I count 35 sheep, which means one is missing from the herd. I quickly retrace the tracks in the fresh snow that fell the day we arrived, pausing to scan the snowy landscape. Squinting through sagebrush, veering from one juniper to another, zigzagging through narrow washes and frozen ponds and beyond to where it all culminates to a thick dark green line on the horizon. It is here, at the intersection of green trees and pink sky that I pause to listen.

There is a dark cloud billowing from the easternmost edge of Black Mesa. Today, like every day I’ve been here, Peabody Coal Company is blasting. I cannot hear the explosions, but as I stand in hoof tracks, the plume in the distance reminds me of why I’m here and with whom my solidarity lays.

In 1974 the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 93-531, which required the forced relocation of more than 14,000 Diné and hundreds of Hopi families from the lands they have occupied and honored for more than a thousand years. In fact, there is evidence that native people occupied this particular mesa for 7,000 years.

(more…)