Word: crownpoint
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...water is so precious that Navajo tradition regards it as a living entity. Survival here has long depended on the health of underground pools and streams that feed wells and the occasional surface spring. That's why Billy Martin is worried. The water supply to his tiny town of Crownpoint (pop. 2,500) is threatened, he says, by money-grubbers who don't understand water's importance to Native American culture. It sounds like a familiar story... until you realize that Martin, 69, isn't upset with white businessmen. He's talking about his Navajo brethren...
...aquifer containing the ore also supplies water to an estimated 10,000 people in and around Crownpoint, a town in which dusty yards are decorated with stripped-down car frames and visiting neighbors honk their horn rather than ring the doorbell. Less than 10% of the local Navajo stand to benefit directly from the mining leases, and many of the rest, conditioned by a history of false promises from outsiders, aren't buying Hydro Resources' assurances that their water will remain unpolluted by the mine...
...Crownpoint the uranium issue has sharply divided the Navajo. At the tribe's chapter house (where the local governing body sits), a recent motion to oppose the mine sparked such furious debate that the issue was permanently tabled. "Anyone who wants to get re-elected can't touch this," says Rosemary Silversmith, the chapter-house treasurer...
With the land in question a checkerboard ownership of Navajo, other private landholders and the U.S. government, the ultimate fate of the mine may depend on who wins jurisdiction in court. Regardless, the Navajo syllables To eii be iina at e (Water is life) have become fighting words in Crownpoint...
...bright green sign is taped to the glass doors at the entrance to the Indian health facility in Crownpoint, New Mexico: IF YOU HAVE HAD FEVERS, CHILLS, JOINT AND MUSCLE ACHES, COUGHING OR HEADACHES, PLEASE NOTIFY THE NURSE AT THE FRONT DESK IMMEDIATELY. Inside, the waiting room of the 39-bed hospital is jam-packed: the old, the middle-aged, children and even an unattended prisoner in flimsy ankle cuffs...
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