Recently, the Hopi Indian Nation ended its relationship with the Sierra Club, declaring the organization persona non gratis. The ultimate decision to end the relationship came after a unanimous vote of the tribal council. The reason was one of economic livelihood. The Sierra Club, in an effort to shut down a coal fired energy plant they claimed polluted the environment and contributed to Global Climate Change, won instead the ire of the Hopi Indian Tribe, recognized by the US Government as a sovereign entity in its own right. The tribe held that closing the plant would cost the Hopis in jobs and in economic development.
The Sierra Club held firm to its commitment, promising the Hopi long-term benefits in terms of a cleaner environment while holding out the promise of future jobs and economic development in the field of green energy. This however was not enough to ease the ire of the Tribe, which ordered them permanently off their sovereign lands.
When I first learned of this story from Moonbattery, I wanted to make note of it, but at the same time I wanted to find out more. Basically, I wanted to get the Sierra Club's side of the story, if for no other reason than just to get their spin on it, but also on the off chance that I might one day find myself blindsided with a previously unstressed other side of the story.
True to form, the Sierra Club makes no bones about their objection to the coal industry and their desire to rigidly regulate, if not entirely dismantle the industry. One article, entitled King Coal, elaborates their efforts and accomplishments in the West, particularly in Kansas. It is all the more surprising then that I have been unable to find anything about this incident involving the Hopi Indians on the Sierra Club's official website. I did, however, find some mention of the Hopi pertaining to another matter.
Interestingly, they had at one point been allies. The two had banded together and won an injunction to prevent uranium mining on Mt. Taylor, a sacred mountain to the Hopis, on the grounds of potential contamination of ground water and streams. They succeeded in winning a one-year moratorium on any further mining and exploration by declaring Mt Taylor a Traditional Cultural Property.
However, it is worth noting that this story was posted on the Sierra Club website on March of 2008, more than two and a half years ago. Since then, there has been nothing posted on the website pertaining to any kind of followup on the Mt Taylor controversy, even though the injunction was granted for only one year.
The story seems suspended at the following point-
The nuclear power industry is now seeking to resume operations, and in response the New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division streamlined the permit process, allowing mining activities to proceed without notifying the affected tribes when the site is less than five acres, and ignoring Governor Bill Richardson's executive order requiring statewide tribal consultation to protect sacred places. New mining plans on Mt. Taylor are opposed by tribes because the state has failed to perform environmental analysis on underground drinking water supplies, groundwater withdrawls, and impacts from exploratory wells.
The emergency stay granted by the New Mexico State Cultural Properties Review Committee will give the state time to gather input from affected tribal groups and allow the tribes and the state Historic Preservation Division to carefully evaluate applications for mining permits. "The committee action means pueblos and tribes can't be ignored when there are imminent threats to a sacred mountain," says Tohe.
And that seems to be the end of it, with no word on whether the mining permits and exploration and/or mining resumed or whether there were further extensions on the injunction granted, or for that matter whether or not the entire project was scrapped, or even if the required testing turned up any kind of evidence as to any potential hazards or seeming lack thereof. We just don't know, at least insofar as anything I've learned from the Sierra Club or from any other source thus far.
Putting aside for the moment my considered suspicion over the likelihood that a state agency would "ignore" an Executive Order issued by a governor, which is curious enough, I find one other thing that I thought perhaps even more telling.
In the above linked Sierra Club article on Mt. Taylor, there was a link pointing to a website which seems to be a joint enterprise of the Navajo and Hopi Tribes, and which the Sierra Club points to as evidence of their collaboration with the Hopi. However, if you click on this link now, you will see-an empty page, one which is nevertheless identified in the url as the page of an article, albeit one which seems to have been deleted. It almost looks like the cyber equivalent of a jilted lover excising his unfaithful spouse's image from the wedding pictures.
The same website, however, in another post has a lot to say about the present rift between the Hopi and the Sierra Club. The title says it all-
Hopi Tribal Council bans environmental groups-
Actions by environmental groups threaten total economic collapse of the tribe, council declares
There's so much there its almost impossible to copy a small part of it which is adequately representative of the whole, but suffice it to say the Tribe felt their very existence was threatened by the Sierra Club, in addition to various other environmentalist groups working in tandem with them.
(Black Mesa Water Coalition photo
Roberto Nutlouis (left) and Lillian Hill at the Black Mesa Mine coal mine before it was closed.)
It's worth your time to go and read the entire article, because it could well be a signpost to what lies ahead in the coming years for all of us if these groups succeed in imposing their radical agenda.
