Diné CARE

Diné CARE is a Diné (Navajo) activist organization that works on environmental, cultural and social justice campaigns, primarily within the Navajo Nation and the immediately surrounding areas. Diné CARE stands for Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment and helped build the early environmental justice movement in the United States. Their work has included opposing the creation of toxic waste infrastructure, polluting energy infrastructure, industrial-scale logging, advocating for compensation for people impacted by uranium mining and weapons development as well as against business practices that facilitate abuse of alcohol in nearby Gallup.



History
Originally called CARE, the group was founded in 1988 to prevent the construction of a hazardous waste incinerator in the community of Dilkon on the Navajo Nation. CARE's activism also led to the creation of the annual Protecting Mother Earth conferences. The first was held in Dilkon in 1990, funded by Greenpeace and Seventh Generation Fund. The creation of Indigenous Environmental Network came out of the Protecting Mother Earth gatherings in Dilkon, and in 1991, in South Dakota. CARE became Diné CARE at a 1991 meeting in Gallup that brought together activists from the Dilkon anti-incinerator activism with other activism taking place across the Navajo nation including alcohol use in Gallup, oil and gas exploration, uranium mining, logging, and asbestos dumping. Co-founders included Lori Goodman, Leroy Jackson, Adella Begaye, Early Tulley and others. Leroy Jackson, who received death threats in response to his work to reform the logging industry's operations on the Chuska Mountains, died in 1994. Friends, family and colleagues believe he may have been murdered for his activism.