Anti-Fracking Link

By Erin Fussell
Four Corners
September 24, 2015


http://doodafracking.org/

Thoughts from Four Corners

By Paula D. Barteau

Shiprock

September 24 2015

Malcom explains the circumstances of the Peabody Coal Mine to our group

So much happened today.

We're in Dinetah, on Larry Emerson's farm. He agreed to let us stay here. I think he had, maybe has reservations, but I am thankful he did.

Sometimes you need to be pushed outside of yourself. The thing about ignorance is you're always inside of it and sometimes you forget that, you forget that you are the product of a specific culture that separates you from others who aren't.

Larry spoke to us today at dinner, about how life works in cycles. Evil comes out of forgetting that, that your future will become someone else's past when you're gone. When you forget that you come from the world before you.

Before coming here we read Dahr Jamail's Toxic Legacy: Uranium Mining in New Mexico and I have had a quote from Larry King, a Dine miner, stuck in my head all day:

"We knew when a safety inspection was coming because all the tunnels not being used were barricaded, workers were told to use respirators and other safety gear and do things that weren't done on a daily basis...Then after the inspection, a couple of days later it was back to normal, no safety and no respirators."

The people who live here have been dehumanized. The institutions of racism here have physical forms: Cell phone towers sticking out of the birthplace of Changing Woman, fracking towers puncturing earth where men and women are buried and still visited by their relatives, hundreds of fracking towers and their accompanying containers of flammable gas clustered on the outskirts of a town that has no hospital, no infrastructure for disaster relief. One such tower, located near an elementary school, caught fire once. The school was evacuated by passersby, not by fireman or health officials.

 Water is sacred here, and the water has been poisoned. Many local farmers are currently prevented from working by the Animus river spill, sheep have died within hours of drinking the water near the Peabody Coal Mine, research into the long term effects of the uranium in the municipal drinking water are only recently receiving funding. People have died of cancer in houses they built out of Uranium tailings they didn't realize were dangerous due to the mining companies' extraordinary indifference to the lives of their employees.

The mouth of the Peabody coal mine

The resilience here is as astounding. I feel overwhelmed and unsure how to contribute to the betterment of the situations here, but I promise I'll do my best and to continue to ask how we can live lives that are not dependent on destruction.

The life here cannot be paved over

Naïve

By Harriet Fawcett

Four Corners

September 23, 2015

Over the past three days as a group we travelled around the Four Corners region exploring the different locations for resource extraction. Lead by Diné activist, Anna Rondon we were guided around the sites of preexisting uranium mines, current coal mining and very much active areas for fracking. We were told about the implications each of these sites had on the Navajo people who lived and worked there. It wasn’t until I arrived at the sites when I truly understood the suffering. I felt the pain as we arrived at the fracking site. As soon as we exited the van the constant loud groaning of machinery was apparent. We spent around an hour there and I couldn’t help being thankful to get back in the van away from the noise to collect my thoughts. It truly upset me to know that I was able to leave after an hour and others had to endure this distress continuously.

How can we be so naïve to where our power comes from?

How can we be so naïve to the effects it has on a whole nation?

 

hope within a small piñon sapling

By CB Bryan

Four Corners 

September 24, 2015

The round cylinders of the fracking sites we visited are painted the exact green of the piñon trees in the surrounding hills. This is piñon picking season and the small roadside stands which have sold melon will now sell small bags of these tiny brown nuts. This is life. The nuts come from the trees which come from the ground which grow with help from sunlight and water. We eat the piñon and get that which the tree has gotten and thus we are one with the tree -- then the ground, the water, the light. It is in all of us. It is maybe in the fracking sites as well. For they are here -- situated next to the trees, planted in the ground -- using the same sacred water and the same sun which breathes life into everything beats down as they access the natural gas hundreds of feet below. The process is laden with sound. You can feel it through your entire body as it seems to access every part of you, eventually becoming a low background drone.

We visited sites with Etta Arviso and our host Larry Emerson. As we looked out on the mesas near Nageezi, dotted with piñons with that drilling sound in our ears, Etta gave a prayer. She pointed to a small piñon sapling -- so small you had to get down low to get it in its entirety. This little tree, born in the wake of such tragedy, is a sign of hope -- continued life. Etta knelt down next to it to sprinkle an offering of corn pollen and say a prayer in Navajo. As she did this a small herd of cows emerged from the road and circled around us.  In this moment I felt something and I can’t necessarily explain it but it rang through my ears and overpowered any other sound. My skin felt hot with the sun’s rays and all I could do was look deep into the hills -- asking them for their loving arms, as well as their forgiveness for what I feel is an immense environmental injustice. Why are we fracturing the Earth? Why are we mining on land that is not rightfully ours to mine? Why are we not listening to those directly affected by these invasive acts? Etta’s words are powerful and wise but within them you can feel pain. Within our host, Larry Emerson there is pain. Pain that I felt as well as we toured areas for resource extraction. This interaction is not something I have in my daily life. But it is constant in the areas that we visited. We are very fortunate to be tourists in this area.

Dinétah

By Kacie Smith

Four Corners Extraction Site

September 24, 2015

I’ve been thinking a lot about our tour of the Navajo Nation. Between long stretches of stunning  natural landscape, we saw sites affected by the extraction of coal and uranium and recently constructed fracking stations. We could physically feel damage happening and shed many tears. This is a photo of our group with Diné activist Anna Rondon as we read a passage from Bitter Water, a collection of stories about the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. The book was written by Malcolm Benally, a native to northern Arizona area and also a student at UNM. Malcolm has just led us through Peabody Coal’s Black Mesa mine.

Hózhóogo Naasháadoo

By Jeanette Hart-Mann 

Dinetah 

September 25, 2015 

During the fall we spend time investigating critical issues facing the region and the communities whose homes are here. A new focus for this year was taking a closer look at resource extraction in the Four Corners region and specifically in Dinétah, the Navajo Nation which is ground zero for much of this activity. But this is not where it ends for these are issues that we all must face. We were blessed to have several Diné guides for this journey who took us into their homes across this big country to experience, first hand, the “cover-up,” that has occurred over the last century and that which continues into the present from uranium, coal, and oil/gas/fracking. Thank you Anna Rondon with the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, Larry Emerson, educator and farmer, Malcolm Benally, author of Bitter Water, and Etta Arviso of the Eastern Navajo Agency; who are all compassionate leaders and warriors willing to share these many stories of colonial oppression and share the strength of their culture and Blessing Way of healing, creation, harmony, and peace.

Cornfields next to fracking pads

Timeline:

September 22, Gather
Larry prepares us for our journey and teaches us to be present, have an open heart, and have no prior intentions. We perform a Sunset Ceremony and learn to feed our ancestors and give thanks for our food. We learn to be grounded in our love and be warriors against the dominance of colonial culture.

Basecamp at Larry's educational permaculture site

September 23, Uranium
Anna Rondon takes us to visit Monument Valley, Rare Metals Superfund Site, Tuba City, Moenkopi, Moenavi Dinosaur Tracks.

Anna talking about Rare Metals Superfund site

September 24, Coal
Anna Rondon takes us to visit Canyon de Chelley, Chinle, and then to meet Malcolm Benally at Big Mountain to see Black Mesa and the Peabody Coal site.

Malcolm introducing us to the blasting area

September 25, Oil/Gas Fracking
Larry takes us to meet Etta and she takes us on a driving tour of Eastern Agency patchwork, Counselor, and fracking sites near springs, houses, and schools.

Etta and Larry talking at a fracking site

This quick blog entry serves as a starting point for a much longer process of reflection and cultivation involving what I learned during this investigation along with the question of how art is an active catalyst for change and how creativity throughout culture builds capacity to re-think and re-enact our lives in the world. Looking at these complex environmental justice issues I know that ground zero is located in the Four Corners region, but we all play a role. Uranium, coal, oil and gas, like all their toxic constituents, are moving through our lives in both microscopic and macroscopic ways. As shifting scales between minuscule and immense they permeate local, regional, continental, and global worlds. It is all about power. 

Peabody Coal, ironically demands safety

Artists can make a difference and the work they do performs far beyond the boundaries of any frame. As this investigation is peeled back its potential is held in the strength of healing and creation, of the individual and the collective to question power that poisons the world and find ways to walk in beauty together. 

In February, Land Arts of the American West artists will be exhibiting a collaborative work about this investigation in partnership with the individuals and organizations we worked during our time in Dinétah. We will be posting more information about this in January.

Below are more images from these four days of intense provocation

Cars cars cars and vehicle tours at Monument Valley

At the view, Monument Valley

Framing similarities, Monument Valley

Remember plants, "They are alive....," Monument Valley

Rare Metals reclamation "cover-up"

Moenkopi farms

Peabody Coal

Peabody Coal ironically demands more safety

Leaking community water-fill station

Peabody Coal conveyor

Peabody Coal conveyor, close-up

Fracking waste water treatment in Counselor

Industry trucks on community roads

Peering out from a sacred spring

Sarah filming perimeter with GoPro

Development stakes

Warrior spear.

More development