Lighting the West, dividing a tribe

BLACK MESA, Ariz. — Tradition has it that the spiritual forerunners of the Navajo people picked this spot — the high mesa land of the American Southwest — and assured the Navajo they had reached a kind of promised land.

The Diné, or “children of the Holy People,” as the Navajo call themselves, were taught not to stray from the land bracketed by four sacred mountains, where they would never know the earthquakes, tornadoes and other calamities that beset their neighbors. The Navajo scratched out a living from the sparse scrub country and, for centuries, the teaching seemed true enough.

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/navajo-coal