We arrived in Flagstaff, AZ this morning -- what a sweet place!  Everyone was surprised to rise up out of the beautiful saguaro-strewn desert into the nearly alpine terrain of northern Arizona.  Flagstaff itself is about 7,000 feet above sea level, and there's a definite chill in the air when the sun is gone.  I believe it's a relief for everyone!

We spent a very powerful afternoon with the amazing young women of Black Mesa Water Coalition (www.blackmesawatercoalition.org) and Indigenous Environmental Network (www.ienearth.org).  We spoke with Wahleah Johns, a longtime BMWC leader and mother of an adorable 7-month-old baby girl named Tohana, and Jihan Gearon, who spearheads IEN's Energy and Climate Change program.  These women and their colleagues are engaged in broad-spectrum, highly effective activism: blending their strong, clear resistance to the devastation of people and land resulting from energy extraction and production, with creative and innovative ways to say "yes."

Wahleah told us about the situation at Black Mesa: she shared that the Navajo Aquifer is the sole source of drinking water for the Black Mesa region, and not only that, but is also the life source for the spiritual and cultural survival of the Navajo and Hopi people and all living things.  Yet since the early 1970’s, annually Peabody Coal Company has pumped more than 4,500 acre-feet of pristine Navajo and Hopi drinking water from this N-Aquifer.

Peabody used this pristine water supply to mix with crushed coal, called "slurry". The slurry was then pumped through a 273-mile pipeline extending from Black Mesa, through northern Arizona into southern Nevada -- unlike almost all other coal in the United States, which is transported by railway. The coal from Black Mesa is delivered to a 1,500-megawatt power plant called the Mohave Generating Station (MGS) located in Laughlin, Nevada. The MGS provided the electrical needs for California, Nevada, and Arizona residents. And yet today, Navajo and Hopi residents that live on Black Mesa still do not have electrification or running water.  MGS also has committed a reported 40,000 violations of the Clean Air Act.

In 2006, after years of protest, Peabody agreed not to use the N-Aquifer, but reinitiated the proposal in 2008, providing only 45 days for the public to comment on an approximately 700 page environmental impact statement.  As of the time of our meeting, no decision has been made, and the BMWC staff and their networks remain at the ready to pursue further advocacy and litigation efforts.

In addition to this powerful and contentious history, Wahleah shared with us the way in which she and her allies do their work -- in collaboration with elders, and towards a balance of saying "no" and saying "yes."  She told us about the Just Transition Coalition, a multi-group network spearheaded by BMWC which seeks to develop and implement alternative energy projects on Native lands.  She told us about the Navajo belief system in which the earth has masculine and feminine qualities, and according to which Black Mesa is a feminine mountain.  It is said that coal is like the liver of the Mother Earth; when the coal is extracted, the Earth's liver can no longer act as a cleansing organ, and illness results.  It is so powerful to witness and to feel the way human life and human relations are so interconnected with, and in fact defined by, the earth's processes and cycles. 

What struck me the most was that all of this work derives from Wahleah's commitment to her family and to the land where she was born;  she is not an 'environmentalist' for any lofty, abstracted purpose, but is at her core a woman who wants to defend her land, her community, and her traditions.  I marvel at what it must be like to do activist work that is so powerfully grounded in home and community.

After we spoke with Wahleah (and then, after we took a marvelous stretch break), Jihan explained her work to us as the Energy and Climate Change organizer for IEN.  She works closely with the dedicated First Nations freedom fighters in Canada, struggling to protect their lands and communities against the tar sands project. 

This is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive.  These types of oil sands developments are generally vast open-pit mines that recover a form of tar mixed with sand. That tar, which is formally known as bitumen, is later separated and processed to produce oil. Most of the oil from the Alberta developments is sent to the United States.  The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production, and high levels of carcinogenic material have been found downstream from the tar sands project in Alberta.  Jihan said that at a recent conference on the tar sands issue, she saw a picture of a fish -- found in waters near the tar sands project -- that was equipped with two sets of jaws.   

IEN works closely with the indigenous organizers in Fort Chipewan to raise awareness around this monstrous project, and to organize the widely-dispersed community of people who are affected by it.  She also works with the Native communities in Ponca, Oklahoma; Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and Fort Berthold, North Dakota; all of whom are suffering the ill effects of energy extraction and production on their lands.  The more we learn, the more it is sickeningly apparent that all of the energy we use to power our society is derived from lands held sacred by and occupied by Native people -- our economy is, literally, built on the backs of the indigenous people of this continent.  Moreover, many of the supposed 'solutions' to the problems we face are also exploitative of indigenous people:  cap and trade systems, for example, can cause the concentration of polluting industries on native lands, while 'clean coal' is simply an oxymoron.  Check out www.ilovemountains.org to find out where your energy is sourced from!  It's an amazing website.

This was, yet again, a moving and deeply instructive afternoon spent with amazing, inspiring women who are working tirelessly and joyfully towards the re-balancing of our relationship with the Mother Earth.  We have so much to learn, and I am so honored to spend my life engaged in this learning, and this service. 

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