Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo
Four mountains marking Navajo Nation boundaries, each a deity.
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For the Navajo, four mountains mark the edges of their nation. Each peak is a deity linked to a specific color and direction, and they are believed to supply essential resources for Navajo life. For decades, uranium mining and other resource extraction have damaged these sacred mountains, harming the environment and the Navajo community.
Quick Facts
- Eastern mountain
- Sisnaajiní (Blanca Peak)
- white
- in south-central Colorado
- Northern mountain
- Dibéntsaa (Hesperus Peak)
- black
- in La Plata Mountains
- Colorado
Facts from the source article.
Geographical location
For the Navajo, mountains are deities with supernatural power. Four sacred mountains mark the cardinal directions of Navajo Country, named in sunwise order and linked to directional colors. Sisnaajiní, or Blanca Peak, is white in the east. Tsoodził, Mount Taylor, is blue in the south.
Doko’oosłííd, the San Francisco Peaks, is yellow in the west. Dibéntsaa, Hesperus Peak, is black in the north. These peaks lie in south-central Colorado; Grants, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; and the La Plata Mountains, Colorado.
Recent controversies
In 1971, Gulf Mineral Resources Corporation purchased property on Mount Taylor and began mining uranium ore in 1980. Above-ground mining and drill-and-blast operations used large quantities of ground water. The New Mexico Environmental Department reported that Gulf dewatered three aquifers through groundwater withdrawal wells installed in the 1970s.
Gulf later merged with Chevron Resources Company, extracting 675,000 tons of uranium ore and leaving 698,000 tons of radioactive tailings on the surface. The Mount Taylor area has several Superfund Sites and is considered one of the most highly polluted sites in the U.S. due to radioactive contamination. In the 1890s, gold and silver mining commenced on Blanca Peak.
More in Religious Places of the Indigenous Peoples of North America
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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