Navajo Nation police have seized water tanks delivered to the Shiprock community in the wake of a devastating Colorado mine spill.
An Environmental Protection Agency-supervised crew accidentally unleashed an estimated 3 million gallons of waste two weeks ago from the abandoned Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado. The waste, which consisted of high levels of toxic metals, floated out of the mine and into the Animas River, then traveled south into the San Juan River.
Lenny Foster of the Dine Nation is the Director of the Navajo Nation Corrections Project and the Spiritual Advisor for more than 2,000 Native American inmates in ninety-six state and federal prisons in the Western U.S. He has co-authored legislation in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado allowing Native American spiritual and religious practice in prison and resulting in significant reductions in prison returns.
He is a board member of the International Indian Treaty Council, a sun dancer and member of the Native American Church. He has been with the American Indian Movement since 1969 and has participated in actions including Alcatraz, Black Mesa, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee 1973, the Menominee Monastery Occupation, Shiprock Fairchild Occupation, the Longest Walk and the Big Mountain land struggle.
Lenny Foster has received many accolades and honors for his groundbreaking work with Indigenous prisoners’ human rights. These include the Dr. Martin Luther King Civil Rights Award in Phoenix, Arizona (1993) and Kansas City, Missouri (1996); the Petra Foundation Human Rights Award in Washington, D.C. (1997) and the Citizen’s Award for Commendation of the Governor’s Religious Advisory Task Force in Salt Lake City, Utah (1997). His program was awarded High Honors from Harvard University Honoring Nations 2003 Tribal Governance Excellence. He was awarded a fellowship by the Windcall Foundation in Bozeman, Montana in June 2004. He was the recipient of the Unsung Hero Award by the Utah Division of Indian Affairs on Indigenous Day, November 22, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received the Volunteer of the Year Native American Spiritual Advisor from the Federal Correctional Complex in Tucson, Arizona in April 2009. He also received the 2013 U.S. Human Rights Network Movement Builders Award.
The Manhattan Project, Shut Down Indian Point Now! & NYC Safe Energy Coalition invite you toTue. March 10, 2015
6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Goddard-Riverside Community House
593 Columbus Avenue, NYC
(NE corner of 88th St & Columbus Av)
Subway: B/C to 86th st & 1 to 86th st
Click here to download flyer
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RSVP: aslater●rcn.com (please change ● to @)
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Experts and activists make the connection between what happens during uranium mining, the great damage it does to people and the land, for the fuel to power Indian Point and Fukushima.
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Hear an update about the ongoing and catastrophic effects of Fukushima from Prof. Hiroko Goto, Chiba University School of Law; Vice President of Human Rights Now.
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Jennifer Thurston of Information Network for Responsible Mining will give us on-the-ground report of environmental impacts of uranium mining in Colorado.
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Meet activist Leona Morgan of the Diné No Nukes. She will talk about her people and their fight against uranium mining on indigenous lands in the Southwest US.
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Klee Benally, a Diné based in Arizona, will address resource colonization in uranium mining, protection of sacred places, and tactics towards collective liberation.
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Learn from Marilyn Elie with the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition about the dangers of Indian Point only 25 miles from NYC and why we must shut it down.
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Speakers:
Professor Hiroko Goto, Professor of Chiba University School of Law in Japan; Vice President of Human Rights Now; Board member of Japan Association of Gender and Law; Board member of Japanese Association of Victimology; Member of Science Council of Japan; and as a former expert member on violence against women for the Gender Equality Bureau was involved in the Basic Plan for Gender Equality in Japan. After receiving her LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from Keio University in Tokyo, where she also completed her Ph.D. studies in criminal law, Professor Goto became a leading expert on Japanese juvenile law and gender law. She has published many works in both English and Japanese on these topics. She is also the chief of the Human Rights Now’s Earthquake Relief Project whose activities include fact-finding missions, policy proposals, lobbying activity, and seminars to raise awareness on the human rights situation in Fukushima and other areas affected by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in 2011.
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Leona Morgan is a Diné (Navajo) organizer working with several community organizations based in the Southwest focused on addressing effects from past uranium mining and threats of new uranium operations in New Mexico since 2007. In 2014, she co-founded a network, Diné No Nukes, an initiative to nurture wide-scale awareness of nuclear and uranium development initiatives in the “Four Corners” region by providing multi-media educational materials and industry analyses to the Navajo electorate & elected officials. The goal of Dine No Nukes is to increase public awareness and civic participation to ensure that informed decisions are made on nuclear issues across the Navajo Nation and within the Four Sacred Mountains—for the protection of health, water, land, cultural resources and the sovereignty of the Diné people.
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Marilyn Elie has been working to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant for the last 20 years. She is a co-founder of Westchester Citizens Awareness Network and one of the original members of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, IPSEC, a coalition of grassroots and environmental organizations in the lower Hudson Valley. She became involved in this issue because of her concern about the unsolvable problem of high level radioactive waste; a toxic legacy that we are passing on to untold generations. Marilyn has also learned to watchdog the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She regularly attends Nuclear Regulatory Commission meetings and has seen three regional directors come and go. She has learned how to read NRC reports for what is hidden between the lines and, on occasion, is the only person in the room who can attest to changes in the regulatory position because she was there at the original meeting. She firmly believes that the next year is critical in determining if the reactors at Indian Point will be relicensed to operate for another 20 years or if they will be denied a new operating license.
The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee presented Broken Rainbow, a documentary film that presents a moving account of the forced relocation of 12,000 Navajo Native Americans from their ancestral homes in Arizona by the government. The Navajo were relocated to aid mining speculation in a process that began in the 1970s and continues to this day. The United States government claims that by moving the Navajo off the land, it is settling a long-standing dispute between the Navajo and Hopi Tribes. To the traditional Navajo and Hopi, there is no dispute.
Native Resistance Network co-sponsored the event and one of our founders, Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong (Dine) and Jerry Greyhawk (Dine) spoke before the presentation of the film, then took questions from the audience afterwards. Firewolf is a member of Black Mesa Coalition and an advocate for Dine Water Rights.
