Press Release		For Immediate Release

Honor the Earth Concert in Flagstaff Calls for Safe Energy on Native Lands

On Tuesday night, May 22nd, the Grammy Award winning folk-rock duo, Indigo Girls (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers), will take the stage at the Pine Mountain Amphitheater in Flagstaff for a special night of music with a message. The concert, entitled Honor the Earth, is a benefit designed to lend support to the Just Transition Coalition and their work to herald in a new, safe energy economy, one based on the vast renewable energy potential of Native lands.

The Indigo Girls - Honor the Earth concert will start at 7:00 PM, with doors at 6:00 PM. The acclaimed world-beat band Sonaya and the People’s Crew will open the show. Tickets are on sale now at www.pinemountainamphitheater.com and Rainbow’s End. To charge by phone, call 505.368.2490. Ticket prices range from $28.00 to $35.00, with preferred seating and a meet and greet with talent costing $100.00.

“ We are excited to come and play in the Southwest - it's been too long. The grassroots organizing in this region is compelling and inspiring. In the midst of such a destructive energy paradigm, Native communities are working to affect positive change and provide an alternative,” said Indigo Girl Amy Ray. “We understand that it will take all of us to fix the bind we are in. Not only do we want to do away with dirty forms of energy that exploit the land and its peoples, but also more than anything, we want to support a new plan that creates a vital economy for this region based on clean, renewable energy.”

“ The tremendous work of the Just Transition Coalition to change the dynamics of energy development away from a reliance on fossil fuels and towards a renewable future offers a vital and positive vision for all of Indian country, and all of America,” said Winona LaDuke, Director of the Native environmental group Honor the Earth, which is sponsoring the concert.

The Just Transition Coalition emerged as a response to the closure of the Laughlin, Nevada Mohave Generating Station, dubbed the dirtiest coal plant in the west. In 1999, the Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club and other groups filed a lawsuit against Mohave’s primary owner, Southern California Edison (SCE), for Clean Air Act violations. That lawsuit resulted in a decree for SCE to retrofit Mohave or shut down by the end of 2005. The plant closed.

Navajo and Hopi communities have been hit hard economically by Mohave’s closure due to lost coal and water royalties, and lost jobs. The Just Transition Coalition’s plan is to replace lost revenues and employment by developing reservation-based renewable energy financed by pollution credits from Mohave’s closure.

When Mohave shut down, the plant stopped emitting over 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxide a year. Mohave owners can sell these allowances as pollution credits to other utilities that need them. Last year, because of the Just Transition Coalition’s work, the California Public Utility Commission required Southern California Edison to establish a separate account to track revenues from the sale of Mohave sulfur credits, which are estimated to be $20 million a year.

The Just Transition Coalition’s plan gives the California Public Utilities Commission an opportunity to restore some justice to the Navajo and Hopi communities and, at the same time, help California meet its renewable energy portfolio through the purchase of clean, tribally-produced energy.

For decades, cheap electricity for Californians came at the expense of Navajo and Hopi people, water and land. Mohave sourced all of its coal from the Peabody mine at Black Mesa. Peabody drew over 3 million gallons of water a day from the Navajo aquifer, which runs below Black Mesa, in order to pump coal through a 273-mile slurry that fed Mohave. As a result, wells and ancient springs have run dry, and cracks and fissures have appeared across Black Mesa, threatening the millennium old cultures of the Hopi and Dine that depend so heavily upon the aquifer for religious, cultural and day-to-day use.

“Energy does not have to come at the expense of a people’s ecosystem and culture,” LaDuke said, referring to the adverse impacts of energy exploitation on Navajo and Hopi communities. “We have a choice. We can either combust ourselves into oblivion or invest in renewable technologies that are culturally-based and sustainable.”

Funding from the Indigo Girls benefit concert will specifically support grassroots Native groups in the Just Transition Coalition, such as the Black Mesa Water Coalition, a group of young Navajo and Hopi activists. Enei Begaye, Executive Director of Black Mesa Water Coalition, states, “We have been a part of the Just Transition Campaign from the beginning because we believe this is a real plan for building wind and solar energy projects that will benefit Navajo and Hopi people as well as all other people around us. With this plan, our local tribal communities are leading the nation in developing a sustainable future!”

Outside of Black Mesa Water Coalition, other Just Transition members include Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, Native Movement, Indigenous Environmental Network, To-Nizhoni Ani, Apollo Alliance, and Honor the Earth.

Indigo Girls will perform a show Monday night, May 21, at the Phil L. Thomas Performing Arts Center in Shiprock to benefit Navajo groups working to stop the Desert Rock coal plant.

For More Information:
Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth, 612-879-7529 or info@honorearth.org
For Talent Interviews:
Becky Bodonyi, 404-377-9900 or becky.rcam@gmail.com
For Just Transition Coalition:
Andy Bessler, 928-774-6103 or andy.bessler@sierraclub.org

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