On Horseback, Oxfam Partner Carries Environmental Message: 'Work With Us'
25 July 2005
Water is just one of the environmental concerns Oxfam partners brought to a rally at the beginning of the Navajo Nation's summer council session.
Nicole Horseherder arrived at the Navajo Nation Tribal Council chambers in the most respectful way she knew of—on the back of a horse. So did about 50 others who joined a crowd of activists at Window Rock, Ariz., with a single goal in mind: to bring attention to the environmental degradation of their homeland caused by mining operations that help feed the country’s insatiable appetite for energy.
The alliance of grassroots organizations, including several Oxfam partners, made their case at a rally that marked the beginning of the Navajo Tribal Summer Council Session in mid-July. Their objective was to encourage the council to set a new direction for energy and economic development on the Navajo reservation.
But for Horseherder, the founder of the four-year-old To Nizhoni Ani environmental group, the rally was significant in another way, too. It marked a turning point for her organization, thanks to Oxfam’s support.
“For the first time, we’ve been able to stick our hands in our own pocket and buy gas for people who pulled their trailers over the bumpy roads (to reach the rally),” said Horseherder. “Oxfam is enabling us to bring people together.”
To Nizhoni Ani—which means “beautiful water speaks”—is one of Oxfam’s newest partners. The group is using a grant from Oxfam to help fund travel to a series of community meetings in the rural region in which it works. It can take up to an hour to drive 20 miles on the rough roads. The area has limited access to media and communications, and community meetings are the central way the organization shares information with far-flung constituents.
Through presentations in Diné, the language of the Navajo, To Nizhoni Ani works to educate local people about the importance of protecting water resources in Black Mesa. A high plateau that covers about 5,400 square miles in northern Arizona, Black Mesa is home to both Navajo and Hopi people. Underneath this giant landmass lies the Navajo Aquifer, the source of water for all domestic and agricultural uses among residents of the Black Mesa region.
Use of Aquifer Questioned
In 1965, Peabody Energy drilled eight wells into the Navajo Aquifer to pump out water for use in a coal slurry line. For more than 30 years, the company has been strip mining on Black Mesa, extracting about five million tons of coal a year. Using 165,000 gallons of water every hour, Peabody shoots the coal through a pipeline to the Mohave generating station 273 miles away in Nevada. There, it’s burned to make electricity for cities in Nevada and California.
Over time, people in the Black Mesa region began to notice changes in their environment—changes they trace back to the coal slurry’s slow draining of the aquifer. Many of the springs and seeps they had relied on for centuries began to dry up. In the last 10 years, big holes and cracks have appeared in the ground—evidence, they say, that the groundwater is dropping.
To Nizhoni Ani and another Oxfam partner, Black Mesa Trust, want to stop the industrial related water withdrawals from the aquifer. But the fate of that resource is just one of the environmental issues that brought those two groups, and others, to the rally in mid-July.
Protesters were also concerned about high asthma and cancer rates in the area of a proposed new coal-fired power plant, known as Desert Rock, in northwestern New Mexico. The region already has two generating stations, and the addition of a third has alarmed some area residents, though it has the support of the Diné Power Authority, an arm of the Navajo Nation. The project would require a long-term land lease with the Navajo Nation and approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“After 100 years of destructive energy development, you’d think our Navajo Nation government would figure it out,” said Anna Frazier community coordinator for Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE), an Oxfam partner that sent participants to the rally. “These energy projects never work as promised. They don’t bring many jobs. They don’t bring prosperity. They are not helping our people. They are killing us.”
Searching for Solutions
Horseherder and other riders made the four-day trek to Window Rock to carry their message in the clearest way they could to the Navajo Nation government.
“This ride-in was making a statement,” said Horseherder. “We’re trying to say work with us and help us find a solution that’s workable to us.”
Peabody Energy maintains that its Black Mesa and Kayenta mines are a prime source of income for the Navajo and Hopi communities. Its mining operations provide about 650 jobs in an area where unemployment has inched above 50 percent. Each year, mining produces more than $50 million in royalties, taxes, and other payments. Together they fund about 21 percent of the Navajo Nation’s general budget as well as 65 percent of the Hopi Tribe’s budget.
But those benefits come with a price, say some activists.
“All the Navajo Nation council wants is economic development—to bring revenues into our Navajo Nation government,” said Frazier. “We’re saying economic development like coal mining and power plants uses a lot of natural resources like water. There’s a lot of environmental devastation.”
Added Lori Goodman, a member of Diné CARE, “We’re failing our people by not thinking out of the box as far as looking into alternative energy. Solar and wind power: We need to look into those for jobs. It’s a quick, easy fix to come onto the Navajo reservation for coal.”
A New Source of Energy: the Community
Whatever the outcome of the rally, one thing was very clear to Goodman. The event itself represented something of a breakthrough for reservation activists.
“This is the first time that reservation communities came together to learn and meet each other and to say we’re all being impacted. This was the people’s agenda,” said Goodman.
“It says our groups are going to get stronger,” said Horseherder, reflecting on the rally. “And the Navajo Nation is going to have to find a way to work with us.”
During the rally there was talk of organizing a day-long conference to strategize ways for this newly energized community of activists to move forward with its concerns about energy exploration and exploitation.
“There’s a sense of people thinking in the southwest (that) we’re sitting on all these resources. We have the ability to change the tide (and move) toward the use of alternative energy sources,” said Goodman.
