Biography
Klee Benally was a Diné (Navajo) environmental and Indigenous-rights activist, musician (guitarist in the family band Blackfire), and filmmaker from Black Mesa, Arizona, based in Flagstaff. He spent decades in frontline civil disobedience to protect the sacred San Francisco Peaks (Dook'o'oosííd) from Arizona Snowbowl's wastewater-snowmaking, and to oppose uranium and pumice mining on Native land. He was arrested and prosecuted for these actions — including chaining himself to a Snowbowl pipeline excavator in 2011 and facing federal charges in 2012 — and authored a book on Indigenous anarchism, "No Spiritual Surrender." He died December 30, 2023, at age 48.
