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The Long Journey Home: Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi from their burial places
BLACK MESA, Arizona -- Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi from their burial places for its coal mining, a tool of genocide, oppression and relocation. Southern Illinois University still has several million artifacts stolen from Black Mesa by Peabody Coal, some dating back 8,000 years.
The Long Journey Home
Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi ancestors from their burial places
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Feb. 14, 2023
BLACK MESA, Arizona -- Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi from their burial places for its coal mining, a tool of genocide, oppression and relocation. Southern Illinois University still has several million artifacts stolen from Black Mesa by Peabody Coal, some dating back 8,000 years.
On this long tragic road home, the ancestors were sent to five different museums -- in Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Nevada, and then finally to the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff -- before reburial in their homeland.
Louise Benally, Dine' of Big Mountain, said, "Peabody Coal Company doesn't have any respect for anything or anybody, only their greed matters." Benally responded in 2013, after the discovery of the removal of the ancestors.
Today, Nicole Horseherder, Diné, Big Mountain, Black Mesa and director of To Nizhoni Ani, said the ancestors and artifacts need to be returned home.
"There is no end to the exploitation from Peabody Western Coal Company. They took over 60,000 acres of land for mining, pitted families against one another, destroyed shallow aquifers and water sources, impacted the balance of the deep aquifers, and dug up our ancestors just to send them to museums and institutions without our consent.
"It is a shame the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe have allowed themselves to be held hostage for 50 years, but Dine community members know that the artifacts and ancestral remains should be returned to Black Mesa for reburial," Horseherder told Censored News.
Beginning in 1968, Peabody removed 200 ancestors from their burial places as it dug up the earth to mine coal on Black Mesa. More ancestors were removed from their burial places in Klethla Valley near Kayenta, for the railroad to carry coal to the power plant near Page, according to the NAGPRA notice.
It was Prescott College and Southern Illinois University that carried out the 'Black Mesa Archaeological Project,' -- benign words that cover up the horror of digging up graves and stealing ancestors and their last belongings.
Read the full article at Censored News
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-long-journey-home-peabody-coal.html
Please see our series on museums and universities harboring thousands of Native remains, which follows the release of the new database at ProPublica.
Photo by Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi ancestors from their burial places
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Feb. 14, 2023
BLACK MESA, Arizona -- Peabody Coal removed 341 Navajo and Hopi from their burial places for its coal mining, a tool of genocide, oppression and relocation. Southern Illinois University still has several million artifacts stolen from Black Mesa by Peabody Coal, some dating back 8,000 years.
On this long tragic road home, the ancestors were sent to five different museums -- in Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Nevada, and then finally to the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff -- before reburial in their homeland.
Louise Benally, Dine' of Big Mountain, said, "Peabody Coal Company doesn't have any respect for anything or anybody, only their greed matters." Benally responded in 2013, after the discovery of the removal of the ancestors.
Today, Nicole Horseherder, Diné, Big Mountain, Black Mesa and director of To Nizhoni Ani, said the ancestors and artifacts need to be returned home.
"There is no end to the exploitation from Peabody Western Coal Company. They took over 60,000 acres of land for mining, pitted families against one another, destroyed shallow aquifers and water sources, impacted the balance of the deep aquifers, and dug up our ancestors just to send them to museums and institutions without our consent.
"It is a shame the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe have allowed themselves to be held hostage for 50 years, but Dine community members know that the artifacts and ancestral remains should be returned to Black Mesa for reburial," Horseherder told Censored News.
Beginning in 1968, Peabody removed 200 ancestors from their burial places as it dug up the earth to mine coal on Black Mesa. More ancestors were removed from their burial places in Klethla Valley near Kayenta, for the railroad to carry coal to the power plant near Page, according to the NAGPRA notice.
It was Prescott College and Southern Illinois University that carried out the 'Black Mesa Archaeological Project,' -- benign words that cover up the horror of digging up graves and stealing ancestors and their last belongings.
Read the full article at Censored News
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-long-journey-home-peabody-coal.html
Please see our series on museums and universities harboring thousands of Native remains, which follows the release of the new database at ProPublica.
Photo by Southern Illinois University Carbondale
For more information:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2023/02/the...
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