1864, the year which thousands of Navajos were captured by force, then rounded up like cattle to begin what would infamously be known as, The Long Walk. A massive deportation from the Navajos’ ancestral land to a location, hundreds of miles away in New Mexico that couldn’t support life. (Diné: A History of the Navajos) All for sake of mineral wealth, which was rumored that the Navajos’ homeland contained vast amounts of gold and silver. After spending four years searching for gold and silver with no luck, the Navajos were finally allowed to go back, but more problems would later emerge over natural resources. (Diné) Today, the Navajo Reservation stretches across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah; and beneath lies incredible amounts of non-renewable resources, 80 billion pounds of Uranium, 100 million barrels of oil, over 50 billion tons of coal, and 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (Broken Rainbow) Control for these resources is crucial for it could be the gateway towards economic growth or it could be the start of an emotional and fatal path for the Navajo People. So, who should control these resources: the people living there or the people who issued the land? I believe that full jurisdiction over the natural resources should be given to the Navajo Nation and its people, for this land and everything that lies beneath it was given to the…show more content… Rather than point fingers and demand that so and so should be responsible for fixing the problems created in the past, the Navajo Nation created their own Environmental Protection Agency, and launched a five-year plan which goal is to: seal off mines nears residential areas, treat groundwater at mil sites, and increase clean water access to areas, that suffer from water contamination due to
