The Navajo’s Fight to Protect Water on Their Own Terms [Video]

After coal mining ravaged their lands, Tó Nizhóní Ání is advocating for energy, water and climate justice on the Navajo Nation.

Herb Yazzie spent more than 30 years climbing the ranks of the Navajo government. He became attorney general in 1990, and then chief justice of the Navajo Nation, defending traditional laws and Navajo legal sovereignty. But during his tenure, he was never involved in one of the things that mattered most to him — negotiating with energy companies that had leased, and subsequently devastated, Navajo lands.

It wasn’t until retiring in 2015 that Yazzie focused on the destructive legacy of the Peabody Western Coal Co. in his community of Black Mesa, Arizona. “Peabody ran an open-pit mine for close to 50 years,” Yazzie said. “Our neighbors, our extended family, especially those who worked in the mines all those years, their kids — many people contracted black lung and they died from the disease.” (Peabody did not return NBCU Academy’s request for comment.)

The mine closed in 2005. But just last year, an energy company approached Black Mesa residents with a hydropower proposal that promised tax revenues and construction jobs. In more than a half-dozen community meetings, Yazzie asked the energy company for proof that the community’s water supply wouldn’t be affected. Still, he received no scientific studies backing up the company’s claims. That’s when Tó Nizhóní Ání reached out to collaborate.

Since 2001, Tó Nizhóní Ání, a nonprofit group whose name means “sacred water speaks” in Diné, has been advocating for energy, water and climate justice after decades of energy companies exploiting their Black Mesa lands. When it presented the Black Mesa community with an analysis of how the hydropower pumps would work, “we all understood that the company was proposing to use vast quantities of the only source of water that we have, which is our aquifer,” or water-bearing rock that holds groundwater, Yazzie said.

Check out our blog post here: https://nbcuacademy.com/navajo-water-rights

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