Native American tribes have often joined forces with environmentalists to block developments they don’t like, such as expansions of ski resorts. But the often feuding Navajo and Hopi tribes in Northern Arizona are joining forces to kick environmentalist off their reservations because they threaten tribal income derived from a coal burning power plant. USA today reports here.
PHOENIX ? The president of the Navajo Nation
joined other Native American leaders this week in assailing
environmentalists who have sought to block or shut down coal-fired
power plants that provide vital jobs and revenue to tribes in northern Arizona.“These are individuals and groups who claim to
have put the welfare of fish and insects above the survival of the
Navajo people when in fact their only goal is to stop the use of coal
in the U.S. and the Navajo Nation,” said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.,
who presides over America’s largest Indian reservation, which sprawls
over three states and claims a population of about 250,000.Shirley’s remarks came Wednesday after the Hopi Nation’s Tribal Council sent a message Monday to the Sierra Club and a handful of other environmental groups: Stay off the reservation.
Tina May, a spokeswoman for the Hopi Nation’s
Tribal Council, said leaders unanimously adopted a resolution declaring
that the conservation groups are unwelcome because they have damaged
the tribe’s economy by pushing to close the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant near Page, Ariz., that produces electricity distributed by providers in Arizona, California and Nevada.
