Klee Benally

1975-2023

Early on December 31, 2023, the Diné land defender, organizer, author, and musician Klee Benally passed away at the age of 48. In his memory, we present an interview that we conducted in 2009 with Klee and his siblings in the punk band Blackfire. At that time, they had already been making music together for twenty years.

A dedicated and demanding proponent of Indigenous liberation, Klee fought on a wide range of fronts, emphasizing the importance of both concrete and spiritual forms of resistance and critically exploring the possibility of an Indigenous anarchy.

As the eulogy published by Anarchist Agency recounts,

Klee was living in Flagstaff, Arizona at the time of his passing. He was born October 11, 1975 in Black Mesa and worked nearly all his life at the front lines of struggles to protect Indigenous sacred lands. Klee was a driven organizer with projects such as Indigenous Action Media, Kinlani Mutual Aid, and Indigenous Mutual Aid. He also helped establish Táala Hooghan Infoshop, Protect the Peaks, and Outta Your Backpack Media, and volunteered with Haul No.

Haul No is a campaign against Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon. Land defense struggles were especially important to Klee.

In addition to all this, Klee was a filmmaker and musician. You can view many of Klee’s films here. In addition to his decades in Blackfire, Klee also played in the band Appropriation and recorded various solo projects.

For a glimpse into Klee’s thinking, you could read the interview that Aragorn! conducted with him. It has only been a couple years now since Klee spoke at Aragorn!’s memorial service. It is a grievous tragedy that we have lost two Indigenous anarchists in such a short time, and both of them so young.

Please donate to Klee’s family, the Táala Hooghan infoshop, or Haul No! to honor his memory. You can do so here.

Detritus Books has published a book of Klee’s work, entitled No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred. The first printing has already sold out, but a second printing is in the works. Klee had also just designed and published the game Burn the Fort, receiving the copies in late December 2023.

You can learn more about Klee’s projects here. You can read the eulogy for him in the Navajo Times here.

We locate ourselves in the springs where our ancestor’s footprints have worn a path like an umbilical cord. We know the land and the land knows us. Where and who we are mean the same thing. This is an understanding that is cultivated through generations upon generations of mutuality. This is where our thinking comes from. It is a place where no government exists. Indigenous liberation is the realization of our autonomy and mutuality with all life and the Earth, free from domination, coercion, and exploitation. This is also an anarchist assertion, so we locate a connection.

-Klee Benally, Unknowable: Against an Indigenous Anarchist Theory

From CrimethInc.