Rena.Babbit.Lane

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Rena Babbitt-Lane

Rena.Babbit.Lane
We live in on top of Black Mesa above Peabody Coal Company’s Black Mesa coal slurry pipeline. A few times it burst and they welded off the pipe contaminating our land and water. I am a medicine woman and hand trembler. Medicine men ask me to gather herbs and prepare it for them. The canyons where most of the herbs are found, the land, and water sources have dried up from Peabody's coal slurry pipeline. The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has dismantled four of the windmills near where we live. I am forced to travel an hour each way over rough dirt roads to get water and it broke the frame of our truck. My grandfather built some of these earth dams but they are filled with sediment. All my children and myself want a home.


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