Word: navajoized
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...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...
...Regulatory Commission concurs, and the company has been granted a license to mine. "If there's a resource there, why shouldn't our people be able to enjoy the proceeds of it?" argues Ruth Bridgeman, 79, who leased her property to Hydro Resources several years ago. Leonard Arviso, a Navajo who acts as the company's liaison to his tribe, talks not of land or money but of children who are forced to leave the community for lack of jobs. "We can respect Mother Earth," he says, "without wasting...
Today the Navajo Nation is but one of many tribes in which some members believe they can exploit their natural resources with minimal risk while others don't want to take any chances. In Alaska spruce forests that served as traditional hunting grounds have been clear-cut by Tlingit loggers. Florida's Miccosukee Indians are attempting to build housing within Everglades National Park, while Utah's Goshute are actively seeking a nuclear-waste dump. And last year Arizona's White Mountain Apaches, protecting their logging and cattle interests, declared that federal agents would be forbidden to enforce the Endangered Species...
...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...
...issue has split not only the tribe but also individual families. For example, Capitan, the grass-roots opposition leader, is the nephew of Arviso, the employee of Hydro Resources. And there is a generational clash as well: some younger Navajo accuse the landowners, many of them tribal elders, of selling out. "The older people always say human life is more important than material things," says LaJuanna Daye, a health-care worker, "but here they have the chance to prove it, and all we see is greed...