Enei, tell us about how you came to be the Executive Director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition?
I'm Navajo. I grew up on the reservation, between Black Mesa mines, one of the largest strip mining operations and a whole slew of abandoned uranium mines. The Navajo reservation has a deep history of mineral extraction. I went to high school on the reservation and college at Stanford studying environmental sciences and came home feeling like we need to do something besides just study it! In 2001, a lot of us got together and decided we need to do something, we were young Navajo and Hopi people as well as Xicano and other concerned people in this area. We formed the Black Mesa Water Coalition.
The protection of our ground water is connected to so many things -- our tribal economy, to energy, our culture, to a history of colonization -- we really needed to get strategic and get organized.
Tell us about the struggle for water rights on the reservation.
The ground water Peabody Coal is using is the sole source of drinking water in the Navajo and Hopi region of Black Mesa. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been studying and measuring it and is a seeing declines in the water level.
When the U.S. government stole our lands then put us on reservations, they thought they were giving us the bad land. Then they realized we had all these resources under our land, the federal government set up tribal governments as a means to obtain tribal resources. Today the Federal Energy Act has a whole section dedicated to tribal lands. It gives all sorts of incentives to industries particularly for fossil fuel extraction on tribal lands. This has major implications not only for climate change, but for water too.The energy companies are basically privatizing and commodifying our water. These companies are getting access to our water at a hugely subsidized rate. Before, we lived off of springs. Now they have the deep wells and the communities have to pay.
It's an outrage to us that Peabody Coal Company has access to all this water under our lands, and our own communities, our own people have to strategize on how to get water. We are trying to take some pro-active steps to diversify the economy on the reservation. We're working on a "Just Transition Campaign" to try to transition our tribal government and economy off of fossil fuel and on to renewable energy to electrify local communities, as well as sell excess electricity to California or other big cities to bring income back to communities.
What is the biggest task you have before you now?
I believe in tribal sovereignty. Our tribes are sovereign nations; our people have the right to decide what's best for us. Yet, right now, more and more, our elected leaders are becoming the mouthpiece for big industries. It's not a good feeling. These industries are right alongside our leaders, waving dollar bills. To change that idea of what it is to be successful, this is the work ahead of us.
Grandmas and grandpas have come out to protest, and we're getting the young people involved. On the reservations a great percentage of the population is under 25. So we're trying to get young people involved. The western education system says, "to have lots of money and lots of cars is success." That is what we are fighting against.
We need to remember that to be successful is to have water. This is our future. We have a responsibility to insure decisions made today will safe guard our people's future.
