FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Some people hiking through Verde Valley in central Arizona stumble upon a spot that just doesn’t smell the way a piûon-juniper forest should. A strong chemical odor fills the air and there’s a large, wet blotch on the otherwise dry ground. After testing the soil, the U.S. Forest Service determines that somebody […]
Karin Schill
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Missing: another tribal environmentalist
In a case reminiscent of the mysterious death of Navajo activist Leroy Jackson, violence is suspected in the disappearance of an outspoken environmental activist on Arizona’s Gila River Indian Reservation. Fred Walking Badger, who had rallied opposition to pesticide use on the Gila River Reservation, set out to run a brief errand May 21 near […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Navajo-Hopi land compromise is near
HOPI PARTITIONED LANDS, Ariz. – For more than a century, the Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes have been battling over the rights to this desert land. Since 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur set aside reservation land for the Hopis that was already inhabited by Navajos, the issue of who belongs here has soured relations […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Coal firm may pull its straw out of aquifer
MOENKOPI, Ariz. – Hubert Lewis recalls hot summer days when he and other children of this Hopi village would get relief from the cool water in Moenkopi Wash. Moenkopi – which in Hopi means “a place where water flows’ – sits right above one of the few waterways that traverse the arid reservation in northeastern […]