This position stems from a longstanding and intimate history with Peabody. Despite this threat to their land and livelihood, the consensus was clear among the Benally family: “We are not moving.” If granted a new permit - approving operations through 2044 - Peabody could begin strip mining thousands of acres of prime grazing land, drying the aquifers, reshaping the landscape and dispossessing the Navajo families currently living there. But starting in January, the company is planning to re-permit Black Mesa Mine under the lease for the nearby Kayenta Mine, which would bring full-time extraction back to the Benally’s front door. Peabody closed it in December of 2005, following decades of grassroots activism. Daily living next to an active mine is a hectic one, and Benally describes it as “egregious,” with smog clogging the air.įor the past eight years, however, the Benally family has gotten a respite from the constant noise and air pollution of Black Mesa Mine. Many of the wells that Benally visited as a young child are now buried and poisoned by mining runoff from the surrounding mountains, which have been blown up, mined out and reshaped by bucket loaders. “I’ve seen the landscape change, literally,” he said. Norman Benally has been a community activist almost his entire life and remembers herding sheep on this land before Peabody arrived. Both mines opened in the late 1960s, but the Benally family has lived there for generations. (WNV / Sam Koplinka-Loehr)Īs the Arizona sun crests the ridge of Big Mountain, it casts a deep red hue on Peabody Energy’s Black Mesa coal mine. Less than a hundred yards away, in the shadow of the towering coal processing plant, the Benally family gets ready for a day of school, work and sheepherding.īlack Mesa Mine is one of two coal mines located in the middle of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona - the other is Kayenta Mine, just five miles down the road.
Sheepherding has become an active and visual resistance to the extractive industries attempting to control the mesa.
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