Some of these ceremonies can no longer be conducted, since the sites have been strip-mined out of existence by coal companies. Some of the people did not find out about the strip-mining until they heard explosions and machinery digging outside their back door. It's a recurring pattern that indigenous people are not even informed of outsiders' plans for their land, much less be consulted. After the traditional Navaho leadership voted 75-0 against a mining lease proposal, the tribal council system was set up using 3 Navaho who agreed to sign. At Big Mountain, Navaho face forced removal from their homes to make way for coal mining, under a law written by a lawyer working for Peabody Coal and passed without the consent of the affected people.
Some electricity is produced by nuclear power.
Worse than that, birth defects among Navaho children are now epidemic. A study found that the level of birth defects there is of greater number and greater severity than that caused by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts combined. These consequences are only from uranium mining and the wastes it generates, so do not include any of the possible damage from nuclear reactor accidents or reactor-generated wastes, about which entire books have been written. The suffering from these birth defects will go on for generation after generation. In recent years there's been an outbreak of uranium mining going on in Canada, and the Native people there are threatened with a replay.