“Why is it our responsibility to sustain unsustainable ways of life?” The Navajo and Allies Speak Out
Unpacking resistance to climate change, colonialism, and COVID-19 on the Navajo reservation.
Photo by Florian Schneider.
Though the state of Arizona is now among the globe’s hotspots for COVID-19, the most dire and long-lasting outbreak in the state is on the Navajo Nation, a vast reservation mostly sitting in the northeast corner of the state. Nearly five percent of the tribal population has tested positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and the outcomes for indigenous people have been ugly, as a result of comorbidities among many Navajo people that match up with the most dire pre-existing conditions for COVID patients, including hypertension and diabetes. Navajo Nation’s case fatality rate was nearly five percent as of June 27, more than five times the national average.
The conditions brought upon the Navajo by the United States reservation system and continued underfunding over time are not surprising to Eva Putzova, a Flagstaff, Ariz., resident and candidate in the Democratic primary against David O’Halleran to represent Arizona’s first Congressional district in the House of Representatives, Dr. Ronson Chee, who grew up on Navajo Nation before founding Riley Engineering, which works on making potable water accessible in places like Navajo Nation, or Klee Benally, an activist singer and performer as well as a leader of the Kinlani/Flagstaff Mutual Aid program.
Putzova, Chee and Benally spoke with The Trouble about what has and has not worked in stopping the spread of the coronavirus among the Navajo, how institutions’ neglect of the environment around this community contributed to the crisis, and what must be done to reverse the injustices that left the Navajo poorly prepared and ill-equipped to fight a pandemic. Points of disagreement among the three proved to be especially illuminating.
What was the state of the reservation system and the relationship between the Navajo people, the American federal government and private businesses at the outset of the pandemic?
KB: “You have to start with colonialism. In 1923, the Navajo Nation tribal council was established by the federal government for the very specific purpose of signing oil, gas, and mineral leases. The Navajo Nation as it’s constituted politically today...its history is a resource colony. When we look at the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 in our community, we can’t ignore the fact that significantly higher levels of respiratory illness and autoimmune diseases are linked specifically to resource-extraction industries: Mining and coal burning, as well as fracking and oil drilling and refining.
“This paints a picture of the reality that we face [as] not just an anomaly, not just what we sometimes hear in mainstream media: that this is happening because we’re poor and we don’t have access to resources. A lot of folks just focus on the statistics but they don’t look at how [this] is by design—that it’s the consequence of an ongoing war against our people by settler-colonizers who have used our lands and our people, our bodies for the benefit of their society. That’s how we identify resource colonialism.
Uranium mining during the Cold War created an environment on Navajo Nation that led to increased hypertension and kidney disease -- many of the same factors that put people at higher risk of death from COVID-19. To what extent do you think these uranium-related illnesses are still a problem in the Navajo community?
KB: “ The EPA has closed more than 22 wells due to high levels of radioactive contamination, wells about 50,000 people relied on. We have more than 523 abandoned Uranium mines on the Navajo reservation, about 2,000 abandoned Uranium mines throughout the region surrounding the reservation, and not a single one is being cleaned up.
“...We saw a massive wave of extraction mining of Uranium on Dineh lands with our own folks not being made aware of the health and safety risks, not informed that they should be wearing protective gear through the mining process, and today, many of those miners who mined up until the ‘80s are suffering extreme health issues. Very little is being done to address those issues. We have the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but it’s limited. It doesn’t apply to people who are working at mines after a certain period of time. But there’s never been a comprehensive human health study to address the impacts of Uranium mining on Navajo Nation. We have the Navajo Birth Cohort Study which is looking at the impacts of women and children, specifically infants that are born. The study hasn’t concluded yet, but the preliminary findings are that there are trace amounts of Uranium in some of these areas … in the urine of newborn babies.
“It’s an intentional legacy of systematic destruction, exploitation and pollution of indigenous lands and bodies that has set us up for this crisis.”
EP: “People are still suffering from higher rates of cancer on the reservation. They live -- and children live -- near contaminated, old mines that have not been properly cleaned up, so we obviously have to prioritize cleaning up the uranium mines, but looking forward, we should not be permitting other mines. We just heard recently that the copper mine near the Havasupai people’s water has been allowed to continue access to its claim, and the lawsuit that was filed by the tribe and by environmental groups was rejected by the courts.
Another issue that has gotten a lot of attention lately is the lack of access to electricity and potable water on the reservation. How does this make it harder for the Navajo people to abide by the recommendations of public health experts during this pandemic?
EP: “While electricity has been generated on the Navajo Nation land from coal and from water in that area, the transmission lines bypass these native communities. The electricity was transmitted to power Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and yet people who live nearby, who work at the Peabody coal power plant, have not benefited from that energy generation.
RC: “Not having running water in the home is a big contributor [to] people getting sick, because you’re not able to wash your hands for 20 seconds. If you’re hauling water, basically what you’re going to do is take a gallon jug of water and pour it into a pan and wash your hands from there. Depending on how much water you have, you’re either going to reuse that water again, or you’re going to throw that water out of the house and refill that pan with water so you can wash your hands the next time. [At] a lot of these houses where people are getting sick, it’s also because they don’t have a sewer or a way to get rid of the water that they do use, which could also lead to infection. You do need electricity to move the water, so electricity is related to it. They go hand-in-hand.”
How have previous iterations of activist groups that fought for the rights and wellbeing of the Navajo people transitioned into projects like Kinlani/Flagstaff mutual aid that are leading the charge now?
KB: “In terms of fighting against colonialism, resource-extractive industries and settler-colonial governments, we have a powerful legacy with Dine Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (starting) in the 1980s. They have continued to work to protect the health and wellbeing of our people on all levels: From addressing air quality issues and coal power plants in the Four Corners area, the worst emitters of carbon in coal-fired power plants in the whole country.
“[There’s also] the Matriarchs at Big Mountain, who one day said, “No, we’re not going to allow this fence to divide our land or be forcibly relocated by Congressional order.” They have been resisting this so-called global superpower [the U.S. federal government] with all its laws and might for more than 40 years now in the Big Mountain area and Black Mesa by maintaining a traditional way of life. Many of these elders still don’t speak English; they grow their corn, raise their sheep, even though that way of life is becoming harder because of (the reservations system). That’s the power of their resistance: to maintain and assert their connection to the land.
“With our traditional teachings, we have K’e, which is our clan system—a familial relationship that has an understanding that extends beyond human relationships. We have an understanding of reciprocity, and that extends beyond just Dine. It is a philosophy of maintaining harmony and balance toward the fulfillment of our existence in this world. The propensity toward mutual aid comes from that. We’re not relief organizations. We’re not interested in the missionizing of charity and the portrayal of our people as victims for these endless ally fundraisers to sweep in and save us.”
Are there recent victories for Navajo and other indigenous activists in Arizona that feel like building blocks for what can be accomplished to continue the fight against COVID?
KB: “One of the highlights over the past several years was the Dooda Desert Rock campaign, where Elouise Brown—who is Dine from the Ship Rock area—helped to lead a movement that led to the termination of a project that proposed to build a multibillion-dollar coal-fired power plant in the Ship Rock area. She set up a blockade and took direct action for years to shut that project down and ultimately facilitated a movement that did just that.
“In 2005, the Navajo Nation was pressured by environmental advocates who had raised (the issue of) threats of coal mining in the area to pass the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act, which effectively banned uranium mining within the borders of the Navajo Nation. It was a significant win and a few years ago, Leona Morgan, who’s a fierce Dine advocate, stopped a council delegate from attempting to side-step (the law) and open up areas of the reservation for uranium mining. There are powerful efforts.
“The recent shutdown of the Navajo Generating Station—while it’s not solely an environmental justice victory—is celebrated, because [the plant] was basically just set up to burn black rock dug from Black Mesa and boil water (from the Colorado River) to then send energy to sustain Phoenix and Tucson. The concern is that it’s a partial victory because the reason that it’s shut down … is its smoke stacks were outdated and they could be upgraded to meet new EPA standards [if the prices become favorable].”
We know that how governments treat environmental challenges play a big part in a community’s ability to overcome them. Is the Navajo response to the pandemic at the point yet where it can fight back against these institutionalized disadvantages?
EP: “It was private citizens—it wasn’t the government of the United States and it wasn’t the government of the Navajo Nation—that stepped up immediately when the pandemic hit the Nation. It was private citizens that set up mutual aid... they have done phenomenal work getting the financial resources to buy supplies, protective gear and food and then distribute it quickly to the people that need it.
“My understanding is that the Navajo Nation government actually prevents these new non-profits [from] providing relief to their people by putting red tape (around) their distribution efforts. They had curfews—of course curfews make sense because you want to limit people’s movement—however, there are people who need food, who need water, who need cleaning supplies, who need face masks. In the absence of the government—whether it’s federal or the tribal government—you at least have to coordinate, and my understanding is [a mutual aid group led by Navajo attorney Ethel Branch] was trying to work very collaboratively with the Navajo Nation president’s office, and they have been running into constant obstacles.”
RC: “I don’t think you’re going to be able to do anything in the short-term. The estimate, [depending] on who you ask, is about 4,000 to 7,000 homes don’t have running water or adequate sanitation facilities in their home. This stimulus funding that they received, the federal grant money, a lot of it is [required to be spent] in six months, but it’s going to take longer to address this problem.
“You have short-term solutions. You can haul water to people, but as soon as that’s over and done with, you [haven’t] addressed the root of the problem, which is ensuring that people have infrastructure to their homes. But to do that and get running water to homes, you basically have to revamp the entire planning policy, and people have to make an adjustment on where they choose to live. Currently, if people just keep living where they are—in remote locations—the likelihood of them getting potable running water services is very low, because it just costs too much money to run pipelines to remote locations. There’s going to have to be some kind of balance between people who want to live remotely and people who want to live on the grid.
“The other issue is there’s not enough housing on the Navajo Nation to provide people another option. They can’t simply just move into another community or town because there is no house to move into. That’s where the Navajo Nation government needs to step up and start providing housing for people to have an alternative to living out in remote locations..”
To what extent can an elected member of Congress affect change on tribal lands, and what will you do in practice to improve the living conditions of Native people if elected?
EP: “The representative has to work with the tribal government within the power structures that were created. They were not created always to the benefit of the actual people, but you have to understand, again, the historical context. Where we have power is in [shaping] the actual federal investment. Through the appropriations process, we have to put trillions of dollars into these communities. That’s completely up to Congress and is up to representatives to push for. Instead of spending $1.3 trillion to modernize the nuclear arsenal, we should put $1.3 trillion into our native communities, because that’s going to make all of us safer, and we will start rectifying these injustices that we have perpetuated by design for hundreds of years.”
How do you see the Green New Deal overlapping with supporting indigenous communities like the Navajo Nation?
EP: “It is just a policy framework, essentially. It needs to be followed by a number of spending bills, but in general, it says that we’re going to invest in particular sectors of the economy so that we can transition to a green economy. That means infrastructure, buildings, transportation systems, energy generation, and we’re going to do it in a just and equitable way so that the communities that have been harmed by a lot of economic activity, especially the extractive industries like mining, which obviously was on and near tribal lands and in other underserved communities. There’s no reason we can’t have a spending bill that would appropriate serious money—I’m not talking about a few million dollars—to jump-start tribal economic development.
“Of course, we have to do it with the tribes, hand in hand. They are sovereign nations, and they should have a say in how that’s going to be executed. Like everything, there’s always risk. Every government entity deals with the risk of corruption, so we have to understand that, but that should not be our concern. Our concern should be whether we have the political will to pass these large spending bills and not only get out of this recession, [but also] how we come out of this on the other end. After 2008, the economy recovered, the corporations made out like bandits, and people saw no improvement to their standard of living. What they saw was continued growth of inequality. As a Congress member, I would be pushing for and leading on these efforts to invest in transitioning our economy in a just and equitable way by investing in our indigenous territories.”
KB: “It’s interesting the ways that settler colonialism is trying to recuperate itself while it is failing. That indicts white supremacy, capitalism and heteropatriarchy as well, and the Green New Deal is just (an) example of that. The green-washing of capitalism is just an attempt to sustain what is clearly unsustainable and to mitigate a war against Mother Earth but not cease it. I understand the logic of reducing harm on some level, but if we’re at the edge of a cliff, harm reduction isn’t what’s needed. We need a clean break, and the Green New Deal just maintains a social arrangement based upon genocide of indigenous folk. I see how it’s justified, (because) some folks want a lighter form of imperialism, (but) other folks want no imperialism. I don’t think window-dressing and green-washing (is a solution), especially when you consider the immediate consequences that we’re facing.”
On May 11, the federal government announced it would give $600 million to the Navajo people as apportioned to the Nation by the CARES Act. What is the progress of this funding, how is it being spent, and how should it be spent?
EP: “The big issues are electricity, housing, water, paving roads, and internet access. You invest in delivering basic infrastructure to people, but make sure that they’re not going to go out and burn coal to do it. We are in Arizona; this is an area that should be leading in renewable energy generation with tribal partners. They need electricity, they need transmission lines.
“Housing. We know that a lot of housing in the United States is sub-standard and energy inefficient. [This is] an opportunity to work toward energy-efficient, quality housing that people deserve. Next, water. There are a lot of miles of Colorado River which border the Navajo Nation, and yet people on Navajo Nation don’t have access to that water. There’s some legal obstacles, obviously, and again it’s not going to be cheap . Yet if you believe in justice and we think we have wronged indigenous communities, we have to prioritize those investments.
“In Flagstaff and other communities, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a shortage of everything. If you could not get toilet paper, you went the next day. If you couldn’t get flour, you went the next day. That’s impossible if you live two or three hours from a grocery store. It’s bad that we have to talk about basic infrastructure as if we are a third-world country. This is very embarrassing for the United States to have large populations living in such poverty and without access to basics.”
RC: “They want to use about half of it to go toward water infrastructure, and the other half, I’m not sure. In the short-term, just establish a water-hauling service that can deliver to homes. Those homes would also need storage tanks. I think that would be a really good use of funds to establish that kind of service.“If you did start to deliver water, you’d have to look at things like upgrading roads and doing road improvements. A lot of these (remote) houses—you’re driving five, ten miles off the paved road just to get there, and when the weather is bad or during the winter, you’re probably not even going to be able to get out there.
You could also couple [water delivery] with a food-delivery service, just ensuring people have essentials to get through [while] minimizing travel. There are very few grocery stores on the Navajo Nation, so most people get their food and supplies off the reservation. [Centralizing services] and having them on the Nation will minimize how far people need to go and [reduce] cases.
“The economy on the Nation is almost non-existent. You don’t have any money circulation, like in any normal town. When you look at the U.S., money can turn over five to seven times in just one town, but with the Navajo Nation, it only turns over once or twice before it leaves. Part of it is that you can’t build a store in a lot of Navajo towns because you don’t have the water to do it. You can’t build a manufacturing facility to have jobs because you don’t have the water to do it. You can’t really build anything because you don’t have the infrastructure to support it.”
How could a healthcare overhaul such as the Medicare For All platform affect native communities?
EP: “My understanding is Medicare For All does not do away with Indian Health Services, which is the main deliverer of health care on tribal land. However, we don’t fully fund Indian Health Services. There is a shortage of providers. People from the reservations, they have to travel to these border towns three to five hours away to access specialists. That shouldn’t be the case. When people experience medical emergencies—because of how far away the emergency service is, or because certain types of emergencies cannot be treated on Navajo Nation—that puts them at higher risk of death.
What comes next to continue to give people access to sanitation materials while also building for the next breakout or natural disaster?
KB: “We can focus support on stabilizing and proliferating indigenous mutual aid that supports our economy, that empowers us in our communities to take care of ourselves and each other. I see the way that folks have responded to the idea of mutual aid on a global scale, particularly in indigenous communities. On Dine land, we see as many as 30 mutual aid projects, some autonomous or small families (and) some larger projects as well. There’s so much power and potential to shape and redefine the social arrangements and what our relationship to the dominant social order is on our terms. That can look like revitalizing our traditional food systems and not being dependent on corporate stores in border towns of the reservation community. That kind of dependency has been part of the social arrangement of colonialism. Anything that counters that, that builds our ability and intervenes into destructive industries that are part of this crisis [is welcome].
“Why is it our responsibility to sustain unsustainable ways of life? We can’t look at solutions without a deep understanding of colonialism and the power relationships that are still at play.”
Brendon Kleen is a freelance reporter based in Phoenix, Arizona. You can follow him on Twitter @BrendonKleen14.
Guess what didn’t fund this article…advertisements! Big corporations! Billionaires! What did fund this article? Just donations from our readers and the odd grant. You could be one of those people funding new essays on the most important issue of our time. And if you already are, thank you!