A Brief History of Mining Reclamation on Diné Bikéyah (The Navajo Nation)

Abstract

A Brief History of Mining Reclamation on Diné Bikéyah traces the emergence and transformation of Diné-led reclamation from the 1970s through the early 2000s. This dissertation argues that mining reclamation on Diné lands was not solely a matter of environmental compliance, but a deeply situated practice of Indigenous governance, moral responsibility, and technical innovation. Drawing from archival documents, site visits, and oral history interviews taken from 2018 to 2025, this study presents an account of how Diné professionals redefined reclamation from within tribal departments and federal programs in two sections. Part one examines the coal reclamation era, focusing on the development of tribal regulatory authority under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), including the founding of the Navajo AML Department (NAMLRD) and UMTRA Programs, detailing how Diné professionals crafted risk classifications, hazard inventory, and engineering plans rooted in both federal and tribal law and priorities. Part two draws on ethnographic data collected in the field and then shifts to explore how Diné reclamation workers approached restoration not only as technical labor, but as moral and spiritual work shaped by ceremonial knowledge, land-based ethics, and the intergenerational burdens of radiation exposure. Through the framework of Critical Reclamation Studies, this dissertation centers the voices of Diné professionals and positions reclamation as a long-term practice at the intersection of science and spirituality, where legal pluralism, healing, and cultural survival are enacted. It calls for looking through the positivist gaze and centering Indigenous law, memory, and spiritual accountability into narratives about federal-tribal interactions on post-extractive landscapes where mine cleanup occurs.