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Sustainable Empowerment
Renewable Energy and The Navajo Nation
Shonto Begay
To see more of Shonto Begay’s artwork, visit shontogallery.com
Vastness. Endless expanses. With both small and large human imprints on the landscape. Tiny, rickety trailers are
buffeted by incessant winds - off-the-grid satellites unto themselves. In contrast, enormous metal transmission
towers march like an enemy army across the landscape, dwarfing small settlements and structures in their movement
toward urban centers. And at the armies' point of origin, coal-fired power plants rise out of the ground in a manner
mirroring the Navajo Nation's iconic monuments of stone. Given the day, hazy skies hem in the horizons, leaving
Shiprock, the Chuska Mountains and San Francisco Peaks as ghostly figures in the distance.
People here live lightly on the landscape while the heart of an entire mesa is wrenched from the earth. Strip mining
leaves gaping wounds and too little water for the traditional springs to weep silent tears.
The Navajo Nation is a land of juxtapositions: life in concert with the earth and life at odds with it. An incessant
corporate prodding, grasping, wrenching of both people and place, alongside the gentle reach and embrace of family,
clan, community. A land of abundant resources, and a people who lack abundance.
However, in this nation of extremes - amidst the marching metal transmission towers and the off-grid trailers they
dwarf - there is a middle way emerging. It speaks to the promise of a restoration of dignity and hope. It involves a
melding and merging of tradition and technology. It is community empowerment through the creation of power.
The rest of our country has much to learn from the Navajo Nation.
Enei Begaye is a Stanford graduate and the daughter of renowned artist Shonto Begay. She is a girl who became a young
woman in the shadow of Black Mesa, under the reservation-wide cloud of coal mining. She now has little girls of her
own. Begaye is a social and environmental activist, one of a number of Navajo youth who are returning to tradition
even as they seek a new way forward for their people.
Last year, Begaye spearheaded a grass roots effort to create a green jobs framework on the reservation. The Navajo
Nation Green Economy Commission Act of 2009 is the first such tribal initiative in the United States. It seeks to
implement projects in renewable energy, green manufacturing, sustainable agriculture and more. And it endeavors to do
so within the context of traditional tribal values and pursuits.
"The idea of being green is not a new concept, though it was difficult to translate at first," Begaye says. "So much
of every part of life is about being environmentally respectful. We're just reconnecting with it."
In Begaye's hometown of Shonto, this melding of old and new is being put to work with the upstart Shonto Rural
Renewable Energy Company. The locally owned company will be responsible for the installation and maintenance of
solar/wind hybrid generating systems that can power three to four homes - typical of scattered family living areas -
with little environmental impact. No marching transmission lines. No hazy coal emissions. No need to dig out the
heart of a mesa, deplete water resources, or suffer mining-related cancer deaths.
Meanwhile, for more than a decade, Native American Photovoltaics, a nonprofit based out of the Dilkon and Teetso
Chapters of the Navajo Nation, has been working to bring electricity to remote residences throughout these two
chapters. Using standalone PV systems with battery storage, the company has been able to provide power to people who
live far away from transmission lines. The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority has also worked to bring renewable energy
to those living off-the-grid, to people still using flashlights and kerosene lanterns to navigate their mornings and
evenings.
Some of this change is born of financial necessity. Eighteen thousand Navajos still lack electricity, and it is
prohibitively expensive to string miles of transmission lines across empty desertscapes to bring power to a
smattering of homes. However, increasingly, the channel of desire runs deeper than that. Now, it is also about
dignity, empowerment, hope, and respect for homeground and community.
"We can create an economy that will be vibrant and help us move away from some of these really devastating jobs that
we have on the reservation, like coal mining, coal-fired power plants and uranium mining," says Begaye. "And we can
start creating jobs that give some dignity to our people because it respects our culture and it can put food on the
table for our families."
Much of this renewable energy push on the reservation is community-based, locally driven, a true grassroots movement.
People like Begaye travel to many of the Navajo Nation's 110 chapter houses to educate local communities about
renewables, green jobs and what they can do to power and empower themselves. Economic and energy decisions are then
left to the newly educated chapter residents.
Much of America lights its homes unaware of the source and true costs of energy. But the Navajo have seen
firsthand the deleterious effects of coal mining and power on the reservation - socially, economically and
environmentally. Thus, they are now taking the means of production into their own hands, into their own communities,
attempting to make energy system manufacture, maintenance and generation a local endeavor. No need for large outside
corporations that are disconnected from the land and culture. Energy production that has meaning. Energy that is
empowering.
"For over 30 years, our communities have been this battery to the Southwest," explains Begaye. "We didn't just want
to switch from a fossil fuels battery to a solar battery. So a lot of our work has been local, independent, pushing
for communities themselves to decide what kinds of jobs fit with their communities."
For decades, the Navajo Nation has been a colony manipulated for its energy resources. For decades, American
corporations have wielded great power over the Navajo people and land in order to get at their oil, uranium and coal.
But now, in a return to tradition that is kinder to the earth, the Navajo people are also finding a more sustainable
future for themselves.
"I think our elders and so many of our people have survived based on a strong foundation of our cultural
understanding of our relationship not only to one another as human beings, but to the earth and to everything around
us," says Begaye. "We can take some of the good things of modern technology and maintain that strong foundation of a
healthy relationship with everything around us. We have to."
The history of mining on Black Mesa, of Peabody Energy, of coal-fired power plants and thousands of displaced Navajo
is a tragic one. In the 1960s, John Sterling Boyden - a lawyer representing both the Hopi tribe and Peabody Energy -
negotiated the rights to mining coal from Black Mesa. The tribes drew the short end of the stick, gaining little more
than laughably low royalty rates, environmental degradation, a loss of one billion gallons of water a year from the
Navajo Aquifer, and no provisions for renegotiation. The lawyer also largely invented a tribal conflict between the
Hopi and Navajo in order to redraw reservation boundaries, giving the land of Black Mesa to the Hopi - even though
12,000 Navajos lived there. The native Navajo people were forced to relocate. Then, with the land unpopulated,
resource extraction began.
In the ensuing decades, Black Mesa has been strip mined. The underlying aquifer has been depleted. Groundwater, flora
and fauna have been poisoned. Skies and lungs have been contaminated. All for low royalties and some coal jobs on the
reservation. All so a corporation could get rich. And the night skies of Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas could be
awash in neon, unaware of the tariff for such excess.
The tribes received little of the coal power produced on their land and from their land. But they carried the full
burden of its cost.
Black Mesa's last day of operation was December 31, 2005. Peabody's Life of Mine permit was revoked January of this
year. The scourge of the Black Mesa Mine is on the wane. Now is a time for regeneration, healing and hope.
In 2001, Nicole Horseherder and her husband founded the organization To'Nizhoni Ani, which translates to "Beautiful
Water Speaks." Their fight was an arduous but successful one: protecting the Navajo Aquifer from Peabody's relentless
pumping for their coal slurry line. The couple was instrumental in the closure of the Black Mesa Mine by convincing
the Navajo Tribal Council to pass a resolution forcing Peabody to leave the aquifer alone.
Horseherder and her family - including three daughters - live in the town of Black Mesa, 20 miles from the strip
mine. She is intimately familiar with the impacts of the mine on land and water. This land has been in her family for
five generations, to the time her great-grandmothers were forced to the prison camps in Fort Sumner. She has a
generational knowing of the hidden price of the Southwest's inexpensively powered streetlights, store signs and
holiday decorations.
"Expensive? My God! Coal is expensive. Government doesn't see it because the ones picking up the tab are the
people who are impacted. They are the ones that subsidized the operation - with cheap coal and water - in the first
place. No wonder we are so poor." She continues, "The rest of the country does not realize how this third world
country helps pay for their infrastructure and services."
Horseherder equates the plight of the Navajo Nation to that of Iraq, Mongolia, Indonesia and other third-world
countries. The Nation is being exploited for its natural resources. Corporations disregard the impacts of their
business on land and culture.
Considering this, the Navajo transition to locally produced renewable energy is remarkable. From a place of
disempowerment and poverty, communities are standing up for change and achieving it. They are finding their own path
to hope, dignity and success. Of course, this success may be foreign to those who embrace values of capitalism. It
has little to do with large profit margins.
Horseherder cites elemental reasons for fighting to protect groundwater, for fighting against coal, for seeking a
return to simplicity in the midst of an increasingly complex climate and world.
"Because I don't have a choice. Because I would be more effective than anyone else. Because I care about the future
and the children. Because I am not afraid of change. Because the Creator gave us the four elements of life void of
pollution. Because this is a man-made problem. Because if I don't, my children will say, ?Why didn't you, when you
could?'"
Often, in the debate about implementing stricter renewable energy policies in this country, the opposition cites the
expense of such a transition. They tell us solar and wind technologies are simply too expensive to embrace right now.
However, if a people with an unemployment rate of 44 percent and a median family income of $12,000 a year - a people
with a majority living under the poverty line - can embrace renewable energy, why can't America as a whole? If the
Navajo Nation can create a Green Economy Commission and promote community-based sustainability efforts, why can't
we?
"I think what we're battling a lot is a different idea of what it is to be successful. And the idea of easy money,"
explains Begaye. "With so much red tape on the reservation, it's so much easier to partner with the big corporations
that have lots of money and plow through the red tape." However, she points out, with all that red tape, "if you can
get something done on the reservation, you can get it done anywhere else in the country."
Tony Skrelunas is currently Native America Program Director for the Grand Canyon Trust, based out of Flagstaff, Ariz.
His work is focused on sustainability issues for Hopi and Navajo communities and governments. He has 16 years
experience working on tribal economic concerns and was formerly the Executive Director of the Navajo Nations Economic
Development and Government Development Divisions. Skrelunas is intimately familiar with economic drivers both on and
off the reservation.
"I have a feeling that communities [on the reservation] are going to grow in a really good way. Some of the
discussions that are going on on the reservation are more advanced than what's going on in Flagstaff," he says,
referring to community dialogs on green jobs and sustainability. "Communities here have said we want something that
fits our values and our culture. There's a whole movement of embracing community-based development. Every time you
incorporate the cultural values, the teachings, the vision - all of this ends up being green. That always comes
out."
Skrelunas believes that America can learn from this locally defined vision. Communities are designing companies - in
renewable energy, agriculture, traditional trades and more - that are responsive to the community and its citizens'
needs. It's not about profit. It's about kinship and compassion. It's an understanding that the building blocks for
our future survival as a species are rooted in things more basic - more ancient - than finances and infrastructure.
It's an understanding that technology isn't the sole key to our salvation. Our humanity must be a part of it, too,
including our connections to one another and to the land. Incorporating the raw materials of the human heart, not
what can be mined from the soil.
It is success based on the health and wealth of a community rather than individual shareholders.
"The balance is simple," explains Horseherder. "You can have an abundance of monetary resources, but without
spiritual resources, you won't be able to go far with your other resources. The spiritual resources are a guiding
factor. It is the source of peace, contentment and accomplishment. Today's efforts must be balanced by
both."
The 2008 documentary Power Paths details Native America's embrace of renewable energy against all odds. From the
Sioux to the Navajo and Hopi, tribes are standing up for the health of their land and people, taking a stand against
resource extraction, and taking control of the means of power production.
The film juxtaposes scenes from the Black Mesa Mine and coal-fired power plants - the devastation of both land and
air - with grassroots efforts to bring smaller-scale renewable energy projects to the reservations. In a particularly
poignant moment, a Navajo family's home is connected to a solar/wind hybrid system. For the first time in her life, a
young mother is able to turn on a light in her own home. Tears of gratitude stream down her face.
This is about more than just power generation. It is the empowerment of a generation.
Bo Boudart, the producer, director and videographer of Power Paths, is struck with the differences between tribal and
American culture. As he made the film - as images of wind turbines and solar panels flashed before him - it was
questions of spirituality and connection to land and community that filled his mind.
"We as individuals don't have a grounding to any particular location. We are opportunistic. It's part of the American
way of life, whereas the tribes have a greater sense of community," he says. "A big step for our society is to become
involved. We haven't had to solve big problems on a community-wide basis the way Native Americans have. The lesson we
can learn from them is how to work together.
"Another lesson is that it doesn't take a lot of money to do this."
One narrative thread that the documentary follows is that of the Just Transition Coalition. This is the collection of
grassroots leaders - including Horseherder from To'Nizhoni Ani, Skrelunas from Grand Canyon Trust, and Begaye from
Black Mesa Water Coalition - that formed in the wake of the closure of the coal-fired Mohave Generating Station and
the Black Mesa Mine. The Just Transition Coalition is addressing the economic impacts of these closures, seeking a
transition from a coal-based economy - one that included great social and environmental costs - to a means of power
production that is owned by the people and serves them. JTC is also seeking recompense for the heavy coal burden the
tribes have borne for decades.
The coalition proposes that annual revenues from the sale of pollution credits from the now-shuttered Mohave plant be
reinvested in the tribes' future. JTC proposes investing 70 percent of the monies in renewable energy projects - both
small- and large-scale - 10 percent in job retraining, and 20 percent to tribal governments to make up for lost
royalties. It is a cooperative effort to encourage a people who have witnessed degradation of their lands with little
benefit. Seventy percent of Black Mesa-area residents live without electricity, even as the large transmission lines
pass over the top of them.
"They have always known that the thing they're willing to die for is protection of their lands," explains
Boudart. "They have no other place they can go to. That's what we have to understand. We have to learn how to relate
to our land, then we can truly fathom the importance of the spiritual connection that we should all have with our
land. Native Americans have never lost that."
Begaye confirms these sentiments.
"We have no place else to go. That's where we're born and that's where we're staying. If we lose the land, then we
lose ourselves. We're kind of like an endangered species right now. We're fighting for survival. When you get to the
point of seeing that, then there's no other way but to work for these green projects."
However, endangered as the tribes may be - watching the destruction of homeground - they are in a unique situation to
reverse the course of events and save themselves. They are finding the power to protect their land and their future -
through green economy legislation, through embracing tribally owned renewable energy, through community
empowerment.
They are a people that have been taken from for more than a century. And now they are finding a way to take back
their land and dignity - in order to gift it to the next generation.
"It is the responsibility of us, mothers and fathers of young and growing children, to make that decision to move to
renewable energy generation and a sustainable economy," says Horseherder. "We are the descendants of these
traditional people who left to us this beautiful life, along with the land, water, the ceremonies and language - all
substantially intact. It is because of them that we must make that type of decision for our children. "
Begaye, Horseherder and Skrelunas all have children. Perhaps this next generation will know a different reality - not
one of endangered land and livelihood, but one of communal hope and dignity.
Contributing editor JEN JACKSON writes from Moab, Utah.
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Friday, May 21, 2010
at 7:13:08 PM
Suggest removal
Louisa says:
I have spent many glorious vacations visiting breathtaking areas inhabited by and under the stewardship of the Navajo Nation. Through their conservation, I have learned to love their culture and the land, especially areas near Moab, Utah and Page Arizona.
This article was eye-opening for me personally. It reminds me how far I have pulled away from basic principles... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am working myself to death, to pay for credit card bills and a mortgage I can't afford. I am completely absorbed in my own problems, totally unaware of these issues.
I sat down recently and read a book - Little Gifts of Sustainable Contentment by C.J. good. After an hour and a half I was thoroughly charmed and delighted. Little Gifts of Sustainable Contentment is a book that helped restore my faith that there is still hope for me and others. This book is a must read for concerned people seeking to meet the urgent challenges that their overabundant lifestyle has created. This simple book, goes far beyond describing the issues. It details very positive and practical ways I can reorient my thinking to a more content, more enjoyable and more sustainable life. I have learned ways to create “Real Wealth.”
Monday, April 05, 2010
at 4:48:42 PM
Suggest removal
Michael says:
"The history of mining on Black Mesa, of Peabody Energy, of coal-fired power plants and thousands of displaced Navajo is a tragic one. In the 1960s, John Sterling Boyden - a lawyer representing both the Hopi tribe and Peabody Energy - negotiated the rights to mining coal from Black Mesa. The tribes drew the short end of the stick, gaining little more than laughably low royalty rates, environmental degradation, a loss of one billion gallons of water a year from the Navajo Aquifer, and no provisions for renegotiation. The lawyer also largely invented a tribal conflict between the Hopi and Navajo in order to redraw reservation boundaries, giving the land of Black Mesa to the Hopi - even though 12,000 Navajos lived there. The native Navajo people were forced to relocate. Then, with the land unpopulated, resource extraction began.
In the ensuing decades, Black Mesa has been strip mined. The underlying aquifer has been depleted. Groundwater, flora and fauna have been poisoned. Skies and lungs have been contaminated. All for low royalties and some coal jobs on the reservation. All so a corporation could get rich. And the night skies of Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas could be awash in neon, unaware of the tariff for such excess.
The tribes received little of the coal power produced on their land and from their land. But they carried the full burden of its cost."
Navajo Nation EPA issued an unlawful Title V (operating) permit under the Clean Air Act for the so called Black Mesa Complex. When a former Chairman of the Hopi Tribe sent a letter to US EPA and Navajo Nation EPA to complain about the Hopi Tribe not receiving notice of an opportunity for public comment on the CAA permit required to operate the mines he received back a nasty letter from Navajo Nation EPA listing who was notified and the Hopi where not listed on the list of who received notice. The letter was nasty I suppose because the complaint included a 60 days notice of intent to bring a citizen's suit against the Navajo Nation EPA for issuing an illegal permit. Navajo Nation EPA claimed it was immune from such suit since the Navajo Nation has sovereign immunity from the CAA. This is nonsensical because the US EPA delegated authority to Navajo Nation EPA to issue the Title V permit so Navajo Nation waived its sovereign immunity when it accepted its delegated authority from US EPA to issue the permit in the first instance. Even if it where true how can Navajo Nation then tell the Hopi-Tewa what to do since they have separate and shared lease holdings with the Navajo?
This nonsense has to stop.
Monday, April 05, 2010
at 4:18:42 PM
Suggest removal
Michael says:
What is needed now is for the Navajo, Hopi-Tewa to join in a united front to get the Obama administration to support doing all future permits for the mining operations on the Black Mesa pursuant to standards adopted in government to government consultations with the Navajo and Hopi-Tewa peoples.
US EPA's NPDES permit under the Clean Water Act for the so-called Black Mesa Complex, so-called because there are two mines there, the Kayenta mine and Black Mesa mine, but Kayenta mine has a life-of mine-permit while the Black Mesa mine does not. This means the Black Mesa mine is being operated illegally. What is needed for meaningful and informed public participation is a one stop permitting process that includes all the permits from US EPA, OSM, and US Army Corp at Moenkopi (Hopi: Mùnqapi) so that farmers that are being directly impacted have an opportunity to participate.
EPA is announcing an extension to the comment period for the proposed wastewater discharge permit for the Peabody Black Mesa/Kayenta Mine located in northeastern Arizona. The comment period will be extended by 30 days, and will now close on April 30, 2010.
The proposed permit will allow the continued discharge of treated stormwater related to mining activities. The proposed permit will establish effluent limitations and standards based on national effluent limitation guidelines and to ensure that Navajo Nation and Hopi water quality standards are met. In addition, the renewed permit proposes to incorporate new regulatory requirements for reclaimed mine areas and proposes to require the implementation of plans to control sediment and seepage from stormwater treatment impoundments.
Please find attached EPA's permit and fact sheet for additional information, or feel free to contact me with any questions.
http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/npdes/pdf/navajo/PeabodyBlackMesaDraftPermit.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/npdes/pdf/navajo/PeabodyBlackMesaFactSheetJan2010.pdf