> >Orion Magazine Summer 98 > >The Black Mesa Syndrome: Indian Lands, Black Gold >by Judith Nies > >Black Mesa is not black and it is not a mesa. It is four thousand square >miles of ginger-colored plateau land in northern Arizona, a distinct >elevated landmass the shape of a bear's paw. On a map, the Black Mesa coal >field looks like an inkblot on a Rorschach test, following the contours of >the Pleistocene lake it once was. Over thousands of years the vigorous >forests and plant life embraced by the lake decayed into a bog which in >turn >hardened to coal--some twenty-one billion tons of coal, the largest coal >deposit in the United States. > >Until 1969, the coal lay untouched and so close to the surface that the >walls of the dry washes glistened with seams of shiny black. With a >long-term value estimated as high as $100 billion, it lies completely under >Indian reservation lands, for Black Mesa is also home to some sixteen >thousand Navajos and eight thousand Hopis. In 1966, the Hopi and Navajo >tribal councils--not to be confused with the general tribal >population--signed strip-mining leases with a consortium of twenty >utilities >that had designed a new coal-fired energy grid for the urban Southwest. > Under the umbrella name WEST (Western Energy Supply and Transmission), >the >utilities promised more air conditioning for Los Angeles, more neon lights >for Las Vegas, more water for Phoenix, more power for Tucson--and for the >Indians, great wealth. > > > >Today, thirty years after the strip mining for coal began, the cities have >the energy they were promised, but the Hopi and Navajo nations are not >rich--that part of the plan proved ephemeral. Instead, Black Mesa has >suffered human rights abuses and ecological devastation; the Hopi water >supply is drying up; thousands of archeological sites have been destroyed >and, unbeknownst to most Americans, twelve thousand Navajos have been >removed from their lands--the largest removal of Indians in the United >States since the 1880s. > >In the following pages, I want to untangle what went wrong on Black Mesa. >When you look at the map of Arizona on this page, you see a series of lines >radiating out from the Black Mesa coal field. Each line represents the >enormous political and economic powers that have shaped the contemporary >reality of this region. And yet, for twenty-five years, the American >press, >with few exceptions, has presented the Black Mesa story as a centuries-old >land dispute between two tribes. The story that has not yet emerged is >about the syndrome in which transnational corporations take and exploit >indigenous lands with the cooperation of host governments. I want to hold >up Black Mesa as a domestic example of that global syndrome, and I want to >ask why our free press has largely been unable to tell the truth about >Black >Mesa. > >Chester Arthur's Square > >Surrounding the ink blot of the coal deposit on the map above is an almost >perfect square of land--one cartographer's minute by one cartographer's >minute--drawn by President Chester Arthur in 1882. His Executive Order >created a reservation for Indians as the government might "see fit to >settle >therein." > >Why would Arthur, a New Yorker and a product of political patronage, give a >land grant three-fourths the size of Connecticut to a population that >consisted of eleven hundred Hopis, three hundred Paiutes, and a few hundred >Navajos? The answer has far less to do with safeguarding Indian residency >than with timber, copper, and coal. > >Chester Arthur was a rich man with rich tastes and no stranger to the >alchemy of transforming government service into economic wealth. As far as >we know, he never visited the West, but he was knowledgeable about Western >railroad charters, land grants, and mineral exploration leases. He >understood the trick of transforming wilderness into public domain lands, >and then into prospecting leases. He understood how business and >government >worked hand-in-glove. In those days, land development companies were >frequently subsidiaries of the railroads, and several years before the >transcontinental railroad reached Arizona in 1881, the U.S. government had >already explored, surveyed, and mapped the mineral riches of the Arizona >Territory. Also in advance of the railroads, the government sent the Army >to subdue the "savage tribes," such as the Navajos in the north and Apaches >in the south, who blocked access to Arizona's resource-rich lands. > >"The only minerals discovered in this region are coal and copper," wrote >surveyor A. M. Stephen in 1879 to his superior, General Howard, who also >held the title of Indian Inspector. "The coal deposit is lying between >Oraibi and Moenkopi," the report continues. "The only white people...are >about twenty families of Mormons at MoenKopi [sic] and Tuba City." Stephen >accompanied his survey with a map of the coal deposit location. > >Arthur understood immediately the implications of the map. If the Mormon >families were allowed to continue to settle and improve their lands, they >would, according to the provisions of the Desert Lands Act of 1877, be able >to buy 160 acres at $1.25 per acre. They would also gain title to whatever >mineral resources lay beneath those acres. But if the same lands were >removed from the public domain and designated as Indian reservation lands >they would no longer be open to white settlement. On December 17, 1882, > >Arthur signed the Executive Order Reservation of 1882 "for the use and >occupancy of the Moqui [Hopi] and such other Indians as the secretary of >the >interior may see fit to settle therein." By this act, Arthur kept control >of >the mineral resources of the region, and set them aside for another day. > >The West, American myth tells us, was a place where there was real >freedom--where you came with what you could carry and you made a life from >it. The government was meddlesome, an intrusion, an invasion into the >individual resourcefulness of the Western pioneers. That is the myth. In >reality, the government and big business made it all happen. > >John Boyden and the Peabody Leases > >Chester Arthur's square remained untouched for seventy-five years, into the >1950s, when a Utah lawyer named John Boyden found a way to transmute the >coal of Black Mesa into gold. A bishop in the Mormon Church and a former >U.S. attorney, Boyden's dapper, modest appearance masked a fierce ambition >and the hardball skills of a trial attorney. Beginning in 1957, he began >to >craft the legal, political, and economic strategy which would open up the >coal deposit of Black Mesa to major energy development. > >As a first step in his plan, Boyden needed the cooperation of the tribal >council of one of the Indian tribes on Black Mesa. He approached the >Navajo, who turned him down. He then went to the Hopi, whose leaders were >bitterly factionalized between traditionals and progressives. Lacking a >governing tribal council since 1938, the Hopi had no legal entity to hire >Boyden, but as a law partner of the man who wrote the 1946 Indian land >claims law, Boyden was knowledgeable about both tribal council politics and >Bureau of Indian Affairs policies. Accompanied by the government Indian >agent, he set about traveling to all the Hopi villages, and talking to all >the Hopi men who spoke English and who had been to government boarding >schools. In the process, Boyden created a new tribal council. > >Boyden was controversial from the minute he assumed his new role. One of >his first actions was to introduce a bill in Congress creating a special >court to allow the Hopi to sue the Navajo to clear title for the coal >lands. > Thousands of Navajos had settled on Black Mesa, and no energy company >would >take a chance on a lease that could be contested. Of the bill, Hopi leader >Dan Katchongva wrote prophetically in 1956, "If [this bill] becomes law, it >will destroy our Hopi way of life, religion and law.... The majority of >the >Hopis are against him as a lawyer." > >The traditional Hopi were furious with Boyden's role and saw his presence >as >an intrusion from Washington. Caleb Johnson, a Hopi student at Princeton >Theological Seminary writing to the Senate on behalf of traditional Hopi >priests, made the astute observation that leadership of the Hopi and the >boundary issue were linked. He added that leadership had a religious >component and that the man Boyden had chosen as Hopi chairman was not >respected. "The chairman of the tribal council," he wrote, "is a man who >does not have a good record and has been convicted of a felony in a Federal >court." > >Others opposed the bill too, including the U.S. Attorney General William >Rogers, on grounds that Indian land issues and reservation boundaries >derived from treaties that were outside American property law. But in >1962, >the special court did clarify title to the subsurface mineral estate and >divided the surface rights. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, >and in 1966 the leases were signed. > >At the top of the 1882 boundary (see map) are two irregular rectangles. >These represent some sixty-five thousand acres leased by the Hopi and >Navajo >tribal councils to the Peabody Coal Company of Kentucky, the largest coal >producer in the United States. The leases were signed secretly by the >tribal councils and the company in 1966, with no larger tribal referendum >on >either side. The Navajos tried to block the mining equipment by setting up >blockades in the road. The Hopi priests eventually sued their own tribal >council, claiming the leases were illegal because they had been signed >without a quorum. > >John Boyden remained the Hopi's lawyer for thirty years. Although he >presented himself as a humble country lawyer working for the Hopi pro bono, >his fees--paid by the government out of monies held in trust for the >Hopi--totaled $2.7 million, a figure revealed only after a Freedom of >Information suit filed by the Native American Rights Fund. > >Kennecott Copper and Strip Mining > >Today at Black Mesa, buckets the size of a four-story building peel the >topsoil off in mile-long strips--a technique called strip mining. Instead >of burrowing into the earth to find the mineral seam, the land over the >mineral deposit is removed. Bulldozers shape the underlayers into enormous >slag heaps, workers dynamite the exposed mineral bed, and steam shovels >load >the coal into massive transport trucks. By the time the coal is extracted, >the land has turned gray, all vegetation has disappeared, the air is filled >with coal dust, the groundwater is contaminated with toxic runoff >(sulphates >particularly), and electric green ponds dot the landscape. Sheep that >drink >from such ponds at noon are dead by suppertime. > >In 1966, Kennecott, an international mining company seeking to diversify, >bought Peabody Coal. Four years later, John Boyden moved his law offices >to >the tenth floor of the Kennecott Building in Salt Lake City, overlooking >the >Mormon Temple. As Boyden leveraged this land issue into a huge case, he >violated a basic tenet of legal ethics: he represented two sides in the >same >case, working simultaneously for the Hopi tribe and for Peabody Coal. >Although his former partners maintained it was "a mistake" that Martindale >Hubbell, the national legal directory, listed Peabody Coal as one of >Boyden's firm's clients, legal scholar Charles Wilkinson published an >article in a 1996 issue of Brigham Young University Law Journal reproducing >Boyden's correspondence with both parties. When Boyden wrote to the >Peabody >vice president as a Peabody attorney, he addressed him as "Dear Ed"; when >he >wrote to him as a Hopi attorney, he called him "Dear Mr. Phelps." > >Not surprisingly, Boyden had not done particularly well for his Hopi client >in the lease provisions: low royalty rates (the two tribal councils splita >royalty rate of thirty cents a ton at a time when the government royalty >rate for coal extracted on public lands was $1.50 a ton), few environmental >safeguards, and no provisions for renegotiation. The worst, however, was >the provision that allowed Peabody to pump four thousand acre-feet >(approximately a billion gallons) of water a year to run a coal slurry >line. > >The Black Mesa Coal Slurry Pipeline > >The dotted line on the map that extends 273 miles from Black Mesa to the >Mohave Generating Station represents this slurry line, the only operating >coal slurry line in the United States. A slurry line, for those who have >never seen one, operates like a giant garbage disposal, grinding huge >chunks >of coal into nugget-size pieces through enormous steel blades, mixing them >with water, then sluicing the batter through a pipeline. For this >operation, Peabody Coal has pumped a billion gallons a year for almost >thirty years from the Black Mesa aquifer, the sole water source for the >Hopi >and Navajo peoples of the region. In these three decades, groundwater >levels have dropped, wells and springs have dried up, and the entire >ecology >of Black Mesa has changed: plants have failed to reseed and certain >vegetation has died out. > >"The water has become more valuable than the coal," exclaimed Hopi Marilyn >Masayesva at the government's environmental hearings. "The water is >priceless. No amount of compensation can replace the source of life for >the >Hopi and Navajo people. It is absolutely immoral and irresponsible for the >federal government to support a continuation of mining activities." >Ms. Masayesva was one of hundreds of Hopi and Navajo who testified in 1989 >about the negative effects of mining on their lands and against the >government's extension of the mining permit. Thousands of years of water >had been used up in a few decades. The government's environmental impact >report concluded, however, that water "was outside the scope of their >study" >and the mining continued. > >One cold March day in 1990, I visited the office of Black Mesa Pipeline, >Inc. A dusting of snow still lay on the ground. In the distance, a weak >sun illuminated the drag lines and I glimpsed cone-shaped piles of coal >waiting to be fed into the conveyer belt. Lowell Hinkins, the operations >manager, assured me that there was no connection between the Indian wells >going dry and the operations of the slurry. The pipeline wells went a >thousand feet deeper than the shallow wells of the Hopi and Navajo, he told >me. He also confirmed that, yes, "Black Mesa is the only operating coal >slurry line in the United States. The others are being built in China and >Russia." I had just had seen a company video that claimed coal was bringing >economic prosperity and the "finer things of life" to the Hopi and Navajo. > >But it is hard to define prosperity. > >The effects of coal slurry pipelines on water tables are known, and in >all-white communities where such pipelines have been proposed, citizens >have >had enough political voice to defeat them. The larger truth about the >Black >Mesa pipeline must include the fact that it was built in part as an >experiment--to test and improve technology primarily intended for other >countries, like China and Russia. The Bechtel corporation had designed the >pipeline in conjunction with a new design for an electrical generating >station--the Mohave Generating Station of Laughlin, Nevada--which was also >a >test of technology for dewatering coal slurry. The owners of the new plant >were Los Angeles Water and Power, Southern California Edison, Nevada Power >(Las Vegas), and the Salt River Project (Phoenix)--all members of the >energy >consortium, WEST. In terms of population served by the utilities, their >combined political power represented seven state governors, fourteen >senators, and at least forty-eight congressmen. > >The Mohave Generating Station > >When the Mohave plant was completed, Bechtel's company magazine saluted it >as "1.5 million megawatts for the West." Twenty-eight years later The Los >Angeles Times observed, "The Mohave Generating Station is the biggest >uncontrolled source of sulfur dioxide in the Southwest--a prime contributor >to the gaseous haze that clouds visibility over the Grand Canyon." >Bechtel, >of course, is famous for its multibillion dollar projects, and for shaping >the politics and technology of the markets in which it does business. With >forty thousand employees, Bechtel has built the three largest >government-funded projects in U.S. history--the Hoover Dam, the Central >Arizona Project, and the Central Artery Project in Boston. > >When the Mohave plant opened in 1970, it raised new questions of strategic >planning. A second plant, the Navajo Generating Station near Page, also >engineered by Bechtel, was due to go on line in 1974. The two plants >combined would require twelve million tons of coal a year for at least >fifty >years. Black Mesa would become home to the largest strip mine in the >United >States. What to do about the thousands of Navajos who lived in the way of >the mining? > >John Boyden was up to the challenge. He went back to Congress with new >legislation to divide Black Mesa and give almost a million acres to the >Hopi. By transferring land to the Hopi, who lived far away from the strip >mining, Navajo residents would become trespassers on the newly designated >Hopi land, and the cost of removing them would be borne by the government. > To frame the issue for Congress, Boyden hired a public relations firm >that >created a largely fictional range war between the cattle-ranching Hopi and >the sheepherding Navajo. > >In 1974, Congress, somewhat distracted by Watergate, passed Boyden's bill >and granted the Hopi 900,000 acres. The law also provided for the physical >removal of the Navajo (by the Indian Relocation Commission), but the >problem, of course, was that there was nowhere for the Navajo to go. > >Congress had no plans for alternative lands, no provisions for housing or >health care or social services to acclimate the Navajo to an urban >environment. Suicide and alcoholism became endemic among the displaced >Navajo, but by the 1980s, when the Navajo and their supporters came to >Congress to protest their situation, they had a hard time finding > listeners. Peabody Coal had a new parent, a private holding company >which >included Bechtel. And by then, Bechtel was entrenched in government: >Bechtel's former president George Schultz was Secretary of State; its >former >legal counsel, Caspar Weinberger, was Secretary of Defense; and former >director of Bechtel Nuclear, Ken Davis, was Assistant Secretary of Energy. > The president of Peabody Coal served on Reagan's Energy Advisory Board. > >The Navajo Generating Station at Page > >While the Mohave Generating Station is a model of bad technology in the >service of terrible land use, the Navajo Generating Station, at the >Arizona-Utah border, is a case study of a political process out of control. > As soon as the Mohave plant was completed, Bechtel moved its construction >crews to the tiny town of Page, Arizona, overlooking the scenic Glen Canyon >Dam, to begin construction ona second electrical generating >station--another >giant at 2,250 megawatts, the second largest utility station in the U.S. > Somebody named it the Navajo Generating Station, a name rich in irony, >since fewer than half of Navajo families have electricity. > >The U.S. government was the single largest owner. The Department of the >Interior needed the electricity to run a federal water project, the Central >Arizona Project (see map), locally known as CAP. CAP is a concrete highway >for water--infrastructure that lifts the waters of the Colorado River over >three mountain ranges in order to carry it to Phoenix and Tucson. This >engineering feat involves siphons, tunnels, dams, reservoirs, and fifteen >electrically powered pumping stations. "With enough money, anything is >possible," an engineer told me when I asked about the economic rationale >for >growing crops by means of the most expensive subsidized water in the world. > The power to run the fifteen pumping stations comes, of course, from >Black >Mesa coal. > >The political issues raised by the Navajo Generating Station are unique. >The >majority owner of the plant is the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department >of the Interior. Within the same interior department is the Bureau of >Indian Affairs, the agency legally entrusted with safeguarding Indian lands >and resources. Questions immediately arise: How can the U.S. government >exercise its trusteeship responsibility toward Indians when one of its >agencies is benefiting directly from the coal leases that it encouraged the >Indians to sign, negotiated by lawyers that it had appointed? Did the BIA >exercise its fiduciary responsibility in negotiating the leases on Black >Mesa? Who reviews conflicts of interest within the government? > >In an era of transnational corporations operating all over the globe, the >methods of separating indigenous peoples from their lands and natural >resources have outstripped the capacity of any agency or nongovernmental >organization to monitor or regulate. In what forum can we debate and >redirect such dealings, which have such profound effects on life itself? > >The line on the map that runs from Lake Havasu south to Tucson represent >335 >miles of the most expensive water in the world. Phoenix and Tucson are >located in the Sonoran desert, the hottest desert in North America, and the >day I toured the control room of the Central Arizona Project, in August >1991, was a typical summer Phoenix day--113 degrees in the shade. I >chatted >with the operations manager, a retired Navy man who told me how they had >built special bridges for wildlife crossings, fenced the aqueduct so that >animals wouldn't drown, and implemented other engineering feats of >environmental sensitivity. Looking at the pulsing computer screens and the >operators who, with a few key strokes, could release millions of gallons of >water from the Colorado River into grapefruit orchards and cotton fields >hundreds of miles away, I wondered if it wouldn't be more sensible to farm >in regions with a better water supply--like rain. > >The Line That Isn't There > >The line that isn't on the map is formed by a barbed wire fence: the new >boundary of the Hopi reservation follows no known topographical feature. > Shaped a bit like a thumb, it was drawn by John Boyden in 1974, the same >year that the Navajo Generating Station came on line and the same year that >his little-noticed bill passed Congress. > >The Hopi Land Settlement Act divided Chester Arthur's 1882 reservation >between the Hopi and Navajo. Boyden drew the line so that it gave >approximately nine hundred thousand acres to the Hopi, who did not live >over >the coal, and relocated, at taxpayer expense, the twelve thousand Navajos >(and sixty Hopi) who did. The Hopi Land Settlement Act also renamed the >newly delineated land as the Hopi Navajo Joint Use Area, Hopi Partition >Land, and Navajo Partition Land. The final version was introduced by Utah >Congressman Wayne Owens (who, when defeated in reelection, became a partner >in Boyden's law firm). > >In Los Angeles, air conditioners hummed. Las Vegas embarked on an enormous >building spree to make gambling a family vacation. Phoenix and Tucson >metastasized out into the desert--building golf courses and vast retirement >developments with swimming pools and fountains. Few realize that much of >the energy that makes the desert "bloom" comes from the Black Mesa strip >mines on an Indian reservation. Even fewer know the true costs of such >development. > >The Syncline and Roberta Blackgoat > >Over thousands of years the Black Mesa coal field was subjected to tectonic >pressures and extrusions of molten rock hundreds of feet below the surface >that caused the coal bed to fold and curve. Geologists call the curvature >that comes close to the surface a syncline. (On the map, a syncline is >indicated by a wavy line with a slash through it.) > >Roberta Blackgoat lives over a syncline. A Navajo who has lived on Black >Mesa all her life, Roberta's cosmology tells her that she is inseparable >from the land that surrounds her. When each of her children was born she >buried his or her umbilical cord in her sheep corral to connect them to the >land from which they come and the sheep who support them. (With sheep, the >older Navajos say, "you've always got food on the table and clothes on your >back.") When I visited her in February of 1991 I asked about the new >boundary line and her view of the forces that dictated her relocation from >land her family had lived on since the 1860s. > >"The coal," she answered with a shrug. She was sitting at her loom in the >back of her hogan weaving. I sat on a sheepskin spread over a dirt floor. >I >had placed my tape recorder next to her loom. As we talked she repeatedly >referred to the altar. Finally I asked, But where is the altar? > >Here. Here, she answered impatiently. Eventually I understood that the >altar was the spot where she was sitting, the hogan itself. > >When I looked at the frame, I saw large logs, all placed in the direction >they grew and in relationship to the sacred mountains of Dinetah, the land >of the Navajo. A hogan, Roberta explained, is sung into place. Is there >also a carpenter? I wanted to know. She shook her head. No carpenter. > >Songs. A ceremony brings a hogan into being. As we talked, I began to >understand that a hogan replicates the Navajo universe in miniature, and >that all human activity is directed towards remaining in balance with the >earth and universal forces. Many Navajo people who move into the city >often >build a hogan in their backyards as a place to reestablish spiritual >connection with the earth and to bring their lives into balance. > >Roberta, whose grandmotherly appearance belies her forceful, astute >leadership of the Big Mountain resistance, described to me a paradigm in > which the earth is a sacred and living organism, in which human beings >and >the earth exist in a reciprocal relationship. This reciprocity is the >foundation for her life. We are the people of the earth's surface, she >told >me, and no more important than the winged creatures or four-legged beings. > The day before, as we rode to Keams Canyon, she tried to translate this >concept into Anglo terms. The church is everywhere, she said. > >Land is the repository for religion, economics, sociology, history, >science. > >And that is why she couldn't leave her land. And what about the coal, I >asked, in the hogan. The shuttle stopped. Roberta spoke very clearly. >"The >coal is the liver of the earth," she said. "When you take it out, she >dies." > >It was my turn to sit in silence. Separated by only five feet of space, we >were occupying two different models of reality. I had been taught that >land >was a kind of primal flooring for human beings, of value only when prodded >into productive use. Roberta was describing the earth as the living host >for all life. She was talking about earth's sustaining properties in a way >that we, educated in the world of Western science, have only recently begun >to call the biosphere. > >How does one calculate the true costs of extinguishing such a complex >culture? > >True Costs and New Stories > >Divide and conquer has a long history in America as a technique of removing >Indians from their lands, a situation that is being replicated by >transnational corporations throughout the world. As former United Nations >Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali observed about the struggles of >indigenous peoples, "Cultures which do not have powerful media are >threatened with extinction. The instruments of mass communication remain >in >the service of a handful." Over the past twenty-five years over twelve >thousand Americans have been removed from their lands. Over a billion >dollars of taxpayers' money has been spent to accomplish this human rights >abuse. > >Yet this story has never made it onto the six o'clock news. > >Today's news must be presented simply, and dramatically--with plot, >character, scene, motivation. A complex story that blends economics, >politics, anthropology, history is hard to tell in our free press. And a >story that examines fundamental corporate activities is hard to tell in a >corporate-owned media. As recently as 1996, The New York Times called the >struggle between the Hopi and Navajo "a centuries-old tribal dispute." In >April 1997, The Boston Globe devoted thirty-three column inches to a story >on the Hopi and Navajo boundary issue without once mentioning the word >"coal" or stating that the largest strip mine in the United States operated >on those same lands. In February 1998, The Los Angeles Times presented a >new spin: it is better to keep polluting than to deprive the Indian tribes >of their coal royalty checks. Cleaning up the Mohave plant (actually it is >the Navajo plant that is the prime polluter) "pits the interests of the >environment against the economic needs of some of the nation's poorest >citizens--the Native Americans of the Southwest." The implications of that >debate, as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power general manager >told us, provide "a sneak preview of the dilemmas to come as we try to >grapple with the implications of global warming and air pollution in >developing nations that depend on the energy industry." > >Hopefully, that false syllogism will be refuted when the real story of how >the Mohave plant was developed finds a public. To date, the news of events >at Black Mesa has been shaped into the preferred narratives of corporate >America--stories of corporate might grappling with economic progress, >technological innovation, entrepreneurial capitalism, the settling of the >American West, making the desert bloom. In the age of global capitalism in >which corporations have bought the media, it is not surprising we see few >stories about effective political resistance. Journalists look for a >smoking gun in the corporate energy development on Black Mesa and, finding >none, abandon the story. It is difficult to tell a story of legal theft, a >story in which corporations have the political power to pass laws. But as >the Navajo and Hopi have tried to explain, Black Mesa, once destroyed, will >not come back. And we are all impoverished by the forces operating at >Black >Mesa, which degrade both culture and nature, and offer us instead a >pseudo-reality--a version of events that prevents clear analysis and >creative thinking. We need new tools, new narratives, new >stories--including stories about an economics that involves morality, an >economics that helps us create the world we want to inhabit. > >A year ago a delegation of Hopis and Navajos traveled from Arizona to the >London stockholders meeting of Hanson's Ltd. (which had purchased Peabody >in 1991) to protest the company's role in the devastation of Black Mesa >lands and water. Lord Hanson called his security guards to throw the >visitors out, but not before The Daily Telegraph reported their presence >and >took a photograph of Roberta Blackgoat offering a prayer. The prayer, she >said, was crucial. * > >Judith Nies is the author of Seven Women: Portraits from the American >Radical Tradition (Viking l977) and Native American History (Ballantine >l997). She is a former congressional speechwriter and assistant secretary >of environmental affairs for the state of Massachusetts. She writes on >environment and politics. > >If you'd like to order these (and other) books, please visit The Orion >Society Bookstore. > >This essay was published in the Summer 1998 issue of Orion. To order a >copy >of this issue, please visit The Orion Society Marketplace, call (413) >528-4422, write The Orion Society, 195 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA >01230, or e-mail us at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- End forwarded message --- *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 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