Burnham families fear losing homes, burial grounds to Navajo Mine expansion
Navajo Times | Sharon Chischilly
Gilfred Hogue looks over his family’s land near Burnham, N.M., Saturday afternoon, Oct. 17. Hogue is concerned that the Navajo Mine’s No Name expansion could threaten his family’s homes, burial grounds and livestock grazing areas.
BURNHAM, N.M.
A line of red-orange steel stakes runs along the hills above Gilfred Hogue’s family land in Burnham. He and his nephew, Dáilan Long, say the stakes mark where the Navajo Mine could expand toward their homes.
Beyond the stakes, Dibé Nitsaa, the sacred mountain of the north, rises above a basin of badlands and rounded hills banded in rust, cream and white. Along the horizon, the booms of draglines extend over ridges of black spoil. At a nearby ranch gate, a sign bearing the Navajo Transitional Energy Company’s name warns of blasting and lists the sirens that sound before each detonation.
“I never thought it would affect us, you know, that this is where we’re gonna have to defend this now to our generation,” Hogue said.
On Aug. 31, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement approved NTEC’s No Name permit, covering 11,526 acres, including 9,042 acres of authorized surface disturbance. The federal agency estimates that the area contains approximately 503 million tons of recoverable coal.
To read the full article, please see the Oct. 22, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow