So who am I?
I am a Generation Indigenous Youth Ambassador, a participant of the first White House Tribal Youth Gathering, and a resident of the Navajo Nation. I study the Navajo language at Diné College and am earning my Masters of Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University. Last year, I represented Indigenous Peoples at the United Nation’s second Universal Periodic Review of the United States held in Geneva, Switzerland. This year, I will be traveling with the SustainUs COP22 Delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a journey that blends beautifully with my goal of one day earning a Ph.D. related to tribal policy, clean energy research, and divesting oil-dependent Reservations. I also serve on the Environmental Protection Agency’s NEJAC/Youth Perspectives on Climate Working Group, with Engineer Without Border’s Nicaraguan Interim Impact Review team, and as a Civil Engineer working with compliance and permitting for the Navajo Nation tribal government. Shí éí Ats’oos Dine’é nishłį́, bilagáana bashishchiin, Béésh Bich’ahii dashicheii, adóó ‘Ats’oos Dine’é dashinalí.
The government even let corporations tear apart Navajo-Hopi relations…
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When my article was published in the Navajo Times on August 11, 2016 calling for Navajo tribal leadership to declare solidarity with the people of Standing Rock, I felt like I was putting a lot of energy into something that would never happen. The Navajo Nation is just too heavily invested in oil, so heavily in fact that its Tribal Council was handpicked by the Federal Government in 1923 just to sign oil leases over to non-tribal corporations. I had called many offices in Window Rock, asking if any formal statements had been issued by leadership against a pipeline’s construction, whether on Navajo or not, and every response confirmed the silence that had come from Navajo Nation on these issues. I was fresh with frustration and anger from my Navajo Nation Government class this summer, a class which detailed exactly how the American government has manipulated and controlled the Navajo people for centuries, developing their resources and stealing their funds. (Navajo Nation has won the largest lawsuit of any Indian Nation against the Federal Government for this theft.) The government even let corporations tear apart Navajo-Hopi relations, displace thousands of tribal members from their homes, and employ tribal people to work under dangerous standards in uranium mines without properly educating them on the risks they were being forced to take. With all the power these corporations have over Americans – and especially over First Americans—why in the world would leadership hear our cries for solidarity with Standing Rock against DAPL?
Many friends even told me it was a lot of work for nothing.
Then, a week after my article hit the presses, the Office of the President and Vice President of Navajo Nation formally declared solidarity with Standing Rock.
I was floored. This, in and of itself, was history, an incredible precedent set for the Navajo people, for the divestment of Dinébikeyah. When I saw the photos of President Russell Begaye and Vice President Jonathan Nez hoisting the Navajo Nation flag into the line of solidarity flags in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, I knew I had to do my part and join the fight.
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Original article appeared at Faithless Faith. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Getty Images