On the weekend of May 15, between two and three hundred people gathered and camped on the south side of Red Butte in the Kaibab National Forest in Coconino County, Arizona, about fifteen miles south of the Grand Canyon, to oppose the nearby Pinyon Plain uranium mine. During a rally on Sunday afternoon, which was autonomously organized to coincide with the camp-out, protesters blockaded a hauling truck headed toward the mine to be filled with uranium Monday morning. Protesters blockaded the truck for nearly an hour, piling rocks and logs under it, disabling its tires, spray painting its cab and trailer, and damaging it so badly that it later needed to be towed away.
Red Butte, or Wii'i Gdwiisa in the Havasupai language, is the birthplace of the Havasupai people, who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and consider Red Butte a sacred ceremonial site. The Havasupai have long opposed uranium extraction on their sacred lands, considering it desecration that threatens their survival and their world.
The Pinyon Plain Mine is owned and operated by Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., a Canadian company now based in Denver, Colorado. The highly radioactive uranium is hauled in open trucks across the Navajo Nation by Hammon Trucking. Haul No!--a grassroots campaign that resists uranium extraction, milling, and transportation across Indigenous lands--has long opposed the mine and what they call "nuclear colonialism."
The call to gather was put out by a new campaign called Stop THEM, which opposes transportation, hauling, extraction, and milling of uranium.