indigenous ones too) set the terms for dissent and triage this crisis to the point where we can see the future coming back at us, but what else can be expected from marching in circles? After all, in the recycling of capitalism into climate justice, we still end up scrubbing their palaces green, resting our heads in green prisons, and sustaining unsustainable lifestyles.

"‘Just transition’ is a strategy of economic redemption to further preserve ways of being that are unsustainable by design, you can’t lobby away #colonialism and #capitalism, no matter how hard you try."

Page 137

#IndigenousAnarchy
#Ecosystem
#DefendTheSacred
#CorporateColonialism

[Thread] Random excerpts from #KleeBenally 's book, #NoSpiritualSurrender

The Enemy of #MotherEarth

"From Mother Earth to our bodies, in a #capitalist system everything that can be reduced to a commodity will be. As long as it can be sold, bought, or otherwise exploited, nothing is sacred. So long as the lands (and by extension our bodies) are viewed this way we will have conflict, as #capitalism is the enemy of Mother Earth and all that we hold to be #sacred.

"In its base definition, capitalism is an economic and political system based on an unregulated or 'free' market, private property, competition, and limited government intervention. But the definition obscures the reality that capitalism is based upon extreme social #exploitation and dispossession, #EcologicalDestruction, #hyperindividualism and #materialism, and its history is rooted in #WhiteSupremacy, #cishetereopatriarchy, #genocide, and #slavery.

"To be anti-capitalist is not enough, anti-capitalist propositions rooted in #industrialism and #extractivism are just as invested in #ecocidal (therefore anti-Indigenous) economies. Killing the Earth is killing Indigenous existence, #Colonizers must religiously convince themselves and others that the world is already dead to justify their ongoing violence against the Earth and existence. In the face of global ecological ruin, some attempt to further convince themselves that killing the Earth just a little bit less is an appropriate response."

Pages 136-137

#IndigenousAnarchy #Ecosystem #DefendTheSacred #CorporateColonialism