The University of Arizona Press
When: April 13, 2023, 1:00 p.m.
Where: Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, Toyota Auditorium, University of Tennessee, 1640 Cumberland Ave., Knoxville, TN
Andrew Curley will speak at the University of Tennessee about his book, Carbon Sovereignty. Curley will discuss his ethnography that documents a 2013 process of lease renewal between the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian tribe in the United States, and the owners of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), the most important coal-fired power plant in Arizona.
Carbon Sovereignty offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy.
