You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Traditional Elders at Big Mountain Arrested for Holding Religious Ceremony

Listen
Media Options
Listen

Related

    On Wednesday, Hopi Tribal Police arrested five elders at an intertribal religious ceremony on Hopi Tribal land nearBig Mountain, Arizona. They were charged with trespassing and holding a ceremony without a permit.

    The arrests are the latest in a conflict over one of the largest coal deposits in North America. On one side are theU.S. government and mining companies, who say neither the coal nor the land belongs to the traditional people, and itshould be mined; on the other are the traditional Hopi and Dineh people, who say the coal is located under theirancestral lands, belongs in the earth, and that mining it would destroy both the environment and their way of life.

    The Hopi and Dineh people have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Peabody Coal Co. engaged in a conspiracy withthe Department of Interior to defraud the tribes and prevent the fair payment of coal royalties to the tribes.

    Guests:

    • Sharon Lungo, supporter of the traditional Dineh and Hopi People.
    • Robert Meyers, officer of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

    Related link:

    Related Story

    StoryMar 14, 2024Mehdi Hasan on Genocide in Gaza, the Silencing of Palestinian Voices in U.S. Media & Why He Left MSNBC
    The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

    Non-commercial news needs your support

    We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
    Please do your part today.
    Make a donation
    Top