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There is not better way to express one's thoughts than through art and music. And these products are usually not created with profits in mind but to inspire and express.

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Black Belt Eagle Scout - Run It to Ya [Official Music Video]

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What inspires the desire to work outside the confines of a colonialist society is the fact that everything that has occurred within the confines has been detrimental and violent towards Indigenous communities. These are not meant to create feelings of pity but as examples of some of the issues and demonstrate Indigenous resilience.

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Every time Cowlitz tribal citizen Rosalie Fish introduces herself in her Indigenous language, she thinks of Kaylee Mae Nelson-Jerry, who vanished from Auburn in the summer of 2019.

"I remember Kaylee and I went to powwows together and we practiced how to introduce ourselves in our language, just as I did at the very beginning," said Fish, who is from the Muckleshoot Reservation in King County and traveled hours to speak Thursday afternoon during a gathering at Legends Casino in Toppenish.

"Kaylee was my friend. She is my friend. She is my cousin, and I believe she is still out there," Fish said at the community listening session held by members of the new state attorney general's task force on missing and murdered Indigenous women and people.

Fish spoke for two more women from the Muckleshoot Reservation - Misty Upham, who was found dead at the bottom of a ravine on the reservation in October 2014; and Renee Davis and her unborn son, who were fatally shot by King County sheriff's deputies in October 2016.

In nearly five hours of often emotional testimony Thursday, Fish and several others shared the stories of their Indigenous relatives who are missing, were killed or have died mysteriously. Task force members also met for an organizational session Friday online through Zoom.

Although the task force is new and the meetings co-hosted with the Yakama Nation were the first, the crisis has continued over decades throughout Washington state, the region and the nation. It has received increasing attention in recent years as people have become more vocal in seeking accountability, answers and justice.

Of the 110 active cases involving missing Indigenous people in Washington state, 28 have connections to the Yakama reservation or Yakima County, according to the latest list from the Washington State Patrol.

"I would say respectfully that we have to do better ... the work has to be better, more purposeful, more meaningful," Roxanne White said Thursday. "Take care of the families and survivors more."

Keeping families at the center

It was important for White, Fish and the others who traveled long distances to be at Thursday's meeting in person, "to be seen and be heard," White said. She came from Seattle. Others came from the Tulalip Reservation near Everett and the Umatilla Reservation in northeast Oregon.

White, who is a survivor and an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous people and their families, spoke during Friday's meeting as well.

The state Legislature created the task force as part of the effort to coordinate a statewide response to the urgent crisis of Indigenous people who vanish, are the victims of homicide or experience other types of gender-based violence in urban and tribal communities.

Task force members will provide findings and updates to the governor and Legislature throughout the process, with a progress report due in August 2022 and a final report in June 2023.

The crisis is complex, with challenges related to law-enforcement jurisdiction, generational trauma resulting from colonization and other issues. Dozens of Indigenous people have vanished, been found killed or have mysteriously died on and around the 1.3 million-acre Yakama reservation. Many cases are unsolved.

"There are 360 runaway youths here on the Yakama reservation," White said. "We know that if we stay silent ... what happened to them or us will continue to happen. We're breaking that silence."

State Attorney General's Office's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People policy analyst Annie Forsman-Adams led the meetings both days and hopes this new effort will make a difference.

"If a task force is going to move mountains, this task force would be the one," she said.

Task force members with relatives who have vanished or have been killed are already working to keep families a high priority. They include Patricia Whitefoot, a Yakama Nation citizen and longtime educator who lives in White Swan, and Carolyn DeFord, who is the trafficking project coordinator at the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.

DeFord's mother, Leona LeClair Kinsey, vanished from La Grande, Oregon, in October 1999. Whitefoot's sister, Daisy Mae Heath, also known as Daisy Tallman, disappeared in late summer 1987. A few of her most precious belongings were found in a closed portion of the Yakama reservation, and investigators believe she was killed.

Whitefoot spoke Friday about the fact that state Attorney General Bob Ferguson didn't attend the community listening session Thursday in person. Ferguson apologized in his opening comments for Friday's meeting, saying his wife was out of town and he had to stay home with their young children.

Ferguson said he hopes to attend future task-force meetings, and Whitefoot wants him to come to the Yakama reservation so he can hear from relatives and survivors in person. Not all have internet access, she said, and some can't drive long distances.

"I just want to make certain we're doing all we can to communicate at all levels," Whitefoot said. "It's important that communication be (made) a priority and also that family voices be a part of this as well. There really needs to be the voices of families and not just the government."

DeFord stressed that in sharing their stories, family members may be traumatized over and over again. It's difficult and emotional to talk about their missing and murdered loved ones. It doesn't get easier despite the passage of time.

"We also have a responsibility to take care of those families. We have a huge opportunity to learn how this affects families," DeFord said. "It's raw and it's real time and sometimes suppressed memories come up - things that we can't just walk off and walk away from."

Laying groundwork

Veronica Jimicum was another relative of missing and murdered Indigenous people who traveled longer distances to speak at the casino Thursday. She shared the story of her cousin Mary Ellen Johnson, also known as Mary Davis, who disappeared from the Tulalip Reservation in late 2020.

Johnson's husband reported her missing nearly two weeks after she was last seen Nov. 25 walking east on Fire Trail Road to a friend's house. Tulalip Tribal Police and the FBI's Seattle Field Office are investigating her disappearance.

The FBI is offering up to a $10,000 reward for information, and Tulalip tribal police and officials recently announced another $50,000 for information, Jimicum said.

Jimicum shared Johnson's story on behalf of Johnson's sisters, Nona Blouin and Gerry Davis, who couldn't attend the Thursday meeting but are planning a gathering on Dec. 9 on the Tulalip Reservation to raise awareness about Johnson in hopes of getting important breaks in her case.

"We miss our loved one and want her home safe and sound," Jimicum said.

Families appreciate the support of tribal and federal authorities to find their loved one, but that's not often the case, especially when adults disappear. The first time Nelson-Jerry's aunt went to police to report her missing, she was turned away after being told Nelson-Jerry was old enough to go missing if she wanted to, Fish said.

"Law enforcement has not shown compassion or haste in these cases," said Fish, who has also advocated for a relative who disappeared on the Yakama reservation and whose body was found more than a year later. Family members of Alice Ida Looney were able to bury her with proper respect and ceremony, but they still don't know how she died, or who may have killed her.

Yakama Nation

As task force members know, "Yakama Nation has the highest number of unsolved MMIW cases," said Athena Sanchey-Yallup, a member of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council and chairwoman of the council's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women committee.

Sanchey-Yallup is executive secretary of the new state task force. Efforts to address the crisis have included ongoing improvements to internal Yakama Nation policies and the revised Yakama code, she said. Sanchey-Yallup also mentioned a new effort to develop a Yakama Nation tribal community response plan in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice MMIP coordinator.

The Yakama Nation, she said, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in April, supporting Rep. Dan Newhouse's request that Operation Lady Justice - the Presidential task force on missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives - establish cold case office in Yakima.

"I certainly hope this comes true to assist our families and loved ones," Sanchey-Yallup said.

The need for increased training on how to navigate sensitive issues and reporting isn't optional, Sanchey-Yallup said. "It is critical to addressing the personal impacts of everyone affected as well as bringing justice to our loved ones."

She suggested a more comprehensive approach to the crisis by the tribe's federal partners. "Congress should also take steps to undo the unnecessary complicated judicial framework in Indian Country," Sanchey-Yallup said.

The tribe appreciates the work being done by the Washington State Patrol's tribal liaisons, Sanchey-Yallup said. That's made a difference, and so could the task force.

"We hope this task force will build upon this group's collective expertise in efforts to develop concrete actions that will have a meaningful impact in this important work of increasing security and safety for Native girls, women and men," she said.

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Washington task force on missing Indigenous people has big task ahead

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Every time Cowlitz tribal citizen Rosalie Fish introduces herself in her Indigenous language, she thinks of Kaylee Mae Nelson-Jerry, who vanished from Auburn in the summer of 2019.

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Join us in calling on the DOJ to investigate possible constitutional violations at Standing Rock and suspend use of federally supplied military equipment by police.

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The unique appearance of Bear Lodge (Devils Tower) has inspired many human connections to the site.
NPS photo

Devils Tower, the centerpiece of Devils Tower National Monument , rises high above the surrounding prairie in northeast Wyoming. This striking geologic feature is composed of phonolite porphyry, an uncommon igneous rock. The site is sacred to dozens of Native American tribes throughout the region, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone. Ancestors of these modern tribes developed origin stories in the form of sacred narratives, which have been passed down through oral traditions.

Different groups of indigenous people have different oral histories about the site. One Kiowa story tells of seven girls attacked by bears who were pushed into the sky by the rising Tower to become stars. A Cheyenne history speaks of seven brothers who rescue the oldest's wife from a giant bear. Arapaho oral traditions tell of a girl who morphed into a bear and attacked her family, leaving scratches on a giant rock.

The park website shares many of these traditional stories, compiled by a local historian in the 1930s. Common threads linking them together are the bear or bears which feature prominently in each, as well as the Tower being created by some supernatural force. Most indigenous names for the Tower reference a bear:

Arapaho - Bear's Tipi

Cheyenne - Bear's Lodge, Bear's House, Bear's Tipi, Bear Peak

Crow - Bear's House, Bear's Lair

Lakota - Bear Lodge, Grizzly Bear's Lodge

The name "Devils Tower" evokes strong emotions today. Indigenous groups agree that "Bear Lodge" is a more acceptable name which reflects their reverence for and connection with the site. Other stakeholders resist this movement to revert back to an original name. The origins of the name "Devils Tower" trace to an 1875 military expedition, although the reasons for the new name remain mired in controversy and uncertainty.

Regardless of what one may call it, the significance of the Tower to modern Native American tribes, and its links to bear culture in the Great Plains, remain strong in present day.

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Devils Tower or Bear Lodge? (U.S. National Park Service)

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Devils Tower, the centerpiece of Devils Tower National Monument , rises high above the surrounding prairie in northeast Wyoming. This striking geologic feature is composed of phonolite porphyry, an uncommon igneous rock. The site is sacred to dozens of Native American tribes throughout the region, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone.

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In January 1891, a group of U.S. Army soldiers marched past their general for a final review. Though their setting was a windswept, seemingly empty South Dakota valley, it was a festive occasion. Company after company paraded past, observed only by their general and small clusters of the people they had recently subdued.

Just a few weeks before, 500 of these marching men had massacred at least 300 Lakota men, women, and children. Twenty of the soldiers would soon receive the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest and most prestigious commendation, for their actions at Wounded Knee.

More than a century later, legislators and activists are calling on President Joe Biden to revoke the medals awarded to the soldiers who participated in the killings. Once touted as a victory against an intractable enemy, Wounded Knee is remembered today as an outright massacre.

(Subscriber exclusive: In the shadow of Wounded Knee.)

The origins of the Ghost Dance

The massacre at Wounded Knee was a reaction to a religious movement that gave fleeting hope to Plains Indians whose lives had been upended by white settlement. The Ghost Dance movement swept through Native American tribes in the American West beginning in the 1870s. It was based on a series of teachings by Paiute medicine men, who prophesied that an upcoming upheaval would lead to the eradication of white men from the Earth and the resurgence of Native Americans.

The movement quickly took on special significance for the Lakota people of North and South Dakota. Over the course of a few decades they had lost over 58 million acres of their land, and were forced to share what was left among multiple tribes and bands. By 1889, they had been split into five separate reservations in North and South Dakota. (Reckoning with a century of trauma at U.S. boarding schools for Native American children.)

The movement's adherents thought that songs and ceremonies could hasten the coming disaster, bring back their dead, and ensure the restoration of their lands. Lakota believers wore special shirts thought to repel bullets, while some experienced a hypnotic state brought on by the repetitive songs and shuffling, circular mass dances shared by followers.

'We need protection.'

But the Ghost Dancers' hopes were met with fear from white settlers, who worried the rituals would incite violence against them. Federal Indian agent Daniel F. Royer-jokingly nicknamed "Young Man Afraid of Indians" by the Lakota he had been hired to monitor-was one of them. In December 1890, Royer sent a desperate telegraph from Pine Ridge Reservation in the Badlands region of South Dakota to his bosses at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.

"Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy," he wrote. "We need protection, and we need it now."

American authorities on other Lakota reservations were also worried about the Ghost Dance's most prominent adherent, Chief Sitting Bull. In 1876, he had led the offensive against the U.S. Army and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand," in which Custer and all of his soldiers were killed.

Though technically a prisoner of war being held at the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota, Sitting Bull had been given special permission to travel the country as a performer, most famously with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show in 1885. But by the time Royer telegraphed his bosses in 1890, Sitting Bull was back at Standing Rock and had indicated he would permit Ghost Dancers to gather in his camp.

The war against the Ghost Dance

Convinced the movement posed a threat to whites, the U.S. Army banned Ghost Dance ceremonies on all reservations in December 1890 and began amassing troops across the region. The federal government had initially planned to have Buffalo Bill Cody try to convince Sitting Bull to make the dancers stand down. But Cody was intercepted enroute by Army officials and ordered to turn back. The U.S. Army now planned to arrest Sitting Bull instead.

On December 15, 1890, about 40 Native American policemen employed by the Indian Agency converged on Sitting Bull and attempted to take him into custody. When he resisted, a skirmish broke out and Bull Head, the police lieutenant, shot and killed Sitting Bull. Some of Sitting Bull's band fled in the night and headed to join the slain chief's half-brother, Chief Spotted Elk, at another reservation.

Convinced federal troops would kill more chiefs, Spotted Elk and his allies headed south to Pine Ridge in search of protection. But their pace was slowed by the weather and illnesses. On December 28, they encountered Army troops, who told them to head to Wounded Knee Creek. That night, as the Lakota made camp at Wounded Knee, about 500 soldiers surrounded the 300 or so men, women, and children.

Carnage at Wounded Knee Creek

The next morning, Colonel James W. Forsyth ordered the Lakota to lay down their weapons and told them they would be taken to a new camp. The Lakota assumed this meant they would be moved away from Lakota territory altogether. Some began to sing Ghost Dance songs.

The troops surrounding the Lakota had been taught that the Ghost Dance and its ceremonies were preludes to war. When one of the dancers took dirt from the ground and flung it in the air, the soldiers interpreted it as a signal of some kind and began firing.

The result was carnage. Though they fought back, the Lakota were at a numerical disadvantage and were outgunned, especially by the early machine guns used by some of the troops.

By the time the shooting stopped a few hours later, bodies were everywhere. Most, including babies and women, had been shot at close range. Some of the Lakota dead were found up to three miles away from the camp where the few who fled had been chased down.

The U.S. Army recovered its own dead, but left the Lakota victims to freeze during the three-day blizzard that followed. Before flinging the frozen bodies into a mass grave, many soldiers stripped the Lakota naked, saving their ghost shirts as souvenirs.

Twenty-five Army soldiers were killed during the fighting, many due to friendly fire. Though no reliable record of Lakota victims remains, contemporary historians estimate at least 300 were killed.

Battle or massacre?

As soon as word of the incident got out, people began to tussle over how to define what had happened at Wounded Knee. Forsyth was relieved of his command after the massacre. His conduct was investigated, but he defended his actions and was quickly reinstated. American newspapers that had breathlessly followed the amassing of troops in the Dakotas portrayed it as a necessary battle; local white settlers celebrated it as a victory over a warlike people.

"We had better, in order to protect our civilization...wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the earth," wrote South Dakota newspaperman L. Frank Baum, the future author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in response to the news.

Meanwhile, Native Americans, Lakota and otherwise, interpreted it as a sign that the U.S. government would stop at nothing to eradicate them. "I did not know then how much was ended," wrote Black Elk, a Lakota medicine man who survived the massacre. "The nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

It would be the last large skirmish in a century of armed conflict between Native Americans and American troops.

Should the Medals of Honor be revoked?

In 1891, the Army issued 20 Medals of Honor to soldiers who had participated in the atrocity.

Over the years, public opinion about the incident shifted as historians dug into the events surrounding the incident. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's 1970 history of how white Americans' actions along the frontier devastated Native Americans, sold millions of copies and turned Wounded Knee into a household name. And as part of the broader fight for Native American sovereignty, participants in the American Indian Movement called attention to the massacre, including during a 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee in which two activists were shot. (Learn more about the Red Power movement's fight for sovereignty.)

Wounded Knee became a rallying cry for activists as they pointed out how centuries of land theft, broken treaties, and forced assimilation affected Native Americans. In 1990 Congress formally apologized for the slaughter.

Calls to rescind the medals have grown louder. In January 2021, the South Dakota State Senate passed a bill that called on the U.S. Congress to open an official inquiry into the medals, and a group of U.S. lawmakers attempted to revive an earlier proposal to revoke the medals. Now, with that bill languishing in committee, they are calling on Biden to do it himself.

"You have the authority to revoke these medals immediately," wrote the lawmakers, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Kansas Congresswoman Sharice L. Davids, in a letter to the president on November 2, 2021. "It is well past time to remove this stain from our nation's history."

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What really happened at Wounded Knee, the site of a historic massacre

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In January 1891, a group of U.S. Army soldiers marched past their general for a final review. Though their setting was a windswept, seemingly empty South Dakota valley, it was a festive occasion. Company after company paraded past, observed only by their general and small clusters of the people they had recently subdued.

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"A watchtower near the Grand Canyon's east entrance is adorned with murals panted by Fred Kabotie and Fred Geary." AZCENTRAL.com 10/7/19

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A few books and articles from this semester and previous classes. Once again, writing is another art form of working outside the capitalist society.

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This is an excerpt of "Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health," reprinted with permission from the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.
Even before the 20th century, what "climate change" refers to in English was not a new or profound concept for many Indigenous peoples. Indeed, many Indigenous peoples have ancient traditions of governance and political philosophies that seek to understand how peoples should be organized to be most adaptive to seasonal environmental changes and to keep track of trends in interannual variations in environmental conditions. I have had the chance to experience and learn from Indigenous calendars, seasonal rounds and almanacs throughout the world. More recently, in collaboration with Jared Talley, I have reviewed large, often forgotten literatures on Indigenous adaptive governance, from Anishinaabe seasonal rounds to Lakota winter counts, to Nuu-chah-Nulth potlatch traditions, to Aztec and Mayan calendars.

Each example I have seen usually involves very detailed understandings of how societal institutions - from ceremonies to harvesting and food storage, to political leadership, to gender relations - should be designed to support resilience in the face of inevitable annual seasonal changes and interannual trends. Significantly, Indigenous peoples used very different concepts to understand what is today called "climate." Outside Indigenous traditions, "climate" is often taken to be an abstract notion tied to Earth-scale changes that are, in a sense, invisible to humans. Indigenous calendars or seasonal rounds, quite differently, track environmental change through the actions of humans and nonhumans - actions situated within ceremonial, ethical, political, conservational and other types of responsibilities that work to create accountability across human and nonhuman members of a society.

We know historically that Indigenous peoples learned to adapt to a certain range of changes, but that many also had to experience more disruptive shocks that are hard to recover from without incurring harms, such as malnutrition, painful geographic displacement, disease and violent conflict. The transatlantic fur trade of the 16th through 19th centuries is one case. Michael Witgen, Susan Sleeper-Smith and other historians have shown how Anishinaabe/Neshnabé peoples responded in ways that strengthened their sovereignty and well-being while also being harmed severely over time by environmental degradation, racism, violence, patriarchy, economic marginalization and forced displacement.

Specific Indigenous groups and Indigenous initiatives have been at the forefront of calling out climate change risks.

Fast-forward to the present: numerous Indigenous testimonies and scientific reports claim that Indigenous peoples are among the populations that face the most risks and will suffer the most harms from anthropogenic climate change. Importantly, impacts on food are perhaps the most commonly discussed topics. I contributed to a health-focused USGCRP [U.S. Global Change Research Program] report that discusses climate risks to Indigenous peoples' "food safety and security," including decreasing access to berries (Arctic), moose and wild rice (Great Lakes), water for farming (Southwest), and shellfish and fish (coastal regions), among other examples. Damage to infrastructure from climate change threatens food storage and preparation.

Critically, the report discusses how loss of access to traditional foods threatens economic vitality, cultural integrity and political sovereignty. I interpret the report as tying these risks and harms to U.S. colonialism, in terms of how land dispossession and failed implementation of treaty rights affect peoples' capacity to steward the environment. Moreover, the risks and harms are particularly challenging in contexts where Indigenous nations, societies and communities are already negotiating historical and personal trauma, alcohol abuse, suicide, high infant and child mortality, diabetes and unsafe levels of exposure to pollutants or toxic substances.

Specific Indigenous groups and Indigenous initiatives have been at the forefront of calling out climate change risks. The Northwest Treaty Tribes have launched an initiative called Treaty Rights at Risk. The initiative discusses how the U.S. federal government continues to violate treaty rights by endorsing activities that permit U.S. settlers to establish their own ways of life in western Washington at the expense of Indigenous peoples' ways of life, which heavily involve salmon but also other treaty-protected plants and animals. Dams, intensive agriculture, urban development, industrial pollution and other land-use practices, including recreational activities, are among the actions that advance settlers' aspirations at the same time that they degrade the habitats of salmon and other species.

Warming waters, ocean acidification and other climate change effects exacerbate these threats to salmon and shellfish populations. The initiative references how closely salmon, for example, is related to economic vitality and cultural integrity. One ceremony, often referred to as a potlatch ceremony, involves people giving away their wealth in salmon to others, accompanied by intertribal treaty talks and cultural performances. The late Billy Frank Jr. stated "as the salmon disappear, our tribal cultures, communities and economies are threatened as never before. . . . Some of our tribes have lost even their most basic ceremonial and subsistence fisheries - the cornerstone of Tribal life."

The Mohawk Nation, which straddles the U.S.-Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River, has a long track record of working to clean up massive industrial pollution in that region. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe is a leader in climate change planning thanks to the work of Mary Arquette and Angela Benedict, among others. One of the issues their climate change plan focuses on is the Three Sisters, "the corn, beans and squash" that supported survival and "sustained life" and continues to be important to Mohawk people today. The plan states, "The Three Sisters are the foundation of the Haudenosaunee culture. Ceremonies are to be concluded with the Three Sisters as an offering to the spirit beings."

Though agriculture centered around the Three Sisters had long been a major economic activity for Mohawk people, the rise in industrial agricultural and rampant pollution from General Motors and Alcoa facilities weakened the production of abundant, nutritious and culturally significant foods. Relative to climate change, the plan states how the Three Sisters are further threatened by recent hailstorms; higher temperatures; droughts; and increases in pests, weeds, and diseases. According to the plan document, these changes affect not only food production but also cultural integrity.

In addition to honoring the environment through ceremonies, humans engaged in burning practices to maintain habitats, among other stewardship practices.

The Karuk Tribe in what is now called California has also been a leader in preparing for climate change, having recently issued its own climate change plan. The Karuk plan emphasizes a range of species as historically and contemporaneously important to them for nutritional, economic and cultural reasons - including salmon, deer and a variety of nuts and berries. Karuk people relate to many of these species spiritually by understanding themselves as bound together through reciprocal responsibilities. In addition to honoring the environment through ceremonies, humans engaged in burning practices to maintain habitats, among other stewardship practices. U.S. colonialism in California degraded the environment, outlawed practices such as burning, and dispossessed Karuk people of large portions of their lands and water.

Today, the Karuk plan states, "From a Karuk perspective, continuance of these traditional lifeways and practices is essential not only for food, but for the maintenance of traditional knowledge, cultural and tribal identity, pride, self-respect, and above all, basic human dignity." As climate change creates further threats to the maintenance and resurgence of these relationships and practices, the Karuk people have created a knowledge sovereignty plan that seeks to strengthen both traditional knowledge and also their self-determined use and application of scientific techniques from Western institutions.

While these examples focus on Turtle Island/North America, Indigenous peoples globally very much emphasize food in their climate change work. The Tebtebba organization's guide on climate change and Indigenous peoples discusses a range of issues and consequences on Indigenous peoples living in different regions of Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. For example, the recent climate change report discusses how "massive floods, strong hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, and storm surges" affect "forests, agricultural lands, crops, livestock, marine, and coastal resources." The guide references a range of food insecurity issues related to climate change effects on freshwater, coral reefs and mangroves, spawning beds for fish, and agricultural lands. It cites the "disappearance of plant and animal species that have sustained indigenous peoples as subsistence food sources or as essential to their ceremonial life" and how "traditional livelihoods ranging from rotational agriculture, hunting and gathering, pastoralism, high montane livestock and agriculture . . . rain fed agriculture, bird migrations used to guide hunters and mark agricultural seasons" are being lost, along with "availability of drinking water."

Again, here we see food as a vector for discussing climate change. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz states, "Climate change poses a serious threat to the rights of self-determination and development . . . as well as the rights to food, water, land, territories, resources, and traditional livelihoods and cultures."

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How US colonialism affects Indigenous peoples' stewardship and access to food | Greenbiz

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This is an excerpt of "Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health," reprinted with permission from the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved. Even before the 20th century, what "climate change" refers to in English was not a new or profound concept for many Indigenous peoples.

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The use of social media especially as a method of crowdsourcing and permitting community resilience is important in the digital world. This column represents mutual aid and social media as a resource for activism

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What’s Going On In Indian Country December 17-24

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’Tis the week before Christmas, and all through Indian Country, last-minute shopping, stress-relieving comedy, charismatic cover girls, and contemporary Arapaho art are all on the year-end agenda.

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Dear Qallunaat,

We have been living in the same Nunavut cities and towns for some time now. In fact, the collective relationship is sometimes held up as innovative governance and Inuit self-determination. Yet, you, the non-Inuit in our territory, rarely reflect that assumption, rather, the opposite. I have thought a lot about the level of damage having a highly transient, mostly white population, does to Nunavut. The indifference to social conditions, the policy inertia, and all the collective microaggressions that maintain an impoverished Inuit population . (I think these trends are palpable on other Indigenous territories as well).

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Dear Qallunaat: Racism, Public Government and Inuit Nunanga - Yellowhead Institute

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In the era of Inuit self-government, non-Inuit seem to talk up a lot of space and racism remains an issue. In this Yellowhead Brief, Sandra Inutiq offers advice in the form of 21 tips how true allyship and how non-Inuit can improve the relationship

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Xiuhtezcatl - Take It All Back (Official Video)

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MISHONGNOVI - At the base of a sandstone mesa, the ground descends in a series of stone terraces and steps, forming an oval-shaped ceremonial gathering place with flat rocks arranged around a central pit. At the bottom, a pool of water shimmers in the sun.

This natural spring, called Toreva Spring, is a sacred place for Hopi people. For centuries, they have held religious ceremonies here while looking into its serene waters.

When he was a boy, Howard Dennis sat by the water during ceremonies and dangled his feet in the cool spring.

"See that little ledge right there? At the bottom, that's how high it used to be," Dennis said, motioning to the dry edge of the pit.

Over the past four decades, he said, the water level in the spring has dropped 8 to 10 feet.

Water still percolates out of the ground and pools in the lower portion of the spring. But Dennis fears the spring could eventually go dry, taking away the essential heart of this religious site.

The Hopi have lived for thousands of years on the mesas of the Colorado Plateau. Flowing springs and seeps have sustained them, providing sources where they have collected drinking water, grown corn and beans, and maintained a spiritual connection to life-giving water.

But the springs are dwindling. Some are completely dry.

Looking down at Toreva Spring, Dennis said he hopes the remaining water doesn't vanish.

"Without us having this water source here, how are we going to continue to practice our religion?" Dennis said. "Our whole religion is water-based. And without this water being here, if it was ever to disappear - which I hope it doesn't - where will we go? How will we continue our religion? How will we be a people?"

The Hopi Tribe's lands in northeastern Arizona, like other areas of the Southwest, have been drying out during years of persistent drought and rising temperatures. Scientists call it aridification. Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is driving up temperatures and intensifying dry spells. When conditions are drier, less runoff seeps into the ground to replenish the aquifers and the springs.

The declining springs have also figured in long-running disputes over coal mining and the effects of groundwater pumping on aquifers beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservations. Over the past half century, Peabody Energy Corp. pumped tens of billions of gallons from the aquifer that supplies drinking water for the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation.

For years, many tribal members have voiced fears that the extraction of water is affecting the ancient reserves of groundwater, reducing underground sources that feed springs.

Bitter disagreements over the environmental effects of the coal mining operations at Black Mesa have continued after the two mines were shut down, one in 2005 and the other in 2019. Since the mines closed, groundwater pumping dramatically decreased. Even so, some Hopi people who opposed the coal industry say they're still deeply worried about the potential long-term effects on their aquifers.

Dennis is involved in environmental groups such as Living Rivers, Waterkeeper Alliance and Black Mesa Trust, and has for years advocated for protecting water on Hopi lands. He offered to show me the springs to explain the changes he's seen and the threats these water sources face.

Dennis belongs to the Squash Clan and his Hopi name is Bahyouma, which means Water Running - or more specifically, as he puts it, water running over the earth, like when rain falls and water runs, or when snow melts and water runs.

He is 55 and serves as a mongwi, a local religious leader in his village, Mishongnovi, which sits on top of Second Mesa overlooking Toreva Spring.

As part of his religious responsibilities, Dennis leads the village's flute society. During ceremonies, the flutes harmonize with shaking rattles and singing. People offer prayers for all living things, for rain, for their corn crops to flourish.

Over the years, people from the community have periodically gathered at the spring to clean it, removing mud and vegetation.

Following Hopi spiritual beliefs, Dennis makes prayer-feather sticks called pahos and lays them down at different springs.

"I see a lot of change in them," Dennis told me. "Seeing these things start to disappear, it's really affecting us."

Dennis sat under a shady tree beside the spring, the breeze rustling in the leaves. He said troubling questions have been on his mind, including what would happen if the springs dry up, and what the Hopi would do.

"It's been on my mind for a while," he said, pausing. "It hurts."

"But I think, all in all, that we were the first, and we'll be the last," Dennis said. "We have to keep our religion going. That's what Hopi is about."

Much of the Southwest has grown drier during one of the most severe droughts ever recorded. Scientists say the dry spell in the West over the past two decades ranks as one of the biggest "megadroughts" of the past 1,200 years, and unlike the decades-long droughts of the past, this one is being intensified by global warming.

The Hopi Reservation has had many dry years since the late 1990s. As the land has become parched, people have noticed the desert vegetation becoming sparser, the greenness fading.

On farm plots where families rely on moisture from snow and rain, they've seen their rows of corn stunted by dryness. Some plants have shriveled in the heat.

The Hopis' crops have also withered in spring-fed gardens on the sides of the mesas. These garden plots have been planted for generations on terraced fields next to springs.

In the past, Hopi people traditionally collected water in round pottery canteens, wrapped them in cloth and slung them over their backs. To sustain their gardens, they scooped up water and poured it into channels running to the fields.

At a spring on the rocky flank of Second Mesa, people still descend the stone steps and carry buckets of water to their gardens. Around this walk-in source, the ground descends in a sloping depression reinforced with stone walls. At the bottom of the steps, a dark green pool glistens.

The Hopi call the spring Lemeva and consider it a sacred site.

On one plot by the spring, Dennis planted seeds this year with his wife, as they have for many years. They grew corn, squash, beans and watermelon. They were able to harvest some of the crops, but the plants withered in the heat when temperatures hit the 100s.

They managed to harvest a corn crop from other rain-fed fields nearby.

Standing beside shriveled corn plants in the garden, Dennis motioned to a spot where fruit trees once stood with peaches and pears. Now the trees are gone.

"They all dried out," Dennis said. "It used to be better a long time ago."

The water level in the spring has also declined over the years, Dennis said. Since his childhood, there has been "a definite change."

Yet people still come to this spring and others to collect water to use in ceremonies.

In their religious beliefs, the Hopi see profound connections between themselves, these water sources and all life. As Dennis put it, "We're all water."

But with fewer springs flowing, Dennis said he's concerned there is less water to support life.

"We see the lack of bees and the other insects that used to be here," he said. "We don't see the amount of vegetation that there used to be."

Dennis said he keeps Lemeva and all the springs in his prayers.

"We can't let her die," he told me. "We keep praying."

On another sweltering day, we visited Lemeva during a tour of water sources with representatives of the Hopi tribal government.

Max Taylor, a technician with the Water Resources Program, explained that this spring has been used for over a thousand years.

"Some of the old archaeological sites around here indicate it's been here for a long time," Taylor said, standing beside the spring. "It's still pretty actively used."

Taylor is a lifelong farmer and rancher who has worked at springs for the tribe carrying out what he calls "renovation" projects. The work often involves removing invasive plants or protecting a water source by fencing it off to protect it from livestock.

From a vantage point on top of the mesa, Taylor looked out across the rock faces and pointed to a green streak running down the lower slope.

"There's a spring there, too," he said. "There's a lot of springs in this area."

Most of the springs that flow from the mesas depend on weather conditions, Taylor said.

"You get your rain and snow, and they'll infiltrate through the rocks and cracks and then come out as a spring," Taylor said. "There's been a lot less snow, a lot less rain, so these springs are slowly drying up."

Duane Humeyestewa, Hopi filmmaker

As a people, how do you respond to it when the environment and your landscape that you've grown up in is changing and shifting?

Many people here have noticed the climate getting drier and water sources diminishing. In places on the Navajo Nation, people say springs where they once led sheep to drink have been drying up.

Duane Humeyestewa, a Hopi filmmaker, said he remembers as a boy climbing in those fruit trees by Lemeva Spring to pick peaches and small, tart apples.

"It is so super dry," Humeyestewa said, motioning to the bare soil in the gardens. "It feels like a drier desert."

As a boy, he rode with his grandfather in an old pickup to the spring, where they filled buckets to bring water home. Growing up, Humeyestewa was taught to take the minimal amount of water needed, just for the essentials, a principle ingrained in cultural values based on harmony with the natural world.

Now, that balance seems to be slipping off-kilter.

"As a people, how do you respond to it when the environment and your landscape that you've grown up in is changing and shifting?" Humeyestewa said.

In addition to seeing symptoms of climate change, many Hopi people say they're deeply concerned about what has occurred with the groundwater beneath their lands.

Their concerns center on Black Mesa, a tableland that rises north of the Hopi villages and that lies partly in the Navajo Reservation and partly in the Hopi Reservation. The 5,400-square-mile area includes Black Mesa itself, with its 2,000-foot cliffs, as well as other mesas, plains, hills and canyons.

At Black Mesa in the late 1960s, wells and pumps began pulling vast quantities of water from the Navajo Aquifer, also called the N Aquifer, to support the extraction of coal and send electricity across the Southwest.

The Hopi and Navajo tribal councils signed leases allowing mining, and in 1968 Peabody Western Coal Co. started strip-mining at Black Mesa.

For nearly four decades, the coal industry accounted for 63% of the groundwater pumped from the aquifer, according to government figures. From 1972 through 2005, an average of more than 1.3 billion gallons were drawn from the aquifer per year.

Much of the water was mixed with coal at Black Mesa Mine to form a slurry mixture, which was sent through a 275-mile pipeline to the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, producing power for Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. A second operation at the Kayenta Mine sent coal by railway to fuel the Navajo Generating Station in Page.

Some tribal members vehemently opposed the coal industry's use of water, and disputes over the environmental impacts have been intertwined with their deep mistrust of the company and government regulators.

The history of how water and coal were extracted from Black Mesa includes a well-documented case of deceit and betrayal.

In the 1960s, the Hopi Tribe's leaders trusted Salt Lake City attorney John Boyden to represent them. Based on Boyden's advice, the Hopi agreed to the coal-mining lease and began selling water to support the operation.

What Boyden didn't reveal was that at the same time, he was also working for Peabody.

Vernon Masayesva, founder and director of Black Mesa Trust

In the Western mind, water is a commodity - that's the word for it - which can be put to what they call beneficial uses. And beneficial use all boils down to money, greed.

His double representation was discovered by University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson, who in 1992 received a call from his research assistant saying papers released after Boyden's death revealed he had been representing Peabody - an egregious ethical violation that critics of the deals had long suspected.

Wilkinson told the story of how Boyden worked both sides and convinced the Hopi Tribe to accept unfavorable deals in his 1999 book " Fire on the Plateau: Conflict and Endurance in the American Southwest."

Wilkinson described a period of "conquest" from 1955-75 that he called the "Big Buildup," in which leaders in cities from Phoenix to Las Vegas to Los Angeles "organized a concerted campaign for the rapid, wholesale development of the energy and water of the Colorado Plateau."

This Big Buildup "made the modern Southwest" and fueled rapid growth, he wrote, but had consequences for the tribes, who "leased their coal and water at prices far below market value."

In the 1960s, plans took shape to buildthe Central Arizona Project Canal to bring Colorado River water to desert cities.And those plans depended on coal from Black Mesa.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1968 law authorizing construction of the CAP Canal, the legislation said the Navajo Generating Station would send 24% of its electricity to run the pumps of the CAP. The coal-fired power pushed water uphill and sent it flowing to support booming growth in Phoenix, Tucson and surrounding areas.

As mining operations expanded, other conflicts led to upheaval. In 1974, Congress passed the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, which redrew reservation boundaries to address a long-standing dispute. The legislation led to the forced relocation of thousands of people, most of them Navajos.

By the 1990s, some Hopi were voicing concerns that the tribe had gotten a raw deal, saying they believed the groundwater pumping was drying up springs and reducing flows in washes.

Former tribal chairman Vernon Masayesva was one of those who spoke out about these concerns. In 1998, Masayesva founded the nonprofit group Black Mesa Trust to press for protecting the waters beneath Hopi lands.

He argued the water extraction was doing lasting damage and affecting the flow of springs. His arguments put him at odds not only with the company but also with government scientists and federal regulators.

Masayesva said he thinks government officials and scientists view the issues with a "Western mindset."

"In the Western mind, water is a commodity - that's the word for it - which can be put to what they call beneficial uses," Masayesva said in an interview. "And beneficial use all boils down to money, greed."

He said while government regulators have used studies to make determinations about the impacts of pumping, "they never really have studied the springs."

And even if there were more studies of springs, Masayesva said, the regulators wouldn't take Hopi knowledge seriously.

"That's where we're at. That's why we are playing a ballgame in their playing field, playing by their regulations," Masayesva said. "And how can we possibly have justice in this unfair setting? To Hopi, water is not a commodity. It's life. It's sacred."

For Masayesva and other Hopi who campaigned for shutting off Peabody's wells, their struggle began to shift as the coal industry encountered headwinds.

In 2005, the Mohave Generating Station was shut down in a legal agreement with environmentalists, who had sued over air pollution. The Black Mesa Minealso closed.

In 2017, Masayesva praised the announcement that Navajo Generating Station would be shut down after two years. He said in a statement that "the price for allowing industrial use of pristine drinking water has been unconscionably high."

Peabody Energy Corp. maintains that the effects of its water use at Black Mesa were negligible.

"Use of water is governed through lease agreements, and studies demonstrate there have been no adverse impacts to municipal water supplies, springs or streams from the mine's minimal water use," Stephanie Weiler, the company's communications director, said in an email. "In addition, Peabody is in compliance with all permit requirements."

Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have been monitoring the effects of groundwater pumping in the area. Their studies say that from 1968 through 2016, Peabody's wells drained more than 49 billion gallons from the N Aquifer.

In a 2018 report, USGS hydrologists described declines in groundwater levels in the Black Mesa area using measurements from monitoring wells. Comparing the 2016 water levels with the "prestress period" prior to 1965, they found the median change in 32 wells was a decline of 10 feet, while half the wells saw a larger median drop of about 36 feet.

The hydrologists have monitored the flow of four springs, a small fraction of the many springs scattered across Hopi lands. They've found that two of the four springs showed a trend of decreasing flow, while the other two had either fluctuated or remained relatively constant.

The USGS studies have focused on the N Aquifer, which supplied the coal industry and also provides drinking water for towns and villages.

Runoff from rain and snow slowly recharges the aquifer north of Black Mesa, and much of the water has been underground for thousands of years. A deep, thick portion of the aquifer sits beneath the coal-mining areas. To the south, the aquifer thins out and eventually reaches the surface, like the lip of a bowl, in low-lying washes south of the Hopi mesas.

Much of the aquifer holds water under pressure, confined between rock layers. Above it sits another separate aquifer, the Dakota Aquifer, from which government regulators said a "limited" amount was pumped for a time by Peabody's wells.

Above that aquifer and a layer of shale lies an upper aquifer in the Hopi mesas called the Toreva Sandstone Aquifer.

The USGS doesn't collect information about springs fed from this upper aquifer, such as Toreva Spring, because based on the geology, this water is thought to be separated by rock layers and not connected to the deeper aquifer, said Jon Mason, a USGS hydrologist.

This perspective hasn't convinced Masayesva and other Hopi people who strongly believe the pumping has affected their springs.

"In our worldview, all waters - rivers, groundwaters, glaciers, whatever - they're all interconnected, because Earth is like a human body, and we survive with all the hundreds of bloodlines circulating through all of our body," Masayesva said. "Based on that disturbance of a huge amount of water underground, which is highly pressurized, it affects the flow of the blood, these springs."

Masayesva also suspects the groundwater drawdown has had an effect in increasing the concentration of toxic arsenic in the drinking water in Hopi communities. The water in portions of the reservation contains levels of naturally occurring arsenic exceeding the federal drinking water limit, but Masayesva said no study has been done examining how the pumping might have affected arsenic levels.

At the end of 2005, Peabody reduced its groundwater pumping by about 70% when it shut down the coal-slurry pipeline. According to USGS data, that reduced the total amount of groundwater pumped in the Black Mesa area by about 44% in subsequent years.

With less pumping occurring, water levels in some wells - even miles away - have stabilized and slowly begun to rise.

Masayesva said one important chapter remains in his fight "before we shut the books" on Black Mesa: the reclamation process to restore the lands and waters after the mining.

To understand the disagreements over mine cleanup, it helps to know that Masayesva and other Hopi people have long accused the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, or OSM, of failing in its regulatory responsibilities.

"OSM, the regulatory agency, treats Peabody like a special customer," Masayesva said. "They do everything according to what Peabody wants."

Together with former Hopi Chairman Benjamin Nuvamsa, Masayesva wrote to the agency in June to demand action, saying Peabody has "effectively ignored" its reclamation obligations at Kayenta Mine and Black Mesa Mine.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, raised similar concerns with OSM, saying in a letter that "Peabody is seeking to conduct reclamation more slowly, and the public has been nearly shut out of the process."

Lanny Erdos, then the agency's deputy director, said in his response that Peabody is "in compliance" with its current five-year plan and that his agency continues to "review and process all proposed permit revisions."

The two former Hopi chairmen made their argument in an Oct. 6 article in the Navajo-Hopi Observer, saying the agency "has failed to come close to meeting its obligation to ensure reclamation of either mine."

They said the agency has a duty to ensure that waters damaged by mining, including groundwater and springs, are restored. The reclamation plans for the mines, however, do not include any plan to replenish the groundwater that was extracted.

"When the deal to begin coal mining on Black Mesa was crafted in the 1960s, officials assured us we would gain enormous wealth," Nuvamsa and Masayesva wrote. "Now, after a half century of providing cheap coal and water to power growth and prosperity in places like Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, we can see the emptiness of that promise."

They recalled how the attorney Boyden had convinced Hopi leaders to sign the original coal deal through deception. And they pointed out that decades later, many Hopi people haven't seen financial benefits and still live in poverty, many without electricity or running water.

"Unless we act now, by demanding a significant revision to Peabody's permit, the spoils of over 50 years of mining will remain a mess," they wrote, urging the tribe's leaders to demand that Peabody be held accountable.

When asked about those concerns, Peabody responded that the reclamation process is on track.

"We are engaged in monitoring and compliance work at Kayenta as we work toward final reclamation, which we expect to be a multiyear process," Weiler said.

For decades, the coal industry brought revenues and jobs to the Hopi and the Navajo. With the end of mining, those economic benefits are drying up.

The utility Arizona Public Service recently proposed a " Just Energy Transition" plan that would provide $144 million to help the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe and the Joseph City area transition their economies away from coal to new industries. The proposal includes $3.7 million for the Hopi Tribe over the next five years.

Daniel Higgins, environmental scientist

They pumped far more groundwater than they said they were ever going to. Water level decline at distant wells is greater than they said it was going to be.

As for the tribe's water supplies, federal regulators have sided with the company in finding no red flags. In a June report, the Office of Surface Mining analyzed data from wells and a groundwater flow model to assess whether there has been "material damage to the hydrologic balance outside the permit area." The agency concluded that material damage to the aquifer "has not occurred."

Nuvamsa strongly disagreed with that conclusion. For one thing, he said, the N Aquifer holds "Ice Age water" that will take hundreds of years to recharge.

"That's why I think that there is material damage, significant damage to the water table, for not only Hopi but Navajo communities as well," Nuvamsa said. "It has a direct impact on our springs."

At one spring, which Nuvamsa believes is fed by the Dakota Aquifer, people from his village, Shungopavi, occasionally gather for ceremonies.

Over the past several years, with the spring mostly dry, they've resorted to hauling water to the spring in tanks mounted on trucks. Before the ceremonies, they've let the water run from the tanks into the spring.

"We've had those springs for, like, forever. And then to have to do that, it's not good," Nuvamsa said. "That is so painful and sad."

Masayesva said he doesn't trust OSM's conclusions and wants independent scientists to take a deeper look.

Environmental scientist Daniel Higgins, in research since the mid-2000s, has found that Peabody's mining operations have consumed more groundwater and caused a greater decline in the aquifer than the company had stated in its initial plans. He submitted his research findings in comments to government regulators in 2011.

"They pumped far more groundwater than they said they were ever going to," Higgins said in an interview. "Water level decline at distant wells is greater than they said it was going to be."

In its reports, Higgins noted, Peabody said the drawdown of groundwater wouldn't have significant impacts in areas around the Hopi villages. But Higgins said the data indicates otherwise.

He pointed to USGS data for wells in the village of Kykotsmovi and Keams Canyon, where over the past several years water levels have begun to rise after decades of steady declines - indicating the drop-off of mine-related pumping has eased the pressures, even on wells located nearly 40 miles away.

Higgins works as a water management consultant and leads a nonprofit group called Resilience Outreach. He has criticized OSM's approach, saying the agency has repeatedly weakened its own regulatory thresholds.

"There's a clear pattern of regulatory decision-making that has served to ensure that mining continues without interruption rather than prioritizing the protection of the Hopi Tribe and Navajo Nation's water resources," Higgins said. "They keep moving the goalposts."

For example, in 1989 OSM established damage thresholds for protecting groundwater, springs and streams, Higgins said, but later changed the thresholds three times.

OSM didn't respond to emails requesting comments.

Higgins said the agency has relied heavily on a groundwater model designed by Peabody's consultants.

He said there hasn't been enough monitoring of springs, and without measurements of flows over time, the potential effects of the groundwater drawdown on many springs haven't been tracked.

Dennis said he believes multiple factors are affecting the springs, including global warming, pumping for the coal industry and pumping from other wells.

He has spoken out against Peabody's use of the aquifer and has criticized what he calls unfair government decisions related to the mining operation.

Several years ago, he traveled to the company's headquarters in St. Louis to try to speak with representatives, "but they wouldn't talk to us."

To collect his thoughts, Dennis jotted down a few paragraphs with pencil and paper, then read them aloud to me.

"As Peabody pumped great amounts of pristine water from the N Aquifer, untold damages were being created. Many springs have gone dry," Dennis said. "It saddens me and many other Hopi religious people that our springs are not healthy. There are springs with great religious significance. What will the people do when they are dry? I feel that now comes a time when we have to find a solution."

When Dennis was a boy, he went with his mother to a spring where they filled metal cans. They loaded the water onto a burro and brought it home.

Dennis and his family still don't have running water in their village, so they collect water at a windmill. They fill plastic jugs at the spigot and load them into their car.

The tribal government, using federal funds, has plans to build a pipeline and other infrastructure to expand water access on the reservation.

Dennis said he'd like to see more water collection points built so people could fill up closer to home.

Some Hopi talk about how years of water extraction helped light up cities and sent water flowing to make the desert bloom. They say when they visit Phoenix and see swimming pools and lush golf courses, they think about how the Hopi have paid dearly for that bounty with their own water, leaving their lands with less.

Among some Hopi, there is a sense that a precious resource has been taken away and that they deserve to regain some of what they've lost.

"I know that we were really unjustly done," Dennis said.

He said he hopes to see the injustices addressed one day. And he offered a hypothetical idea: What if people in Arizona's cities could choose to donate an extra few cents on their utility bills to help the Hopi?

"It's time for somebody to pay a little bit back to help out the people back here," Dennis said.

He said he also thinks the Hopi Tribe should gain access to more water. If the tribe could tap into the Colorado River, for example, infrastructure could be built to use the water to replenish the N Aquifer.

The Hopi are also concerned about the effects of groundwater pumping on springs that emerge from deep aquifers and gush out of the canyon walls along the Little Colorado River. Some of their most sacred places lie along the river, including Siipa'pu ( also called Siipa'puni), a revered site with a flowing spring that the Hopi consider their place of emergence into this world.

Dennis and other Hopi have seen the flow of the Little Colorado River diminish, and they worry that pumping by landowners around the area is affecting springs along the river.

Long ago, the Hopi ranged widely across the Southwest. They left petroglyphs and pictographs on rocks telling of events in their history, how they lived and what they valued. In these images, they spoke of deities, clouds, animals, plants, water and springs, among other things.

Hopis say their ancient ancestors traveled on migrations as clans before settling on the mesas.

They say the Hisat'sinom, or the ancient ones, included the Ancestral Puebloans, who centuries ago built cliffside dwellings in Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly, and who left these villages by about 1300 following severe decades-long droughts.

When their reservation was established by the U.S. government in 1882, the Hopi ended up with only a small portion of their traditional lands, cut off from streams and rivers where their ancestors had roamed for millennia.

Leaders of the Hopi Tribe have been trying for years to clarify their rights to water from the Little Colorado. This year, the tribe's leaders returned to court in a case that will determine their rights to water in the Little Colorado River basin.

Securing additional water will be critical given the stresses on groundwater and the shift to a hotter, drier climate, said Jarrett Calnimptewa, manager of the tribe's Water Resources Program.

"If climate change is still going to continue the way it is, where we're not getting the rainfall for recharging the N Aquifer, we have to look for other sources of water," Calnimptewa said. "And that would have to come from sources outside of the reservation."

The Hopi have traditionally collected water not only from springs but also from cisterns carved into sandstone on the tops of the mesas.

Long ago, people hollowed out depressions and holes in the solid rock, creating storage spaces for rainwater. They used the natural contours of the rock, selecting a low point and carving out a symmetrical chamber beneath a gaping hole.

On the sloping ground around each cistern, they used cracks in the rock to capture rivulets and carved channels to carry runoff from rain and melting snow, sending the water trickling through the opening into the chamber.

Beside the centuries-old village of Oraibi, these cisterns remain, obscured in brush. They now sit empty.

Beatrice Norton, who is 69, said she remembers that during her childhood the cisterns had plenty of water. People would lower a bucket on a rope, scoop up the water and fill jugs.

Norton followed her grandmother, who used metal milk cans and wheeled them home in a wooden wagon.

"Sometimes they would really fill up because rainfall was plentiful a long time ago," Norton said. "But now, it hardly ever rains."

Visiting her clan's cistern, she leaned over the opening - a square shaft with rounded corners - and peered into the darkness. At the muddy bottom, about 10 feet down, three snakes sat tangled and motionless, unable to escape.

The last time she collected water here was more than a decade ago, she said.

"I feel sad when I come here, to see the way it is," Norton said.

Most of the time, the cistern lies covered with an old box spring to prevent animals from falling in.

When she was growing up, people from the village would clean out the cisterns once a year. They would pull shrubs from the cracks to help the waters run. They would lay down prayer feathers.

Norton, who serves as chairperson of her village board, said she wants to maintain these traditions.

"We can clean it out," she said, "and then the men folks will make a prayer feather."

Just like those cisterns were once full to the brim, Dennis said he remembers a deep pool at the bottom of Toreva Spring.

"When we had our ceremony, we'd sit in there. And your legs would be in the water," Dennis said.

A glimpse of that wetter past was captured in 1905, when photographer Edward S. Curtis made an image of people gathered at the spring for a ceremony, some sitting on a ledge, reflected in the wide pool.

Now those days seem as distant as the history of the old stone schoolhouse next to the spring, which has been closed and empty for decades. The school once had a pump that sent spring water to its faucets.

"That was how much water there used to be here, a lot," Dennis said. "Now everything is drying up."

He offered to show us another spring and we drove to Keams Canyon.

At the end of a dirt road, the desert brush turned to thick vegetation. Reeds sprouted from a pond, fed by a stream.

A spring flowed from underneath a rock face, forming a swirling puddle where bees hovered.

"This whole area has good water," Dennis said. He picked some mint and smelled the fragrance.

His wife, Colleen Seletstewa, gathered a handful of mint. She also picked cattails, saying the plant is hard to find and she needs it for ceremonies.

"Wow, and they are big!" she exclaimed.

Dennis walked on past the cattails, around the pond.

"I like how the water runs down and it trickles down and it feeds everything down along the way," Dennis said. "It gives us hope. It gives us inspiration to keep our religion going, not to give up."

When he was younger, he said, water sources around his village teemed with life like this.

"There's not too many healthy springs anymore," he said. "A lot of them are dry."

Sometimes, Dennis goes to visit springs that have dried up. He finds the spaces in the rocks where water once ran. He still has hope that the springs may come back.
Ian James is a reporter with The Arizona Republic who focuses on climate change, water and the environment in the Southwest. Send him story tips, comments and questions at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com and follow him on Twitter at @ByIanJames.
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Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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'Everything is drying up': As springs on Hopi land decline, a sacred connection is threatened

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MISHONGNOVI - At the base of a sandstone mesa, the ground descends in a series of stone terraces and steps, forming an oval-shaped ceremonial gathering place with flat rocks arranged around a central pit. At the bottom, a pool of water shimmers in the sun.

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Ed Kabotie "One Man Jam" | Other from Flagstaff, AZ

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Tribal Nations are on the frontlines of climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten our traditional ways of life and livelihoods, as well as have countless far-reaching social and economic consequences for tribal communities. Tribal leader participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland is essential to our continued advocacy for Tribal Nations on the global level to protect our lands and resources. In recognition of the importance of this conference, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Fawn Sharp is leading an Indigenous delegation to advocate on behalf of Tribal Nations at COP26. NCAI firmly believes that by upholding global obligations to Indigenous Peoples, the international community can make significant headway towards crafting solutions to our shared climate crisis.

The upcoming COP26 comes at a critical juncture, where all nations and communities must find consensus to address one of the world's most serious crises - the climate crisis. Solutions cannot be developed without continued and increased Indigenous participation and inclusion, in line with the United Nation's Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Tribal Nations have a different and unique sense of land and place. Our communities are rooted in, and often dependent upon, their environment and local natural resources for cultural practices, traditions, community, food, economies, and ways of life. Our Tribal Nations are responding to sea level rise, coastal erosion, ocean acidification and salinity, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena, altered seasonal duration, economic and health impacts, and more. We also have expertise on environmental sustainability with solutions driven by our Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

This moment demands and needs tribal leadership involved at the global level, and COP26 provides an opportunity to elevate Tribal Nations to be part of this global leadership discourse and be acknowledged with the same respect as states and special interest groups.

NCAI recognizes the need to elevate and strengthen the voices of tribal leaders and tribal partners to coordinate, collaborate, and participate in local, national, and international climate changes strategies. With the strong delegation and inclusion of Tribal Nations, NCAI holds high expectations for the conference, and we look forward to a productive COP26 convening.

About the National Congress of American Indians
Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the United States. NCAI advocates on behalf of tribal governments and communities, promoting strong tribal-federal government-to-government policies. NCAI promotes an understanding among the general public regarding American Indian and Alaska Native governments, people, and rights.

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National Congress of American Indians' Statement on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's 26th Conference of the Parties

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Tribal Nations are on the frontlines of climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten our traditional ways of life and livelihoods, as well as have countless far-reaching social and economic consequences for tribal communities.

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Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny (TV Movie 2007) - IMDb

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Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny: Directed by Mark Sandiford. With John Amagoalik, Lori Idlout, Alexina Kublu, Zebedee Nungak. A documentary written from the Inuit perspective on the oddities of Qallunaat (the Inuit word for white people). A mix of satire, comedy and indigenous facts on everyth…

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Smash the Non-Profit Indigenous Complex! Smash Capitalism!

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Indigenous non-profits are the problem. The Non-profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) is a system of relationships designed by colonial and capitalist forces to manage and neutralize effective radical o…

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Smash the Non-Profit Indigenous Complex! Smash Capitalism!

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Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota), earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011) and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (2008). She is a recipient of 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art, 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, 2017 and 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowships, 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant,and 2013 McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship. White Hawk is represented by the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis, MN

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Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) Contemporary Native American Art

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Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota), earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011) and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (2008). She is a recipient of 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art, 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, 2017 and 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowships, 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant,and 2013 McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship.