It’s kind of like the punch line to the old joke: “What you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
The Navajo-Hopi Observer has the heap big news:
The Hopi Tribe has a message for the Sierra Club and other environmental groups: Keep out!
That is the response of the Hopi Tribal Council [earlier this fall] to what it says has been continuous concerted attacks from local and national environmental groups “bent on advancing their interests and agenda at the expense of the Hopi Tribe and its sovereign interest.”
The council wants the Sierra Club and other environmental groups and on-reservation organizations affiliated with these groups to know they are not welcome on the Hopi Reservation, declaring them persona non grata — no longer favored or welcome.
By a resolution approved 12-0, the council said environmentalists have deprived the tribe “of markets for its coal resources” and coal revenues needed to sustain governmental services, provide jobs for tribal members and safeguard Hopi culture and tradition.
In 2005, environmental groups played a significant role in the shutdown of the Mohave Generating Station, which the Hopi Council contends “deprived the Hopi Tribe of many millions of dollars of annual operating revenues,” according to the resolution.
Revenue losses from the Mohave power plant range from an estimated $6.5 million to $8.5 million annually.
The council feels that the economic viability of the Navajo Generating Station – the tribe’s only remaining coal customer – is also being threatened, and that environmentalists’ actions could lead to “total economic collapse of the tribe.”
So much for the environmentalists’ image of the peaceful red man, living in harmony with nature. Because as far as the Hopi are concerned, nature gave them a big ol’ pile of coal and it’s not doing anyone any good as long as it sits in the ground.
Source: Navajo-Hopi Observer
