Kayenta

A new study has found inequities in the delivery of federal benefits for Indigenous coal miners in the western U.S. who are suffering from black lung disease. It's helping to shine a light on an under-researched subject.

On Friday, a home health care company held an informational meeting in Tuba City, Arizona, on the federal benefits available to some Navajo coal miners who have black lung disease. The meeting, hosted by Positive Nature Homecare, was the latest on the subject of black lung among coal miners on the Navajo Nation. Willa Mae Jones is a member of the Navajo Nation and a health outreach worker at Canyonlands Healthcare in Chilchinbeto. She attended Friday’s meeting to meet with coal miners who largely worked at the Kayenta and Black Mesa mines in northeastern Arizona. Jones says her husband was a dragline operator at the Kayenta coal mine. When her son was growing up, she says she advised him not to follow in his father’s footsteps. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture is offering grants for people that experienced discrimination in the agency’s farm loan programs.

The Kayenta Mine, a surface coal mine which closed down in 2019, was operated by the coal company Peabody Energy. Now, retired coal miners across the Navajo Nation, including some who worked at the Kayenta Mine, are suffering from black lung disease and other health problems as a result of exposure to coal mine dust. In the second installment of a series on black lung among Navajo miners, former miner Alex Osif took KSJD on a driving tour of the mine in northeastern Arizona.

The Biden administration is moving the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters out of Grand Junction and back to the nation’s capital; The Kayenta community broke ground on a new wellness center last week.