The dam breach is just one event in a long series of ecological and cultural injustices against the Dine people and their neighbors, the Hopi.
The big mountain and black mesa were holy to both the Hopi and Navajo. They see it as a sacred center of the world that they were meant to protect. The media, the government, Senator Barry Goldwater, the tribal councils(puppet governments), lawyers, created and exaggerated a land dispute, which lead to the forced relocation of 10,000 Dine from land that had been formerly been a joint use area between the tribes (but was technically on the Hopi reservation). It was claimed by Hopi council that this was on behalf of the welfare of the Hopi people, but they aren't inhabiting this land their Dine neihbors formally subsisted on. Instead its inhabited by mining equipment and oil rigs. Their most sacred mountain happened to be very rich in every resource that's valuable to the 20th and 21st century economy, coal, uranium, oil, and natural gas.
Theyre basically a third world nation in America. Theyre sitting on the most resource rich part of the country, but theyre among the poorest regions in the country, the other being the Black Hills area in South Dakota. A lot of Navajo don't even get electricity, even though transmission lines run over their houses. Its not that they even asked for electricity or even wanted money, or anything the white man values. They just wanted their land, their sheep, and clean water, but they don't get anything.
As the Navajo were relocated, they couldnt live off the land anymore. They had to go work for the very mining companies they opposed to begin with. The whole area is contaminated with uranium mining tailings. Its in their water and air. Its just a lot cheaper for industry to close up the mines and not even clean up the tailing pilings. Cleaning up the environment would cost money which would raise the price of electricity (so its not just corporations who are to blame but consumers too). The "civillized" world keeps costs low by not cleaning up their mess. They are burning up a mountain holy to these people for the temporary gain of keeping technologic society running for a few more decades. Destroying millenia old cultures to maintain a modeof living that's built directly on the death of the planet.
Theres not even any guarantee that ecosystems are really even restored to their original state when they do put the money in. Strip mines are ordered now to fill in the holes they dug up. They used to just leave them open. However, filling it back in doesn't do anything to decontaminate the air and the ground water. I mean, cleaning up uranium tails may be better than just leaving them open, but the contaminations already done. It was already done as soon as they dug it up.
Gold was what was sought by the white man before coal and uranium. They said they could contain it safely. They always say this, but it broke. They claim they can clean up strip mines and restore the environment, but this is a lie too. Just as the damn with the contamination will be have to be on peoples minds for a long time, so will the nuclear waste, and the fracking sites.
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