The Navajo Nation

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: near Santa Fe, New Mexico

I wish we’d gotten to talk to more Navajos while we were on the reservation. Natural resources and social justice seem so applicable, as they are with any resource rich and cash poor area. Extraction and exploitation go hand in hand in the history book (excepting the newly revised Texas Curriculum Board ones) and I wish we’d heard more about current issues and negotiations over water and minerals. There was definitely a compelling undercurrent on the bulletin boards I saw, and I know I’ve read thing about uranium mining on Navajo lands in the Nation. I don’t know a lot about our tribes or reservations, but what I’ve read seems like a very bleak picture. It’s not just Native Americans, I suppose—it’s almost all impoverished communities with high unemployment sitting on valuable resources. And poverty is greatest in resource-rich areas—what does that say about the ruthlessness of capitalism? But to speak of sustainability seems like a paradox. Conserve the oil or uranium and prevent a public health emergency and the creation of two new Superfund sites? That’s ecologically sustainable, but you’ll starve to death. Rich people destroy the plant far better and faster than anyone, but up to a certain level, you can’t afford to card. You can’t afford to think long-term. So you let the corporations in, they take what they can, and you postpone starvation for a few decades. Not really economically sustainable, but also not economic suicide. Someone needs to give these communities a better option, or better yet, put them in a position to make changes for themselves.

Which seems like what Billy and the Shonto Community Development Corporation are doing. Trying to get through the bureaucracy to serve the community, trying to give people power. But to get rid of the coal plant, you need to create 600 jobs. Solar systems installation and monitoring are great, but there aren’t 600 jobs there. I hope the plant closes and a new one isn’t built. I hope we can find a better way to employ Navajos, a better way to feed Los Angeles, a better way to get power to Tucson. But as much as I hope, I don’t really believe.