Caretakers versus Exploiters: Impacting Biodiversity in the Age of Humans

Rationale

As long as I can remember, Black Mesa has been the most noticeable land formation at the height of about eight thousand feet at its peak, then gradually sloping down. The mesa is south of my rural town of Kayenta, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation. The four thousand square mile mesa takes the shape of a bear’s claw when viewed from the air. The Dine people call it Dziliziin, meaning Black Mountain. The plateau is not black, but strips of coal are visible in the arroyos and ravines before the mining of this fossil fuel. Since the 1960s and forty years later, the Peabody Coal Company established its rights to mine the land. Peabody planned intensive mining of approximately four thousand acres annually for 35 years to meet its contractual agreement with the owners of the Navajo Generation Station.³ 

The local communities on the Hopi and Navajo Reservation have reaped benefits of the mine’s services, like jobs for both tribes, free coal to keep their homes warm during the winter months, and Peabody Corporation was supporting the town businesses and royalties the tribes. These benefits from the mining company have ceased, and the tribes, communities, and families need to adjust their budgets and tighten their belts to do without profits. Most families will move to the big cities to continue work and to support their families. 

Based on my observation, Kayenta (Dine) and Tuba City (Hopi) were booming communities during the mine operation. Today, the communities rely on the tourism business, the local public and Bureau of Indian Education schools, and the clinic/hospitals. The Kayenta community has about five to six thousand residents. Outlying rural communities like Oljato, Dennehotso, Baby Rocks, Chilchinbeto, Black Mesa, Shonto, and Inscription House come into Kayenta for shopping needs, fast food restaurants, the Black Mesa Theater (movie, before COVID), banking, education and the sports program for their children. 

I have many years of experience working within the Kayenta Unified School District. KUSD has four schools: the ABC preschool, the elementary school (KES), which has kindergarten through fourth grades, the middle school (KMS) grades fifth through eighth and the Monument Valley High School (MVHS) grade ninth through twelfth. Included with the ABC preschool are the Navajo Nation Head Start and the FACE programs for the younger students. There are two Head Start classes and one FACE program within our community to educate the younger students ages three through five years. According to the Kayenta School Board minutes (May 2020), 1,719 students attend KUSD. Included with the student count are the feeder schools within a fifty-mile radius of Kayenta, who have students attending KUSD. The Bureau of Indian Education Schools like Kayenta, Chilchinbeto, Dennehotso, Shonto, and Black Mesa Community are a few of the surrounding schools. 

Many parents within the Kayenta community work at the local business, the clinic/hospital, and schools, to provide for their family needs. The poverty rate among the community is 42.55%.⁴ The poverty rate among those who worked full-time for the past 12 months was 8.20%, part-time was 41.90%, and those that did not work was 52.82%.⁵ These reports show that many families need additional support from the schools like lunches for students during the summer months, the culture center food bank, and other necessities for their education. As a title one school, the district supports and provides other services to families like the school and community internet, laptops for each student, and free online education platforms.  

From years of working in my school district, I know the school has implemented the Inclusion Model and has been using the method for many years. The inclusion model aims to commit to educating each child who enters the classroom regardless of the child’s disability. The child’s support service would come into the school to modify or accommodate the lessons taught for the day while addressing the child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. In addition to Special Education students, the English Language Learner and 504 students are included in the classroom setting. These students need special accommodations, and teachers need to have the training to provide different methods and strategies to assist with specific students who struggle with learning the concepts. 

Besides accommodations, my district has initiatives that provide educational services to students for distance learning. These platforms for online teaching will have teachers teach students. At the same time, my district decided upon the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) scenarios for the coming fall 2020, to prepare for the hybrid model or fully online learning. 

The curriculum unit I am preparing will address fifth-grade students and is adaptable to fourth-grade students as well. As long as I have been teaching, I have heard from other teachers about the lack of basic science knowledge for students when they get to eighth grade. At the eighth-grade level, students take the state science and the NWEA science assessments. Many of these students do not have a strong background in science concepts because they did not receive adequate science instruction during their earlier grade level years. 

Students need to know the standards and need to know the events that are happening within the Dine Nation, in the local communities, and globally. These events, like water scarcity, the closure of the mines, the arid land strip mining, ecological impact, global warming, and climate change, are essential factors our students need to know. This critical and historical information is dire for our children’s knowledge. The knowledge will affect their future choices, help their people, and make a change for a better world.