To resist future encroachment the Navajo Nation must resist through non-violent methods as observed in the past. .
The sudden growth of an urbanized Southwest with an unquenchable thirst for energy can be credited to the exploitation of the Navajo Nation (Vice News). Black Mesa, the largest mining operation in North America, provides the bulk of the Southwest energy needs, but coal is a dirty form of energy with the final product is the suffering of local communities. One of the largest and dirtiest power plants; the Four Corners Power Plant, supplies power to New Mexico and Arizona and yet continues to have outdated environmental standards set by the EPA (Vice News). One of the detrimental consequences of these outdated environmental standards is the contamination of water sources throughout the reservation due to unlined toxic pools of waste that dot the landscape adjacent to Black Mesa and The Four Corners Power Plant (Vice News). Recently, Vice, an independent media highlighted that large amounts of mercury and lead were detected in the nearby Chaco River, part of the San Juan Watershed (Vice News). Why is nothing being done about this environmental degradation and the protection of communities?.
This injustice is the product of a half century of structural violence and reinforcement through direct violence. How did this structural violence, which is when "violence exists when some groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc are assumed to have, and in fact do have, more access to goods, resources, and opportunities than other groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc, and this unequal advantage is built into the very social, political and economic systems that govern societies, states and the world." (Johan Galtung, Turning the Tide) come to be? According to the Navajo Nation Bureau of Economic Development, unemployment for the Navajo Nation hovers around 43% and in some areas, according to "environmental health perspectives", unemployment can range as high as 84%.