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Navajo Nation

  • 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.
  • A new store that sells potable water has opened up in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. About a third of the roughly 170,000 people who live on the Navajo Nation do not have access to clean, reliable drinking water, according to the tribe’s Department of Water Resources. Many Navajo citizens regularly have to drive for miles to haul water back to their communities. Elijah Bitah is a co-founder of Tó Water Company, which celebrated its grand opening in Shiprock on Saturday. Bitah says that he and his family were inspired to start Tó, a Navajo word that means water, after visiting a similar drinking water business in Gallup. They also saw a need for residents of Shiprock to have access to clean water after the Gold King Mine Spill in 2015, which caused wastewater containing heavy metals like arsenic and lead to flow into the Animas and San Juan rivers.
  • Former President of the Navajo Nation Jonathan Nez has announced he’s running for Congress in Arizona’s 2nd District. The seat is currently held by freshman Republican Eli Crane, who joined with a group of far-right defectors to oust former-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. The 2nd Congressional District is also home to 14 of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes. Nez, a Democrat, would be the first Native American representative from Arizona in Congress. Nez says it will likely be a tough race – the district has 30,000 more Republican voters registered than Democrats. He says he plans on focusing on issues that matter to everyday Arizonans, like inflation and lowering the cost of childcare. And Colorado voters will decide next month if the state should be allowed to keep more of the money it gets from tobacco and nicotine.
  • A new report by a nonprofit that researches Native American boarding schools in the United States has found an additional 115 schools to add to its list, including dozens located in Four Corners tribal communities. The findings by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS, have identified more boarding schools used for the cultural erasure of Native American children, like those located on the Navajo Nation. Many of these schools weren’t fully supported at the federal level but were instead operated by religious institutions like the Catholic and Mormon churches. The NABS report builds off of a list initially compiled by a federal agency in 2022. Carl Slater is a Navajo Nation council delegate who represents five chapter houses in the Chinle Agency.
  • Environmental groups that work to protect the Black Mesa region in northeast Arizona say that Peabody Energy has not done a sufficient job of reclaiming the now-defunct Kayenta coal mine, and shouldn’t be refunded millions of dollars in bond money. Recently, the coal company Peabody Energy applied for the release of $17.3 million, part of a larger bond held by the Office of Surface Mining, or the OSM, for parts of the Kayenta Mine that have undergone some phases of reclamation. The office is under the Department of the Interior, and is tasked with ensuring coal mines adequately restore land damaged during strip mining. The bonds were posted with the OSM by Peabody to be returned only after the mine lands had been reclaimed to certain standards. In late August, the OSM held a public meeting on the bond release at the Navajo chapter house in Forest Lake where some community members also raised concerns about the long-term impact of mining on local water resources.
  • For months, fraudulent sober living homes have targeted tribal communities across the western United States, including the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Navajo Nation, coercing vulnerable Native American people into coming to facilities in Phoenix. A victims’ advocate says grassroots organizations like hers have been relying on social media to connect Native families looking for loved ones who’ve ended up living unhoused in Phoenix because of this scheme.
  • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun using new cleanup technology to remove radioactive soil from areas around Cove, Arizona. Since the 1950s, uranium mining has occurred in the Lukachukai Mountains, leading to the contamination of waterways and livestock in the region. The EPA is now using soil sorting technology to remove waste rock from two areas in Cove that had previously served as transfer stations, or sites where uranium ore was piled and eventually trucked off. Krista Brown is a remedial project manager for the EPA, and says that the soil sorter has so far been successful in separating native soil from uranium waste. And Colorado’s Prescription Drug Affordability Review Board is considering capping the price of a life-saving medication for cystic fibrosis.
  • A group dedicated to protecting water sources in the Black Mesa region of northeast Arizona has filed resolutions from eighteen different Navajo chapter houses to a federal agency in opposition to proposed water storage projects. Tó Nizhóní Ání, or Sacred Water Speaks, is a Navajo nonprofit that works to protect water sources on Black Mesa from misuse and contamination by energy companies. Adrian Herder, a campaign lead for Sacred Water Speaks, says that his organization has submitted resolutions to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opposing the three Black Mesa Pumped Storage projects. And more money than ever before is being spent on lobbying in Colorado. The Colorado Sun reports more than $50M went to lobbyists from July 1, 2022 to the end of June this year.
  • In the last month, an advocate for Indigenous people who’ve been targeted by fraudulent sober living facilities says she’s helped dozens of displaced victims from tribal communities like the Navajo Nation return home. In May, the governor of Arizona announced the state would crack down on these fake sober living homes in coordination with the Navajo Nation government, which launched an effort to return Navajo citizens from the Phoenix area to their homes. Since many of the fraudulent facilities are now shutting down, victims advocates in the Phoenix area have noticed an increase in the number of unsheltered Indigenous people who have needed bus fare to return to their communities. And two new state laws that give Colorado renters extra protections go into effect this month.
  • 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.