New! Beautiful Hademade Rugs for Sale

These beautiful rugs are made by master weavers from Black Mesa. From herding the sheep, to dying the wool, to weaving the rugs, the weavers hand craft their rugs in the traditional Dineh (Navajo) method.

Please contact 928-309-9051 with any questions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Size: 29 1/2 x 48
Ganado red design
navajo handmade commercial wool
Tightly woven
Price: $900-1000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 SOLD!

 

 

 

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Caravan November 2010 Transcripts/Notes—translation from Dine by Danny Blackgoat

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BMIS Points of Unity

These principles reflect what we believe to be truly important aspects of our work.

We’ve adapted the following from SmartMeme:
In all of our efforts to collaborate for change, we value relationships, and approach our work with respect for all people and all life on Earth. We strive in both our perspectives and practices, to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and oppression in all its forms.

We challenge power structures at all levels. We are committed to becoming better allies by helping to develop accountable leadership and build broad-based movements for environmental, social, and economic justice.

We intend this to be living document and an evolving guide for Black Mesa Indigenous Supports practices, strategy, and vision. We commit to embracing the following principles:

Holistic Analysis:  Social, economic and ecological issues are interconnected and interdependent.  We believe in “supporting Native communities to protect the Earth we all share” so eloquently stated by Honor The Earth.  The problems are interrelated, and so are the solutions.

Analyzing Power: Through the analysis of institutional power, we identify and unpack the systems of oppression, and analyze the narratives that help to legitimize and hold these institutions in place. We bring power analysis as a lens to all of our work.

Undoing Racism: Racism is the single most critical barrier to building effective coalitions for social change. We commit to create and promote an anti-racist culture in our organization, and practice anti-racism in our personal and political work.

Listening: We take responsibility for making space for all voices in the Black Mesa community, the support group and larger network.  We prioritize listening to the front-line communities of Black Mesa who are impacted by coal mining & forced relocation. We listen to the experiences, stories, and histories, as told by them. We also prioritize listening to elders, youth, women, queer folks, and people of color.  We strive to listen to what people are saying or by what they’re not saying.

Appreciation and Gratitude: for the whole of each other’s personhood. We will respect and nurture each other’s culture, class, gender, orientation, racial, and religious differences. We will be sensitive to each other’s family situations. We will resist arrogance. We will be willing to share our weaknesses. We will call each other out, and also celebrate each other often.

Acting: consciously and consistently to challenge historic patterns of marginalization
and oppression including racism, sexism, homophobia and discrimination in all its forms.
We are committed to being a visible ally.  We are committed to action and taking public positions on oppression.  We will help build a multi-racial, anti-racist movement.

Leadership: To organize with integrity requires that we be accountable to the communities struggling with oppression, and develop accountable leadership and relationships.

Networking: The growth of an effective broad-based movement for social transformation requires networking or “building a net that works.” As the movement develops a strong net, people are less likely to fall through. Black Mesa Indigenous Support nurtures our network and acts as a connector across the issues and communities we serve.

We, the collective volunteers & greater network of BMIS commit ourselves to working together to embody the above-stated principles. If you share these principles, we invite you to join us in fulfilling them.

 

We also agree with Honor The Earth’s statement:
“We believe a sustainable world is predicated on transforming economic, social, and political relationships that have been based on systems of conquest toward systems based on just relationships with each other and with the natural world. ….we are committed to restoring a paradigm that recognizes our collective humanity and our joint dependence on the Earth”.

 

BMIS has adopted the following principles from Unsettling America, (which in turn was adapted from Unsettling MN)

• As settlers and non-native people (by which we mean non-indigenous to this hemisphere) acting in solidarity, it is our responsibility to proactively challenge and dismantle colonialist thought and behavior in the communities we identify ourselves to be part of. As people within communities that maintain and benefit from colonization, we are intimately positioned to do this work.
• We understand that allies cannot be self-defined; they must be claimed by the people they seek to ally with. We organize our solidarity efforts around direct communication, responsiveness, and accountability to indigenous people fighting for decolonization and liberation.
• We are committed to dismantling all systems of oppression, whether they are found in institutional power structures, interpersonal relationships, or within ourselves. Individually and as a collective, we work compassionately to support each other through these processes. Participation in struggle requires each of us to engage in both solidarity and our own liberation: to be accountable for all privileges carried, while also struggling for liberation from internalized and/or experienced oppression. We seek to build a healthy culture of resistance, accountability, and sustenance.

 

We have also adopted Setting The Record Straight’s Points of Unity:

• We recognize that “race” is a false construct, arbitrarily created by Europeans to establish and maintain privilege and power. “Whiteness” was invented for similar reasons and serves as “North” on the illegitimate “compass” of race by creating hierarchies of language, skin tone, religious practice, and culture. We seek to deconstruct these oppressive paradigms and take part in the effort already established to build and resurrect models of human interaction based on cooperation and the value inherent in our various traditions and cultures.
• We recognize and respect the inherent autonomy and self-determination of indigenous groups. We define autonomy as the capacity of communities to survive and thrive without interference or threat of violence from outside forces. We see self-determination as the power of a community to define its own fate and course of action.
• We seek an immediate end to all genocidal policies and activities. We oppose the full range of genocidal actions, including things like cultural appropriation, which are often mistakenly thought of as non-genocidal because they don’t necessarily entail direct physical violence.
• We seek to help create relationships of true and lasting justice between indigenous and non-indigenous communities. We believe that those who benefit from the occupation of indigenous territories have a responsibility to put effort into helping build these fundamentally just relationships. If necessary, non-indigenous communities should make themselves available to indigenous groups as a source of aid and support. Because everyone ultimately stands to gain from this process, we promote mutual empowerment, not charity.
• We support and respect a diversity of tactics and efforts made by colonized groups to resist oppression and/or reclaim complete autonomy. However, we may not condone all methods used, or choose to utilize certain methods ourselves.
• We will actively fight all oppression in ourselves, our collective and events, in liberatory movements, and outside the movement. We hold that all systems of oppression are linked, and that no movement for liberation can succeed while replicating/maintaining any oppression. We will not tolerate any form of oppression. Some systemic oppressions include racism, sexism, transphobia, and ablism.

 

And last but not least!:

• All Indigenous Peoples in the occupied lands known as the United States have the right to self-determination and access to clean and safe land-bases.
• Representation: BMIS and the regional network agree to not act as a representative of or speak on behalf of the struggle. We agree to only speak for ourselves.

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EPA RULE CRIPPLES PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW IF WORST AIR POLLUTERS ARE VIOLATING THE LAW

Approach Prohibits States from Including Adequate Monitoring
Requirements in Air Pollution Permits

WASHINGTON, D.C.///February 12, 2007///Environmentalists are heading
to court today to challenge an Environmental Protection Agency rule
that weakens clean air requirements for major industrial polluters.
The recently finalized rule enables the nation’s largest polluters to
avoid monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements needed to
document whether they are illegally polluting the air. Read more

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Biological Diversity Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, February 6, 2007

CONTACT: Erik Ryberg, Center for Biological Diversity, (520) 260-4157
Hamlet Paoletti, Natural Resources Defense Council, (310) 434-2300
Wahleah Johns, Black Mesa Water Coalition, (928) 863-1375

Groups Challenge Environmental Analysis of Controversial Black Mesa Mine:
Feds Failed to Consider Harmful Impacts to Sacred Springs Read more

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Tensions run high at final Black Mesa DEIS hearing

Rebecca Schubert
The Observer

FLAGSTAFF-Gathering from communities across northern Arizona and
beyond people of the many nations including the Hopi, Navajo and U.S.
came together to learn and discuss the Office of Surface Mining’s Draft
Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The public meeting was the
final in a series of 12 held by the U.S. Department of the Interior Office
of Surface Mining (OSM) administrators across northern Arizona. Read more

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Big Coal’s Dirty Move

As the world heats up, the coal industry is racing to build more than 150 new power plants before Congress decides to crack down on global warming

JEFF GOODELL
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a suicidal act is one that is “dangerous to oneself or to one’s interests; self-destructive or ruinous.” By this standard, the coal boom that is currently sweeping America is the atmospheric equivalent of a swan dive off a very tall building. At precisely the moment that scientists have reached a consensus that we need to drastically cut climate-warming pollution, the electric-power industry is racing to build more than 150 new coal plants across the United States. Coal is by far the dirtiest fossil fuel: If the new plants are built, they will dump hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year for decades to come — virtually guaranteeing that the U.S. will join China in leading civilization’s plunge into a superheated future. Read more

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Black Mesa EIS meeting one for the record

Black Mesa EIS meeting one for the record

By Kathy Helms
Dine Bureau
Wednesday, January 3, 2007

WINDOW ROCK — To call Tuesday night’s meeting on Peabody Western
Coal Co.’s Black Mesa Project a public hearing, “is really
inadequate,” Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amos Johnson told
federal officials.

But that wasn’t the only complaint in an evening that didn’t get
off to a good start and broke up just short of descending into
verbal chaos. Read more

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