#kleebenally — Public Fediverse posts

Honoring the #Movements and People who Inspire us. #Warriors, #Writers and #Dreamers -- A Thread Runs Through Them. #CensoredNews 20th Anniversary.

'Know who you are, and never let anyone take your power from you.'

By #BrendaNorrell, Censored News, August 30, 2026

"We're coming up on our 20th anniversary at Censored News, and we are honoring the warriors, leaders, writers and dreamers who make Censored News possible.

When the Mohawks came for the border summit in 2006 and 2007, it was, as they say in the movie Casablanca, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Along with the Mohawks, leaders, writers and dreamers through the years became a sort of collective which makes Censored News what it is, a service to #IndigenousPeople and #HumanRights.

We lost many of our best, #Lakota Warrior Woman #DebWhitePlume, our longtime friend #KleeBenally, our French translator #ChristinePrat, and many more. But thanks to those who keep sharing their work, we keep Censored News going. This summer our page views increased by millions, thanks to their labors of love.

Today, we celebrate the movements and people who inspire us, as we celebrate our 20 Year Anniversary at Censored News."

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2026/08/honoring-movements-and-people-who.html

To donate - [email protected] via PayPal. Link to donations page:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2019/08/donate-to-censored-news.html

#IndigenousNews #ReaderSupportedNews #MicheleCook #OfeliaRivas #FloydWesterman #TohonoOodhamNation #BorderPatrol #Diné #Navajo #IndigenousActivists #LandDefenders #WaterDefenders #LandIsLife #WaterIsLife #MniWiconi #Marcos #Mexico #Chiapas #Maori #Aotearoa #IndigenousResistance #NoBorders #LeaveItInTheGround #StandWithStandingRock #StandingRock

@CosmickTrigger #KleeBenally and #Blackfire live. Thought you might appreciate it.

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

#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

#Blackfire - "Common Enemy" (LIVE at the Grass Roots Festival of Music & Dance, in Trumansburg, NY - 2022)

Posted Dec 22, 2024

"Navajo (Diné) activists Jeneda (guitar & vocals, Klee (percussion) and Clayson Benally (guitar & vocals), perform together as 'Blackfire' at the GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance, in Trumansburg, NY."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iiIoOK4v6Q

#RestInPowerKleeBenally #KleeBenally #RIPKleeBenally #NativeAmericanActivists #NativeAmericanMusicians #LeaveItInTheGround

#KleeBenally, Navajo advocate for #IndigenousPeople and #environmental causes, dies in Phoenix

Klee Benally was among the most vocal opponents of snowmaking at #ArizonaSnowbowl ski resort in #Flagstaff.

AP, January 1, 2024

PHOENIX — "Klee Benally, a Navajo man who advocated on behalf of Indigenous people and environmental causes, has died, his sister said. He was 48 years old.

"Benally died Saturday at a Phoenix hospital, Jeneda Benally said. His cause of death was not disclosed.

"Klee Benally was among the most vocal opponents of snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl ski resort in Flagstaff. At least 13 tribes consider the mountain on public land to be sacred.

"He protested #PoliceViolence and #RacialProfiling and was among activists who gathered outside metro Phoenix’s NFL stadium in 2014 to denounce the offensive team name previously used by the franchise from Washington, D.C.

"Benally advocated for the cleanup of abandoned #mines, where #uranium ore was extracted from the Navajo Nation over decades to support U.S. #nuclear activities during the #ColdWar.

"He also spoke out against an ordinance that, in a bid to address the problem of #homelessness, had banned camping on public property in Flagstaff.

"'There is no compassionate way to enforce the #AntiCamping ordinance,' Benally said in 2018 when officials declined to alter the 2005 ordinance. 'Life is already hard enough for our unsheltered relatives on the streets.'

"Benally was also a guitarist, and played with his sister and brother in the Native American punk rock band #Blackfire."

Source:
https://www.12news.com/article/life/people/klee-benally-navajo-advocate-for-indigenous-people-and-environmental-causes-dies/75-51b35e37-1a11-4853-8e2a-320fb4da7766
#RestInPowerKleeBenally #RIPKleeBenally

#KleeBenally, cultural advocate and land defender, dies at 48

By Kianna Joe | Dec 31, 2023

"KINŁÁNÍ-DOOK’O’OOSŁÍÍD

Klee Benally died Dec. 30, 2023. He was 48.

"Benally was the son of Jones and Berta Benally. Klee Benally was from Dziłyíjiin, Arizona. He was Bi’éé’ Łichíi’ii and born for Tódích’íi’nii. His maternal grandfather is Polish and Jewish, and his paternal grandfather is Naakaii Dine’é. He lived in Kinłání, where he proudly stood tall with Dook’o’oosłííd.

"In his last interview with the Navajo Times on Dec. 7, Benally credited his father, a respected and known hataałii, who shared the Diné traditions and culture with him.

"Klee Benally’s teachings growing up laid a foundation for who he was as a Diné and led to him fighting for the sacred Dook’o’oosłííd.

"'For Diné people, it represents a part of our cosmology and being,' Benally said on Dec. 7. 'Each mountain is a part of our creation account set forward for our boundaries, Diné Bikéyah, where we walk around.'

"Benally described the mountains as leaders that hold and share teachings for Diné.

"Countless comments from people who knew and followed Benally shared their sudden sadness but described Benally as a 'one-of-a-kind' wise son, brother, uncle, or grandpa.

"Along with fighting for sacred elements, Benally was an artist in many mediums, writer, musician, and filmmaker.

"On Thursday, Dec. 21, Benally launched his book, '#NoSpiritualSurrender, Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred,' at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Flagstaff. However, the book was released in November with physical copies only available at Bookmans in Flagstaff or online at #DetritusBooks website.

"The book delves into Benally’s experience fighting for sacred places and why he does it to protect #nahasdzáán.

"Benally recounted the many times he had been arrested, along with tying himself to heavy machinery to send a message that he wasn’t going anywhere for the land’s sake.

"In a post shared on Benally’s Instagram page, he shares his full circle moment having done shows with his band #Blackfire at the #LeftBankBooksCollective bookstore in Seattle, Washington, where he was able to drop a few copies of his book off at.

"His music with Blackfire was fueled with the same messages he shared in his book, justice for Indigenous people and the land.

"Blackfire was created in 1989 with Benally and his siblings, Jeneda and Clayson Benally.

"Benally’s work reflected his dedication and understanding of fighting for land and its Indigenous peoples.

"Benally was a part of many organizations working to support and fight for land like '#HaulNo!' and '#ProtectThePeaks.'

"Benally worked endlessly for the community and land, which are grateful to have been protected by a dedicated #Diné."

https://navajotimes.com/reznews/klee-benally-cultural-advocate-and-land-defender-dies-at-48/
#RestInPowerKleeBenally #RIPKlee #RIPKleeBenally #NoUraniumMining #DefendTheSacred