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Tsé Bitʼaʼí  (Shiprock). Photo courtesy of Wikipedia   Moderator’s Note: On August 5, 2015, the EPA reported that crews at a defunct gold mine in southern Colorado—the Gold King Mine near Silverton—accidently released more than three million gallons of highly contaminated water into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River. The ‘River of Souls’ is a critical source of agricultural water rights for Native farmers from the Ute and Navajo (Diné) nations. It has been widely reported that the EPA has tried to get Native farmers from the Navajo Nation to sign official forms that are ‘waivers’ releasing the agency from direct lawsuits for damages, in what can only be considered a brazen display of environmental racism in a clear example of a violation of the Obama Administration’s own commitment to Executive Order 12898 (see, for e.g., the August 12 report in Aljazeera-America ). Despite this ecological catastrophe, one of the most serious and damaging mined waste ‘accidents’ i...

BMG cyanide calavera. Art | Amy Woods. Photo | Devon Peña It’s the water, stupid! THE CRIME OF COAL MINING EAGLE PASS Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 21, 2014 One does not have to travel to the Global South to witness the social, cultural, and ecological ravages of industrial mining. We can see plenty of damage in our own country. Colorado has a gold mining legacy gloriously celebrated in movies, books, and museums across the state. This is a mythical enterprise and promotes romanticized nostalgia and a warped ideology of rugged frontiersmen bravely beating back Indian savages to conquer the wilderness in search of a God-given right to make fortunes while doing their part for Manifest Destiny and the settler colony. In the real material world, Colorado’s mining legacy is encapsulated by one fact: There are more than 1,300 miles of mountain streams and rivers badly contaminated by acid-mine drainage from more than 23,000 abandoned mine sites scattered across the high country (see...