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Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships
Regional Programs: Arizona
Multicultural Alliance for Safe Environment event.In the Southwest, the Sierra Club's EJ program is focused on working with tribes and community groups to protect their resources from misuse and contamination via destructive industrial practices as well as to ensure the health and safety of local residents.
Organizer Robert Tohe is actively involved in a broad coalition of native groups whose aim is to prevent the resurgence of uranium mining in New Mexico and Arizona, where area residents still suffer from the health effects of past mining. In addition, Robert has worked with tribes to protect the sacred mountains such as the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona and Mt Taylor in New Mexico. An important part of his work involves safeguarding valuable water supplies against excessive industrial use.
In December of 2006, the Southwest EJ program co-sponsored the Indigenous World Uranium Summit in Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. There are new efforts around the world to mine, process and store deadly uranium on native lands. The summit was an opportunity for representatives from indigenous communities, tribal governments and non-profits around the world to strategize and defend themselves.Read the Declaration issued at the
Indigenous World Uranium Summit, read by Manny Pino, one of the original
writers of the Salzburg mining declaration of 1992.
In addition to working with tribes and groups such as Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining, Dineh Bidziil, Dine Hataalii Association, and Azee Bee Nahagha of Dine Nation against the resurgences of uranium mining in New Mexico and Arizona, the Southwest EJ program has also continued to actively work to protect the sacred San Francisco Peaks from to use reclaimed city water to make snow for the Arizona Snowbowl ski area located on the Peaks slopes. The Peaks are sacred to 13 tribes, and tribal activists have expressed dismay over snow-making plans.
In early 2007 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of tribes and environment organizations legal claims based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the NEPA. The Forest Service was granted a rehearing by appealing the first court decision and the lawsuit was reheard a second time on December 11, 2007 in Pasadena, CA. Robert Tohe has worked to provide legal interpretation and translations into the Navajo Language for Norris Nez Sr., a plaintiff/appellant in the lawsuit. Mr. Nez, a medicine men speaks and understands only the Navajo Language.
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Arizona Environmental Justice Program
P.O. Box 38
Flagstaff, AZ 86002
928-774-6103
Organizer: Robert Tohe
robert.tohe@sierraclub.org