The fight for an equitable energy economy for the Navajo Nation

On a chilly December morning in northern Arizona, near the town of Page, Nicole Horseherder stood beside a barbed-wire fence, waiting for the smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station to fall. The coal-fired power plant, just a mile away, towered against the backdrop of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a cloudless blue sky.

As they waited, Horseherder, a Diné (Navajo) environmental activist, and her husband, Marshall Johnson, spoke into a phone camera trained on the power plant. They were livestreaming the demolition on Facebook. Horseherder’s hands were nestled in the pockets of her long tan wool jacket, its tassels swaying at her ankles. She and Johnson switched between English and Navajo as they spoke to the tens of thousands of people who had tuned in to watch.