curley moral economy of navajo coal workers-short.pdf

T’
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eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers Andrew Curley Department of Geography, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...

T’
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eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers Andrew Curley Department of Geography, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The development of coal mining in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States, is understood as a consequence of economic dependency, resource curse, modernization, cultural contradiction, and so on. Missing from these frameworks are the perspectives of indigenous actors who participate in these industries. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Navajo coal workers and community members during a 2013 lease renewal to analyze how a moral economy of Navajo coal workers accounts for the mobilization of Navajo labor in support of the industry, despite years of exploitation and environmental damage. This article’s central argument is that the moral economy of Navajo coal workers is built on a subsistence logic, summarized in the Navajo idiom t’
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eego, which emphasizes notions of “hard work” on one’s “traditional” land and is produced in the collective conditions of a worker’s union. Even as the future of coal looks bleak, understanding how this folk ideology mobilizes Navajo workers in support of a declining industry gives us a better understanding of the integration of indigenous peoples into capitalist processes. Key Words: coal, indigenous geography, moral economy, Navajo, resource geography. 在纳瓦霍族国这个美国最大的印第安保留区中的煤矿开发, 被理解为经济依赖、资源诅咒、现代化、文 化冲突等结果。这些认识架构所缺少的, 是参与在这些产业中的原住民族行动者的视角。本文运用 2013年採矿权租约展延期间与纳瓦霍族矿工和族人所进行的民族志田野工作与访谈, 分析纳瓦霍矿工的 道德经济, 如何解释尽管常年的剥削与环境伤害, 纳瓦霍工人仍动员支持该产业。本文的核心主张是, 纳 瓦霍工人的道德经济, 建立在生计逻辑之上, 并以纳瓦霍的俗语“T’
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eego”概括之, 强调在自身 的“传统”土地上“勤奋工作”的概念, 并且在工人工会的集体条件下进行生产。尽管煤矿的未来相当严峻, 理解此般民间意识形态如何动员纳瓦霍工人以支持一个衰败的产业, 让我们对于原住民族整合进入资本 主义有更佳的理解。关键词: 煤炭, 原住民族地理学, 道德经济, 纳瓦霍人, 资源地理学 。 El desarrollo de la miner
ıa del carb
on en la Naci
on Navajo, la m
as grande de las reservaciones indias de los Estados Unidos, es vista como una consecuencia de la dependencia econ
omica, la maldici
on del recurso, la modernizaci
on, la contradicci
on cultural y as
ı sucesivamente. Lo que no aparece en estos esquemas son las perspectivas de los actores ind
ıgenas que participan en estas industrias. Este art
ıculo se basa en trabajo de campo etnogr
afico y entrevistas administradas en 2013 a obreros navajo que trabajan el carb
on y a miembros de la comunidad, al renovarse el arrendamiento, con el fin de analizar c
omo una econom
ıa moral de aquellos trabajadores puede explicar la movilizaci
on laboral navajo en apoyo de la industria carbon
ıfera, pese a an ~ os de explotaci
on y dan ~o ambiental. El argumento central del art
ıculo es que la econom
ıa moral de los trabajadores navajo del carb
on est
a construida alrededor de una l
ogica de subsistencia, resumida en la expresi
on navajo t’
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a hw
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ı t’
eego, la cual enfatiza nociones de “trabajo duro” en nuestra tierra “tradicional,” y es producida en las condiciones colectivas del sindicato del trabajador. Aun si el futuro del on luce sombr
ıo, entender c
omo esta ideolog
ıa popular moviliza a los trabajadores navajo en apoyo de carb
una industria en declive nos facilita una mejor comprensi
on de la integraci
on de los pueblos ind
ıgenas en los procesos capitalistas. Palabras clave: carb
on, geograf
ıa ind
ıgena, econom
ıa moral, Navajo, geograf
ıa de los recursos. n 2017, Arizona’s largest utility, the Salt River power plant on the western edge of the reservation I Project (SRP), announced that it would close the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) at the end of its fifty-year lease in 2019. NGS is a 2,250-megawatt and is the largest single contributor of greenhouse gases in Indian Country. For decades, the Navajo Nation has relied on coal mining for jobs and # 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109(1) 2019, pp. 71–86 Initial submission, September 2017; revised submission, March 2018; final acceptance, May 2018 72 Curley revenues. In recent years, however, the region’s coal economy has been in decline. Although environ- mental costs to the land and people are a factor, utility companies are divesting from coal because of its higher costs compared to natural gas. Since 2006, two of the four long-standing coal mines within the reservation have permanently closed, laying off hun- dreds of workers and resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenues. Employees at these mines mobilized in 2006, in 2013, and again in 2018 to try to pre- vent their closures but with declining success. In February, workers, relatives, community members, and tribal officials protested a potential shutdown of Figure 1. Navajo coal workers outside of Navajo Nation Council the NGS outside of the Arizona state capitol in Chambers, April 2013. Phoenix (Barbee 2018). In 2013, I observed an early iteration of this crisis with high salaries and good benefits. Additionally, coal within the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation provides sizable and reliable revenue for the tribe in a Council was considering renewing a lease that would neoliberal era of declining federal funding. keep the plant in operation until 2044. At the time, In this article, I argue that Navajo coal work can- the plant provided 90 percent of the power for the not be reduced to theories of employment and mod- Central Arizona Project (CAP), a critical water ernization, dependency and underdevelopment, infrastructure for the state. SRP, the plant’s operator environmental damage, risk, politics of recognition, and second largest owner, first approached a Navajo resurgence, or even limited to the logics of settler- “negotiating team” in 2010 to extend the lease. By colonialism. Rather, the social life of coal produces 2013, SRP was ready to move on the lease. Their heterogeneous, divergent, and conflict-ridden senses lobbyists leaned on tribal lawmakers to pass the of indigeneity. Methodologically, anticipating necessary council resolutions that would demonstrate internal contestation and centering research and support for the lease extension. Although Navajo analyses on actors and groups within their relative environmental groups voiced opposition, their con- relation to coal breaks apart what might become cerns were absent from the proceedings. homogenizing assumptions about Navajo cultural Mobilization instead came from Navajo coal work- values that are often found in works on indigenous ers who chartered multiple buses from Kayenta, peoples and extractive industries. This article focuses where they worked and lived. They traveled the 134 on Navajo coal workers who are responding to a miles to Window Rock where the council would declining coal economy and suggests that their decide on the lease. They filled the usually empty mobilizations in support of coal are an expression of gallery seats of the Navajo Nation Council a moral economy (Figure 1), a collectively held ideo- Chambers. The Navajo Nation passed the necessary logical claim about what is the proper order and dis- resolutions to extend the life of the plant tribution of resources often expressed in moments of until 2044. political and economic crises. There are two central In 2017, however, SRP reneged on this agreement features to this moral economy of Navajo coal work- after it secured cheaper energy from other power sour- ers. First, it is rooted in the Navajo “subsistence ces. This development follows a long pattern of settlers ethic” of t’
a
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o aj
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eego, which is fundamentally buying time with tribal nations in unequal negotiations an expression of hard work and the maintenance of only to unilaterally abandon them in the end when cir- one’s livelihood on ancestral lands. Second, it is cumstances shift more in the colonizer’s favor (Wilkins reproduced in the collective structure of a worker’s 2013a). Had this effort succeeded, the renewal would union. Although the subsistence ethic existed in have certainly preserved the plant and its feeder mine, Navajo communities long before the coal industry the Kayenta Mine, for the foreseeable future. In a place developed, the worker’s union helped put this ethic of nearly 50 percent unemployment, the mine and into political mobilization within the Navajo plant combined employ approximately 800 workers Nation. The moral economy of Navajo coal workers  T’
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eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 73 stresses two important benefits of coal work: (1) relationships with surrounding non-Native polities. Coal provides a source of livelihood and (2) it ena- U.S. federal officials, who oversaw Indian affairs, bles Navajo people to stay in the reservation on assumed that the tribe’s abundance of valuable energy their traditional lands. Understanding the perspec- resources could support new forms of industries within tives of Navajo coal workers helps us to better the reservation and would improve life and liveli- understand coal’s uneven social impact in and hoods for the Navajo people (Kluckhohn et al. 1946; around indigenous–settler interfaces and how capital- Aberle 1969; Reno 1981). ist structures and practices are incorporated into The first large-scale Navajo coal lease was signed indigenous life as strategies of survival. in 1957 outside of the Navajo community of Shiprock, where oil was “discovered” thirty years before (Powell 2018). It was called the Navajo Mine Navajo Coal and Development and has become the fuel for two large regional power Scholarship on Navajo extractive industries plants operating just outside of the northern edge of started as modernization narratives that characterized the reservation, the Four Corners Generating Station the Navajo Nation and its people as in need of and the San Juan Generating Station (Iverson and “development” through the exploitation of natural Roessel 2002). These power plants continue to sell resources (Reno 1981; Goodman 1982; Ali 2003). energy to rural Arizona towns and New Mexico cit- Starting in the 1970s, scholars critiqued this mod- ies, although their production has declined signifi- ernization approach and said that tribes were cantly in recent years, which has also resulted in a “dependent” on revenues from extraction (Robbins loss of jobs and revenues. In 1962, the McKinley 1978; Dunbar-Ortiz 1979; White 1983; Weiss 1984). Coal Mine started operations just south of the They became an internal colony of the United Navajo Nation’s capital of Window Rock. Finally, in States through “resource colonialism” and “captive 1967 and 1973, two large coal mines opened on nations and internal-colonies” (Snipp 1988, 2) or as Black Mesa in the center of the reservation to satisfy “radioactive colonialism” in the case of uranium min- rapid energy growth in the region (Needham 2014). ing (Churchill and LaDuke 1986).1 Navajo resources In 1968, Congress passed legislation to build the have powered the region’s economy through jobs, CAP, a series of large canals that would move water cheap energy, and accessible water (Deck 1997; from the Colorado River to the Salt River Valley Anthony Evans, Gamez, and Madly 2013). It has also where Phoenix was expanding. To provide power for caused known and unknown environmental damages CAP, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, from and engendered contentious politics around it. Since Arizona, proposed the construction of a large coal- the imposition of the reservation system in the 1850s, fired power plant, the NGS, in lieu of a hydroelectric U.S. tribes were treated as backward and uncivilized. dam in the Grand Canyon. Udall worked to build Consequently, reservations are always sites of inter- the power plant on tribal land to provide the Navajo vention, first by armies and churches and then by Nation with revenues and jobs as part of a moderniza- government officials and development experts. The tion narrative. The plant was built in concert with first and perhaps most notorious resource developers the passage of mining leases between the Navajo extracted from Indian lands was oil, especially among Nation and Peabody Western Coal Company to sup- the Osage in Oklahoma (Dennison 2012; Fixico ply coal from Black Mesa to the plant. The mine 2012). Congress eventually passed the Indian Mineral that supplies NGS is called the Kayenta Mine. Today Leasing Act in 1938 to regulate mining within Indian it is one of two mines operating in the Navajo lands (Rosser 2010; Voggesser 2010; Allison 2015). Nation. Many of the mine’s workers live in the town In the Navajo Nation, oil, uranium, and coal of Kayenta about twenty miles northeast of the mine coevolved with institutions of tribal governance that site (Ambler 1990; Nies 2014). led to the tribe becoming reliant on extractive indus- In recent work, researchers and activists have tries for revenues (Reno 1981; Chamberlain 2000; become more critical of coal, development projects, Iverson and Roessel 2002; Wilkins 2003). In this and even the role of tribal governments in facilitat- respect, the dependency school of thought was largely ing exploitation (Smith and Frehner 2010). They correct in its characterization of the incorporation of recognize the inherent health and environmental indigenous territories into exploitative and unequal consequences of the coal industry (Jorgensen 1978; 74 Curley Geisler et al. 1982; Churchill and LaDuke 1986; with complex and divergent perspectives, with Ambler 1990; Gedicks 1993). Today many environ- unique positioning, and who occupy different geo- mental groups claim that tribal governments were graphical and social niches are reduced to their tribe, designed to accommodate and intensify resource nation, or government (Coombes, Johnson, and extraction as new forms of colonialism across indi- Howitt 2012). To alleviate this tendency, for genous lands (Powell and Curley 2008; Powell example, Radcliffe (2015, 2) emphasized social het- 2018). In Native environmental scholarship, there is erogeneity among indigenous peoples, moving away an emphasis on decolonization, cultural renewal, or from “indigenous” as a homogenous or fixed category a return to “traditional” practices of Native life and in colonial structures with essential meaning to one leadership (Jaimes 1992; Churchill 1999; LaDuke of positionality. Her research highlights elusory 1999; Coffey and Tsosie 2001; Necefer et al. 2015). forms of intervention in the lives of indigenous Settler-colonial studies (Veracini 2011) focuses on women based on colonial assumptions of what it indigenous–settler dynamics and emphasize the role means to be an indigenous man or woman in rural of “the settler” (Wolfe 1999), “arrivants” (Byrd areas of Ecuador. Neale and Vincent (2017) warned 2011), or “non-Native” (Morgensen 2010) in struc- us of the limitations of focusing too much on per- turing the legal, political, and territorial difference ceived “ontological differences” within indigenous between colonizer and colonized (Snelgrove, communities that is a premise in much of anthropol- Dhamoon, and Corntassel 2014). This scholarship is ogy and critical cultural studies on tribes (Hunt strong in describing and analyzing the social, racial, 2014; Radcliffe 2015; Todd 2016). What I emphasize and political restrictions and inequalities of tribes here is not difference, or intersectionality, but within settler-colonial (as opposed to postcolonial) “friction” between the structuring of colonial rela- states that are bent on the “elimination of the tionships (i.e., settler colonialism and regional Native,” including through resource colonization energy interests) and the particularity of a deploy- (Wolfe 2006). These narratives, however, have diffi- ment of an indigenous identity that is trying to pre- culty capturing how indigenous peoples work serve a paternalistic model of development within through colonial structures for survival. In response, the Navajo Nation (Tsing 2011; Valdivia 2015). critical indigenous scholars and activists are articu- Methodologically, this article puts at the center of lating normative politics centered on indigenous analysis those who are most reliant on and supportive “refusal,” “liberation,” and “resurgence” that provide of the continuation and renewal of the coal industry pathways beyond the “settler state” to dislodge it of within the Navajo Nation. I account for how Navajo its conceptual dominance (A. Simpson 2014; coal workers reached larger understandings of work Coulthard and Simpson 2016; L. B. Simpson 2016). and livelihood in the production of a moral economy. They provide much-needed language to recenter The understanding of the coal industry for workers is indigenous lifeways in analysis and to transcend nar- not simply a reflection of dependency or opportunity; ratives of erasure and elimination. Although these it is fundamentally a sense of livelihood. Their under- frameworks free indigenous scholarship from colonial standing is an example of how indigeneity is socially limitations, they also miss important areas of social, and materially produced against and through colonial political, and cultural life within Native commun- structures. The geography of coal mining in the reser- ities that work contrary to ideals of resurgence, such vation requires us to narrow our object of analysis as the mobilization of Navajo coal workers in from the homogenizing category of “the Navajo,” defense of a dying industry. In this case, a moral because it can obscure diverse and contrasting moti- economy approach disaggregates “Navajo” to a par- vations of social actors under its name. The under- ticular size and scope of ideological production standing of the spatial and scalar nature of coal in around questions of labor and livelihood to reflect the region demands a focus on the specific groups the politics around this particular issue. and actors within and without the reservation who shape competing energy politics. Methods This article generally relies on observations of protest, formal political procedures, community Historically, across academic fields, tribal actors meetings, and on-the-spot conversations with are treated as unified objects of analysis. Peoples Navajo people regarding the future of coal for the  T’
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eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 75 Table 1. 2013 coal workers and Kayenta residents as Aristotle, and these might be part of a larger interviewed “universal moral grammar” that exists outside of cap- Date Age Gender Education Occupation italist rational (Honneth 1996; Mikhail 2007). Our modern usage of moral economy, however, is rooted CW 1 5/22/13 61 M High school Welder in Thompson’s provocative essay about “bread riots” CW 2 5/14/13 N/A M High school Electrician in late eighteenth-century England as that country CW 3 5/13/13 66 M N/A Administrator CW 4 7/18/13 64 M High school Truck driver transitioned into capitalism. Thompson attributed CW 5 7/19/13 N/A M College Dragline operator “the crowd’s” collective sense of moral indignation CW 6 N/A 60s M College Works for SRP to ongoing changes in distribution practices between CW 7 N/A N/A M High school Truck driver buyers and sellers of grain that marginalized common CW 8 6/22/13 N/A F College Truck driver folks. He said that the bread riots were not spontan- KR 9 N/A 30 F College Researcher KR 10 N/A 23 F College Not-for-profit eous rebellions of hunger, as economic historians KR 11 N/A 35 F Graduate Government had described (Thompson 1971), but a defiance to a KR 12 9/1/13 34 M Graduate Government changing social order. His intention was to describe KR 13 N/A 30s M Graduate Researcher preexisting mores that informed rebellions and were KR 14 N/A 32 F College Arts disrupted by social changes linked to the emergence Note: CW ¼ coal worker; KR ¼ Kayenta resident; SRP ¼ Salt of capitalism and a new political economy of River Project. agriculture (R. R. Fassin 2009). In this approach, Thompson considered the agency of actors who Navajo Nation in 2013. It also relies on forty-two comprised “the crowd” and whose standpoints were in-depth, semistructured interviews with tribal offi- informed by local customs and culture on the polit- cials, coal workers, and environmental organizers ics of resource distribution (Thompson 2015). conducted between 2012 and 2014. During this Scholarship in agrarian studies further developed phase of research, I attended local meetings at the moral economy to focus specifically on the social Kayenta “chapter house” and “township,” two separ- class of peasants. J. C. Scott’s (1977) reworking of ate and sometimes competing subpolitical bodies Thompson’s language described a subsistence ethic within the community. I talked with informants on of Southeast Asian farmers as the basis of moral the phone (unrecorded) and learned about unadver- economies. At the time of Scott’s writing, peasants tised events. I socialized in the afternoons and eve- were idealizations in national liberation movements nings with community members, most of whom did in both Asia and Latin America. They were also the not work at the mine but knew someone who did first victims of “modernization” and the commercial- and who had deep understandings of the history and ization of agriculture in socialist and capitalist politics of coal in the region. In directly observing economies, however (Booth 1994; Edelman 2005). the renewal process, I traveled hundreds of miles In his use of moral economy, Scott reemphasized between tribal meetings and events that would sud- dearth and referred to a historical and conservative denly pop up regarding the lease, from mobilizations subsistence ethic of poor peasants who were risk- in Window Rock, to public hearings in Page and averse and living near the edge of survival (J. C. Phoenix, polities located on opposite ends of Scott 1977; Watts 1983). Like Thompson, Scott dis- Arizona. In particular, I developed my analysis from puted rational choice theory of conventional eco- fourteen in-depth interviews with Navajo coal work- nomics. He also challenged Marxist grand theories ers and community members from January 2013 to of exploitation that were deductive and did not January 2014 when I lived in the Navajo community account for the lived experiences and perspectives of of Kayenta (Table 1). poor peasants (J. C. Scott 1977). Wolford moved away from precapitalist logics of moral economies in The Moral Economy of Navajo her focus on social mobilizations for land in Brazil Coal Workers (Wolford 2005, 2010). Rather, she described a con- temporary production of moral economies that were Moral economy broadly refers to embedded beliefs based on a blend of history, “customs, culture, and about economic rights. Sayer (2000) claimed that context” (Wolford 2010, 7). Wolford described how ideas of moral economy are documented as far back political mobilizations in Brazil were rooted in 76 Curley peasants’ senses of a right to land that combined reconstructed normative “folk ideologies” (Bernstein subsistence and colonial logics. Indigenous actors are 2007, 11) deployed against a capitalist reordering of on the opposite end of this dynamic. In colonial society for political impact. Although the Navajo contexts, transition from subsistence to wage-labor Nation is not a peasant economy, it is a place built life is sometimes “telescoped” into a single gener- on embedded subsistence values, which inform the ation (J. C. Scott 1977, 9). Consequently, memory nature of Navajo incorporation into regional capital- of previous social orders is fresher and, in the case of ism. When advocating for coal, Navajo workers many of my Navajo informants, existent within repurpose the Navajo subsistence logic of t’
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ı workers who are actively participating in a capitalist t’
eego as a right to work and a right to meaningful economy. What Scott identified as a subsistence livelihood. This right operates in the liberal milieu ethic influenced how peasants responded to the com- of modern governance and is a claim against the mercialization of agriculture and how they resisted powers of the state. This right is deployed at times risky marketing schemes. In the unique conjuncture of crisis, perpetuated by changing energy and capital- of settler-colonialism, indigenous peoples were con- ist interests in the region, arrangements that are fun- fined to reservations and forced to assimilate to damentally built on the exploitation of indigenous European American values designed to transform lands, resources, and labor. I observed collective their understanding and relationship with the land. expressions of this perceived right in 2013 as an Combined with regional energy development built effort to extend a coal lease by twenty-five years. on unequal relations of power between tribes and In Canada, Latin America, and Australia, indi- states (Rosser 2010; Needham 2014; Powell 2018), genous attitudes toward “development” and extract- Navajo subsistence understandings about the import- ive industries are complicated and are not always ance of hard work for survival were altered and rede- sites of resistance against extractive industries ployed in the context of wage labor (O’Neill 2005). (Valdivia 2005; Perreault and Valdivia 2010; Stanley This article uses moral economy to refer to collect- 2016). Boutet (2014) found that Innu in Northern ively held beliefs about the role of coal work in the Canada adapted to resource development in their development and maintenance of productive relations territory in ways that facilitated “traditional” land around coal mining in the Navajo reservation. I argue use practices into participation in wage-labor work. this is an intervention within indigenous geography to In Chile, Camacho (2016) differentiated indigenous integrate a deeper appreciation of social class and attitudes toward mining, development, territory, diversity of motivations within indigenous commun- and—ultimately—water change along generational ities. It is also done to demonstrate how extractive lines to demonstrate difference in indigenous atti- industries are forms of “colonial entanglements” tudes toward natural resource use. Although there (Dennison 2012, 2017), processes of messy and often are many parallels between indigenous peoples’ expe- legalistic engagements among tribal actors, their gov- riences in North America and the rest of the world as they pertain to extractive industries, here I rely ernments, and outside colonial interests that make it on the scholarship on U.S. tribes as a particular iter- more difficult for tribes to exert control over their ation of settler-colonial history and structures that lands, resources, and development priorities. In the recognize, to a limited degree, territorial autonomy case of mining in the Navajo Nation, coal workers and processes of self-governance while denying crit- extend a subsistence ethic of hard work into a moral ical facets of self-determination to these commun- economy of coal as an objective of Navajo state devel- ities. This conjuncture produces an “indigeneity” opment. In my research, I found that coal workers highly reliant on and supportive of extractive indus- often express to community members, the tribal gov- tries as a strategy for survival on the land. ernment, the state government, and federal agencies how the Navajo Nation (and other state actors) ought to support policies that secure the future of the Navajo T’
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o aj
ı t’
eego and the Navajo coal economy. Their mobilizations are based not on Subsistence Ethic abstract economic rationale but a perception that the Navajo Nation owes coal workers a right to livelihood. Navajo people have always maintained ideas of Moral economies are not simply “traditional” territory tied to particular individuals, families, or beliefs reacting to a changing social order; they are even clans. Work is generally valued in its  T’
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ı t’
eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 77 immediate and contextual usefulness to a family, Court, Herb Yazzie, used t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego to reduce group, and, increasingly, idea of “nation.” The per- child support owed to a woman who had divorced ceived usefulness of Navajo labor was historically her husband twenty years prior. Yazzie wrote: evaluated in its necessity for survival in the condi- Our elders have always taught the concept of t’aa hwo tions of the semiarid Colorado Plateau defined by aji t’eego (self-reliance). The emphasis of this value is cold, snowy winters, periodic droughts, hot summers, that one must prepare himself/herself for the difficulties and sparse vegetation. Navajo notions of work and in life—one needs to rise early to meet the dawn and responsibility, the core of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego, “you are be blessed with the desire, commitment and responsible for your own well-being,” were directly capabilities necessary for a strong positive mental tied to survival and the necessity of providing sub- attitude, physical strength and endurance and sistence for your family largely through physical capabilities in dealing with life’s challenges. labor. In their famous 1946 ethnography on “the In an e-mail exchange, Bradley Begaye2 translated Navaho,” Kluckhohn and Leighton identified this the phrase like this: “t’aa hwo—you only/just you sense of so-called industriousness as “health and aji’teego—have to be/it has to be/your actions/take strength are perhaps the best of the good things of initiative/make it happen/personalized to self.” In life for The People [Navajo]. If you aren’t healthy, other words, “Only you are responsible for your state you can’t work; if you don’t work, you’ll starve” of being. The phrase is idiomatic,” he told me. (Kluckhohn and Leighton 1974, 299). In 2013, a “Ajit’eego” relies on the context of the conversation. sixty-year-old coal worker I interviewed (CW2) At’eego is close to “the way something is. If you emphasized how coal work reflects values his parents want to lecture someone about it … ’aa hwo and grandparents taught him as a child. He said in anit’eego ei biigha—if you want to succeed, it has to his second language, English, “We are doing as we be you.” Another informant wrote to me, “Just to let were told. We get up early in the morning and come you know I disagree with the translation of many back and we bought just a little bit of progress.” things—such as t’aahwo’ajit’eego. In my interpret- The meaning of t’
a
a hwo ‘
at’
eego is rooted in ation it would be ‘only you determine your state of ‘
at’
eego, translated to “for being” as in t’
a
a b
ıh
ı being’ instead of ‘it’s up to you’ and all the other ‘
at’
eego k’ad ‘aw
aalya sid
a or “He has himself to translations.” T’
a
a hwo ‘
at’
eego is often described as blame for being in jail.” The phrase t’
a
a hwo ‘
at’
eego something that comes from the past when Navajo is popular in Navajo and used regularly in conversa- people relied mainly on sheep for subsistence. In tions about self-reliance. For example, the popular rooting the source of t’
a
a hwo ‘
at’
eego in “elders,” footrace series, “Just Move It,” held during the sum- the Navajo Nation’s Supreme Court dates its origin mer months across the reservation to combat obesity into the past. Fundamentally the history of t’
a
a hwo and diabetes, uses a variation of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego as ‘
at’
eego is linked to survival on the land prior to the the slogan for the run. Race organizers translate it to introduction of capitalist relations in the U.S. mean, “It’s up to you.” In the 2012 State of the Southwest. Although the notion was born in the Nation address, former Navajo Nation Vice context of a subsistence economy, it is now applied President Rex Lee Jim referred to t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego within regimes of wage labor. to reiterate the importance of Navajo people taking For most people in the Kayenta area, the first personal responsibility for their livelihoods. He said, wage labor work came in the form of uranium min- “I wanted to encourage Navajos to take responsibil- ing in the 1940s and 1950s. Uranium mining left a ity for their own actions and their own future.” terrible and tragic legacy across the Navajo Nation (Navajo Nation Supreme Court Opinion SC-CV-40- (Brugge, Benally, and Yazzie-Lewis 2006; Voyles 07, 18). In another example, “returning to the core 2015). The mines were crude and irresponsibly values of t’a
a
’ hwo
a
ji
t’ e
ego,” the Navajo Nation administered (Eichstaedt 1994). Mining companies Program for Self Reliance, “The NNDSR applies the abandoned many of these sites. One of the coal Navajo teachings of the concept of t’a
a
’ hwo
a
ji
t’ workers I interviewed learned the value of mining e
ego to empower Customers to take personal respon- from his father, who labored in these uranium sibility for themselves and their families” (Navajo mines in the 1940s and 1950s. By the time he Nation Department for Self Reliance 2018). In started work at the Kayenta Mine in the 1970s, the 2009, Chief Justice of the Navajo Nation Supreme negative health effects on his father had developed 78 Curley into cancer. Workers who had never smoked sud- doing meaningful work near one’s home. As one denly developed lung cancers years after they had coal worker said to me: ended their participation in mining. It was later I have lived the mining environment all of my life. It learned that the mines were poorly insulated and was the mineral that helped me from childhood to the workers were not provided protective masks high school. I’m accustomed to it. I do know the value while mining (Eichstaedt 1994). Despite these to the family, my mom and dad when they were alive, negative health effects on a previous generation, and I was raised as a miner. And me again, I raised my young Navajo men still eagerly applied for employ- family from coal mining. Uranium to coal mining, it ment at the new coal mines in the 1960s and has benefited our people. And it is very benefiting to 1970s, often right out of high school. With little be near or live on our own soil. Take as the minerals formal education and even less opportunity, coal are being discovered, near our hometown. We don’t mine employment was seen as a way to provide for have to live somewhere else. (CW1) their families and fulfill their home obligations. For the men I interviewed, their masculinity was The mines opened shortly after the Vietnam War defined in providing for one’s family, both nuclear when many Navajo veterans returned from the war and extended. This was how the coal industry, looking for work. although clearly an environmental and health risk to With the expansion of capitalism into the region, miners and members of the community, quickly Navajo subsistence attitudes toward work did not embedded itself in the Navajo working-class econ- suddenly disappear and were not simply replaced by omy. Although the work displaced families who capitalist ideologies of individualism, “the Protestant lived on or near the mine site and contributed to work ethic” (cf. Littlefield and Knack 1996; Weber environmental problems in the area, many (not all) 2002). Rather, alternative and preexisting ideas of who sought and gained employment in the industry work were repurposed and redeployed in this chang- came to believe that the benefits of providing a ing environment. In the case of Navajo men, phys- good living for themselves and resources for their ical labor for survival, perceived as “hard” work, was families outweighed environmental and health con- reemphasized: chopping firewood, building corrals, sequences. R. R. Scott (2010; R. R. Scott and diverting water runoffs to flood fields. These kinds of Bennett 2015) identified a similar tendency among physical labor became tied to ideas of Navajo mascu- coal workers in West Virginia. In one interview, linity and maintaining connections with ancestral Scott talked to a community member whose town land (Lee 2013; Innes and Anderson 2015). was destroyed through the controversial mining Eventually, seasonal employment in non-Native technique of mountaintop removal. The interviewee industrial agriculture, rail, road, and housing con- acknowledged that coal displaced her family and struction drew Navajo men away from the household obliterated generations of family history tied to the economy for months at a time (O’Neill 1999, 2005; land, but it also provided the men with jobs and Hosmer, O’Neill, and Fixico 2004). This economy sources of livelihood. Faced with the destruction of further intensified gendered divisions of labor. her family’s land, the interviewee instead focused on Women took responsibility for subsistence agricul- the livelihood that coal brought to families (R. R. ture, herding sheep, weaving rugs, and other local Scott 2010, 99). A young woman who grew up in forms of industriousness as men traveled in labor Kayenta, but not in a coal mining family, told me camps or worked far away from home (Adams and that the children of coal workers were the ones who Ruffing 1977; M’Closkey 2008; McCallum 2014). had new shoes and nice backpacks (KR14). Two One can interpret this evidence of Navajo as a other interviewees, whose fathers were coal workers, primitive form of accumulation (Bush 2005, 2014, told me that the revenues from coal work were an cf. Pasternak 2017, 73), but Navajo people have important part of their household income when they retained a strong sense of place that is rooted in were growing up (KR10 and KR11). Although they their traditional homelands and have resisted mov- had questions about the industry, they understood ing into towns and cities. They have worked on and emphasized the importance of it for their development strategies that will bring industry into parents and their parents’ generation. For some the reservation. Although not part of the formal def- Navajo people, dressing nicely in new clothes was a inition of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego, for some, it implies sign of a good work ethic (KR14). New clothes and  T’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 79 trucks were interpreted as the result of hard work. The coal worker justified his work through t’
a
a hw
o Most of the children of mine workers explained that aj
ı t’
eego and recognized that the rest of the commu- even when they disagree with the coal economy, nity does not always support coal work. He went on they respect their parents’ work and the material to criticize what he described as a lackluster response security it brought them. To have a job, regardless of from the Navajo Nation Council and the work of the circumstances, meant that you were providing Navajo environmentalists in challenging the coal for yourself and your family. industry. His statement is further proof of the need On the other hand, wealth can be interpreted as to disaggregate Navajo claims and not assume or the outcome of corruption and bad character. Not all imply a uniform, ontological difference as the main work is viewed favorably in traditional Navajo ideas of substance of indigenous frameworks. For my inform- labor, and the opposite of t’
a
a hwo ‘
at’
eego are accusa- ant, coal was primarily a political question. Other tions of cheating, dishonesty, or sometimes even witch- informants who lived in the community disagreed craft (Kluckhohn 1944; Kluckhohn and Leighton with the workers’ understanding that t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı 1946). Today, charges of corruption and laziness are t’
eego supports coal. They emphasized traditional life- rampant in Navajo political discourse (Lee 2017). The styles, such as sheep herding and farming. What dis- tinguishes their perspectives from those of coal Navajo tribal government has been restructured several workers is both positionality and organizational times in the last forty years mainly as a response to infrastructures. For coal workers, not only are they these perceptions (Wilkins 2002, 2013b). A Navajo materially invested in coal production but they are coal worker characterized how he felt about council socially connected in ways historically new for delegates like this: “What the Council doesn’t realize is Navajo people, through the collectivizing edifice of that they are the problem.” Sarcastically imitating a worker’s union. Conversely, Navajo environmental council delegates, he continued: organizations and tribal officials have their own “Let’s go take a break, let’s go to the Shalimar Inn, structures that amplify different narratives on coal. let’s go have a beer.” By the time they come back they In the next section, I argue that the coal worker’s are too drunk to do anything. And then they were too union transforms t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego into a moral busy playing around with their girlfriends. That’s what economy of coal. it is. That’s what this council is. They are always fighting because somebody went and touched somebody’s girlfriend. Unions and the Production of Moral I later asked a council delegate about this perception Economy of Navajo Coal Workers that council delegates party and do not take the The role of Navajo labor in collectivizing the voice needs of coal workers seriously. The delegate said of coal workers was critical in translating ideas of t'aa that it was the coal workers who were well off and hwo aji t'eego, from a maxim of subsistence to one demanding too much. He said that he sees them that supports coal development in the reservation. driving around in brand new trucks. Anticipating The United Mine Workers Local 1924 maintains its this, the coal worker said: own building and union hall in Kayenta, a separate political space from the rest of the community where They would not listen to the workers because I heard it conducts meetings. The union maintains a hier- one of the council members say, “All they do is drive archy of paid staff who officially represent the work- dualeys and four-door trucks.” Already they are prejudiced because we are practicing what our great- ers. Most importantly, with its monetary resources, it grandmas and great-grandpas said, t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego, it can afford to charter buses for mine workers to travel is going to be up to you to be something. We are not from Kayenta to the tribal headquarters in Window practicing what those councilmen over there are doing, Rock or to Phoenix to advocate for coal. The union just sitting around and going to bars. Can I have some sponsored these mobilizations in 2013 and again in discretionary funds? No. We are doing what we are 2018. As mentioned earlier, I witnessed one such told. T’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego. Get up in the morning and mobilization in April 2013, where I conversed with make some money. Good things will come to you. We dozens of Navajo coal workers as they petitioned the get up early in the morning come back, we brought Navajo Nation Council to renew the lease for the just a little bit of progress. (CW2) NGS between the tribe and the SRP. From what I 80 Curley observed, this was the crucial process in elevating t’
a
a has strongly affected Navajo labor relations with hw
o aj
ı t’
eego into an ideological claim about how unions and federal agencies” (39). Navajo workers and what should be done with tribal resources based understand the exploitive nature of coal work. on expectations of the state (Navajo tribal govern- Although they support the industry, they are wary of ment). The union was instrumental in this process. It the companies. One interviewee said that the union collectivized resources among workers and became an helped preserve job security and created safer work- official voice for them. In a letter dated 28 February ing environments. Another interviewee told me: 2013, the United Mine Workers of America I grew up with the idea that union is bad. White collar (UMWA) wrote to the Navajo Nation Council workers and family. My dad was against unions. (But) I Speaker Johnny Naize, “We, the members of the am a true blue union guy. Different companies that United Mine Workers Local 1924 for the Kayenta I’ve worked for, there are a lot of grievances and the Mine Complex, believe that the proposed lease company will stand behind you. Just look at the amendment legislation for the Navajo Generating teachers, if there was no union then teachers would be Station is in the best interest of the Navajo people.” fired left and right. Something like that be your The lease would: “train … our newer generation so mouthpiece. And I believe it. (CW2) they can become miners to support their families, The work at the mine is grueling and wages are paid provide … a college education of their children,” hourly. Peabody Coal likes to highlight the number and restore lands “for livestock and wildlife habitat in of Navajo employees it employs at the mine, but addition cultural plant collection, which enables us to very few of them are salaried. Most of the employees practice our cultural ways.” with salaries are “company men,” who are non- Unions are not a common organization in reserva- Navajo and who live outside of the reservation. The tion communities, and tribal governments continue contrast between the salaried staff and workers at to have ambivalent relationships with them. Today, the mine could not be starker. Local 1924 is one of two coal unions that operate in The union helps to alleviate this difference the reservation. The Union of Operating Engineers between salaried and hourly employees and acts as Local 953 represents the workers at the recently an important mediator between the Navajo people bought Navajo Mine on the eastern end of the reser- and the company (CW1). This organization is not vation. Originally, there were two chapters of the formally part of the tribal government, corporation, UMWA on Black Mesa, but Local 1620 closed or community. It translates ethos of working-class when the Black Mesa Mine shut down in 2006. culture into the Navajo context and informs Navajo Historically, tribal leaders have understood unions as coal workers that they have working rights against threats to tribal sovereignty (Robbins 1978; O’Neill the mining corporation, Peabody Coal. 2005; Kamper 2010). In 1958, the Navajo Nation For more than forty years, the union has helped Council passed a resolution banning unions in the translate working-class culture into the cultural con- reservation (Robbins 1978). In 1960, the Navajo text of the Navajo Nation. An interviewee told me Nation challenged the AFL-CIO’s right to organize that he felt that the union was a good thing and that under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, it improved the conditions of workers since he started claiming that treaty rights give tribes plenary power there in the mid-1970s. He said, “When we first in their own lands. The following year, however, a joined the union that was the only way to get a good U.S. District Court nullified the tribe’s right to ban wage scale and the union helped us a lot.” He contin- unions and said that only Congress has authority ued, “They helped secure jobs through the bidding over labor relations in reservations (O’Neill 2005). process,” a process that ensures that workers with Afterward, tribal officials adopted a more pragmatic senior rank get the jobs and shifts they want. This view toward unions, what Kamper (2010) called bidding procedure was won through union contracts “pragmatic unionism” (101). Today tribal officials and not something Peabody Coal used prior to the and community members see them as ways to gain union. “We had that Indian preference and monetary more rights for Navajo workers. As Robbins (1978) wise and also health wise. We are the only union that wrote, “although the economic impacts of energy offers 100 percent health benefits.” Union members developments are depressingly slight, and even meet twice a month to discuss their grievances and harmful, the introduction of huge energy projects ongoing developments at the mine. During these  T’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 81 meetings, Navajo coal workers communicate, coordin- families. In my interviews, their points were remark- ate, and elect “officers” to represent them in official ably consistent and often emphasized that the money contract negotiations with the company. They discuss they earned through coal work paid for school fees wages, health benefits, shifts, and seniority. Through and kept them rooted on the land. In these acts, the union, workers are able to communicate their Navajo coal workers forge a collective folk ideology expectations of the Navajo tribal government effect- to demand the continuation of the Navajo coal ively. They expect that the tribe will support policies industry. This ideology is produced and promoted in that will continue coal mining and preserve their live- political mobilizations. Therefore, the phrase t’
a
a lihood. Navajo coal workers translate values of hard hw
o aj
ı t’
eego elevates a unique ethic among Navajo work that is part of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego into a moral coal workers into a larger idiom of energy politics economy of coal that demands a right to livelihood. within the Navajo Nation. Not all Navajo people Some of my interviewees had strong criticisms of would agree with this interpretation of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı the union. As Gaventa (1982) showed in his classic t’
eego. It is contextual and contingent. This is why study, coal unions become a power unto themselves many Navajo people find themselves in disagreement and this was my interviewee’s point. He said, “I’ve with the perspective of Navajo coal workers and seen documents of overstaffing at the Union Hall. their interpretations of historic Navajo values of People are sleeping and drinking on the job.” Others hard work. Navajo environmental organizers and felt that the seniority system reduces opportunities for activists, in particular, hold radically different views younger employees. Despite grounded criticism, the on these same values (cf. Powell and Curley 2008; union still fosters a sense of solidarity among workers Powell 2015). The deployment of an identity, as who share the same occupation risks. It produces an coal workers, is a momentary political claim based identity among Navajo laborers that is separate from on valuing hard labor, fulfilling a sense of livelihood, the coal company and the tribal government. For and staying close to home for work. The union many Navajo coal workers, this sense of collectivity organization provides Navajo coal workers with the only exists during contentious political times, such as space and leverage to develop this thinking and the renewal of a coal lease or contract between the articulate an ideological claim about the meaning of union and the company. At other times, though, this coal and work in their lives. solidarity is simply nonexistent, and each worker slips Without union support and resources, the moral back into his or her mundane and labor-intensive economy of Navajo coal workers might not exist. work routine. As Brubaker noted, identity in groups is Similar to earlier works on moral economy, it was a not a permanent category but something that happens loose expression from a crowd about how society’s in a particular context to address a limited set of resources should be distributed. There are implica- questions or issues. For the Navajo coal worker, soli- tions of fairness, justice, and rights. It is not always darity and ideological understanding of the role of based on notions of subsistence, but in this case, “coal workers” in Navajo development, U.S. modern- ideas of work, livelihood, and survival from an early ization, and, in some instances, expressions of U.S. time in Navajo history became crucial in the deploy- nationalism emerge during consequential political ment of demands to the (Navajo) state. Because it is decisions such as the lease renewal but will disappear a particular iteration of Navajo values and identity, into the background once this question is over or this moral economy demands a renewal of the resolved (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Brubaker 2004). Navajo coal economy as a paternalistic model of For Navajo coal workers, union-sponsored mobili- development in the region. Coal workers believe zations reinforced this temporary sense of class iden- that their labor built the Navajo Nation and tity and group belonging. In 2013, workers came improved overall conditions of life, providing power together and demanded rights from the state. Their for electricity, jobs for families, money for school, mobilization built on the subsistence ethic of t’
a
a and revenues for the tribal government. For this rea- hw
o aj
ı t’
eego and created an ideological moral econ- son, there is a sense of indignation at the tribe’s omy of Navajo coal workers, evident in the preced- wavering over lease contracts, even if the terms are ing statements. These workers provided overlapping unfavorable to the tribe. Navajo coal workers recog- and largely consistent descriptions about coal work nize that if the lease fails and the mine closes, their as a source of livelihood and critical income for their way of life is forever gone. 82 Curley Discussion and Conclusion the land that is rooted ironically in subsistence liveli- hoods. This benefits our understanding of Navajo Navajo coal work is more complicated than cate- people’s view of the environment and “development” gories of employment and modernization; depend- and their participation in capital-intensive industries ency and underdevelopment; or even environmental and economies. In this instance, the moral economy damage, risk, and politics of “recognition,” liber- of Navajo coal workers is produced in the particular ation, or resurgence. Coal work has a social life that conditions of union activism. produces complicated relationships to the industry in The geography of colonial relations between the a capitalist economy. The mobilization in 2013 of United States, the State of Arizona, and the Navajo Navajo coal workers for a power plant lease exten- Nation dictate where coal activism occurs: backroom sion was an expression of their moral economy, a negotiations in Phoenix, public mobilization of collectively held ideological claim about the proper workers inside and outside of the Navajo Nation, or order and distribution of resources within the lobbying in Washington, DC. This activism at tribal, Navajo Nation. In this article, I traced the produc- state, and federal levels signals the tightening of tion of moral economies for Navajo coal in relation “entanglement” of the Navajo people and their gov- to the organizational structure, resources, and sense erning institutions into colonial capitalism. Such of belonging that the union provides. I argued that activism reveals how the Navajo Nation is spatially the contemporary moral economy shared by many integrated into regional energy economies and polit- Navajo coal workers is rooted in the subsistence ical structures. With the decline of coal in recent ethic of t’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego, which is an expression of years, this integration is in flux and subject to hard work and maintaining one’s livelihood on change in radical and unpredictable ways, a shifting ancestral lands. I showed how this ethic predates the political economy that triggers public displays of coal economy and is not uniformly interpreted across moral economies. The lesson of a particular class of the reservation but instead highlighted and height- Navajo workers and their multiple decades of labor ened in coal-producing communities like Kayenta. in the Navajo coal economy yields critical insight Such a simple insight is sometimes lost in scholar- into how we understand extractive industries and ship on indigenous peoples when a focus on onto- indigenous geographies today. The moral economy logical difference is featured. of Navajo coal workers not only helps us to under- Methodologically, anticipating internal contest- stand the pressures of extractive industries on tribal ation and centering research and analysis on groups lands, but it gives us a way to anticipate its social of actors and their relative relation to coal breaks consequences of both booms and busts. In his sem- apart what might become homogenizing assumptions inal paper “The Making of the English Working of Navajo cultural values. This case study demon- Class,” Thompson (1966) wrote about the legacies strates that at times it becomes necessary to under- of gone but not forgotten social classes: stand and account for competing internal sentiments on questions of a development project. Studies on Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own extractive industries within the Navajo Nation focus experience; and if they were casualties of history, they too broadly on the collective understandings of indi- remain, condemned, in their own lives as casualties. Our genous peoples as objects of analysis, such as claiming only criterion of judgment should not be whether or not to display “Navajo” attitudes toward the environment, a man’s actions are justified in the light of subsequent leaning toward ideas of how they change over time evolution. … In some lost causes we may find the cure within the community (temporal) and not how they to social evils which we have yet to cure. (13) are internally contested, frictional, and spatial. This Or as one coal worker put it: scholarship misses the contestation of coal between Navajo actors and relative to their governing institu- I would say that it gave me a good life, but there are tions. Not only is coal contested and complicated times when you just felt like walking away from it. That was the source of income. That’s the only thing within the Navajo Nation but the terms of this com- that I knew was to mine. … I did my job well and I plication and contestation are unique to the social was praised for it. So it was good and bad. (CW1) and political actors involved. For Navajo coal workers and many members of their community, coal work is For the moral economy of Navajo coal workers, if an expression of a kind of labor and relationship to their cause is lost and their industry forever in decline,  T’
a
a hw
o aj
ı t’
eego and the Moral Economy of Navajo Coal Workers 83 their experience and collective understandings as a American studies. Today, indigenous scholars avoid particular deployment of indigenous identity will citing him because of his false identification as Native American and some disagreement with remain in our memories and tell us something about conclusions in his scholarship. I am citing his work the history and structuring of federal–tribal, indige- here not to confirm his analysis but to include it as nous–settler relations. Their moral frameworks persist. influential work during this time. It is unfortunate that their voices are largely absent 2. This is a pseudonym. from scholarship on extraction in Indian country. They are the ones who chose to work in these mines References and must bear much of its personal costs, from black lung, to work injuries, to lost time with family. It is a Aberle, D. F. 1969. A plan for Navajo economic develop- grueling and dangerous form of work. Navajo coal ment. In Toward economic development for Native American communities: A compendium of papers submit- workers are talked about but never afforded an oppor- ted to the subcommittee on Economy in Government of tunity to speak. In light of recent developments in the the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United Navajo coal industry, we learn that tribes are exploited States, 91st Congress, 1st Session, Joint Committee, in multiple ways through settler-colonial structures and 223–76. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing regional energy development. Not only are their lands Office. Adams, W. Y., and L. T. Ruffing. 1977. Shonto revisited: turned into the economic and energy fuel for the Measures of social and economic change in a Navajo region, accruing reward upwards as in every capitalist community, 1955–1971. American Anthropologist 79 relationship but tribal nations are demoralized and (1):58–83. constantly reminded of their powerlessness. Colonial Ali, S. H. 2003. Mining, the environment, and indigenous development conflicts. Tucson: University of Arizona institutions like SRP perpetuate a sense of inevitability Press. and defeat while pretending to champion the interest Allison, J. R. 2015. Sovereignty for survival: American of tribes. It is a confusing and contradictory relation- energy development and Indian self-Determination. New ship. The legal and political links between tribes and Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ambler, M. 1990. Breaking the iron bonds: Indian control of states, utilities and coal mines, workers and employers energy development. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. demonstrate spatial limitations built on legacies of Anthony Evans, T. J., M. Gamez, and E. Madly. 2013. colonialism. Moral economies are responses to social Navajo Generating Station & Kkayenta Mine: An eco- change that tribal actors intuitively recognize as nomic analysis for the Navajo Nation. Tempe: W. P. unjust. In their production and posture, these folk Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. Barbee, M. 2018. 200 protestors march at Arizona Capitol ideologies take on a life of their own and can diverge to oppose shutdown of Navajo Generating Station. significantly from other grounded perspectives. In the Cronkite News, February 6. Accessed May 24, 2018. end, they gesture toward resolutions of social wrongs https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2018/02/06/hundreds- perpetuated again and again. protesters-march-arizona-capitol-oppose-navajo-gen- erating-station-shut/ Bernstein, H. 2007. Capitalism and moral economy: Land questions in sub-Saharan Africa. In Conference on Acknowledgements poverty and capital, ed. Global Poverty Research Group and Brooks World Poverty Institute, 2–4. The author thanks the article’s undisclosed Manchester, UK: University of Manchester. reviewers and editor James McCarthy for their feed- Booth, W. J. 1994. On the idea of the moral economy. back, critiques, and support. American Political Science Review 88 (3):653–67. Boutet, J.-S. 2014. Opening Ungava to industry: A decen- tering approach to indigenous history in subarctic Qu
ebec, 1937–54. Cultural Geographies 21 (1):79–97. ORCID Brubaker, R. 2004. Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Andrew Curley http://orcid.org/0000-0002- Brubaker, R., and F. Cooper. 2000. Beyond identity. 7392-3565 Theory and Society 29 (1):1–47. Brugge, D., T. Benally, and E. Yazzie-Lewis. 2006. The Navajo people and uranium mining. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Notes Bush, C. M. 2005. Reconsidering incorporation: Uneven histories of capitalist expansion and encroachment, 1. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ward Churchill Native America. Studies in Political Economy 76 was a well-known and cited scholar in Native (1):83–109.