Glenna Begay, Black Mesa Elder,

I have traveled over thousands of miles to be here.

I have very big concerns about the mining. They are digging half a mile from my house. They are clearing the land for digging coal.

They blast the mines, which release many toxins into the air. live right in the mining boundary area. The huge draglines come to dig up the vegetation. It creates a lot of dust that comes to my house and the whole area. It is creating a lot of respiratory problems for our animals and ourselves. We are all suffering form poor health.since the mining started on our area, a lot of my relatives have died off; even miners themselves have been dying of Black Lung and other respiratory problems. It is the mining by Peabody that is killing everything around us.

We want to live and we want the mining to stop. are suffering and having hardship. Everything was good before the mining started. Now the nines are just killing us off. Even our water, our precious water, is going somewhere else, somewhere we don't even know.

We are watching ecological devastation out on our land. Black Mesa. These mines are destroying our land.

They tell us that the land is not ours, and even they they are relocating us. They are the death of our problems.

WE ARE HERE TO PUT A STOP TO THE MINING PRACTICES!