Remembering that we are water.
Rainwater Harvesting: Indigenous Wisdom for Climate | TEDxFremontEastDistrict
Story by Lorena Bally
Do you remember learning about the water cycle in your third grade science class? The sun heats up the ocean to create clouds that float over the land. It rains, water flows downhill into streams that enter the ocean again. Maybe your teacher made you learn a jingle of precipitation, evaporation, condensation!
According to water specialist Carmen Gonzales, most hydrology college students learn a similarly broad concept of the water system. She remembers classes focused on teaching students how to move water in pipes and store it in tanks.
Healing our watersheds with Water Specialist Carmen Gonzales
Healing the Sacred Bond: The restoration of water sovereignty through Indigenous wisdom in the Americas
Story by Lorena Bally
Water is Life. It’s a resource essential for survival, but for Indigenous cultures across the Americas, it is so much more. Water is a being filled with spirit and sentience who has generously shared her abundance with her children.
For Diné and Mexican Water Specialist Carmen Gonzales, her life is water. As a permaculture designer, she works to restore systems through earth-centered solutions that strengthen the soil microbiology to maintain humidity and recharge water systems slowly over time. After living most of her life in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, the water is slowly calling her back home to her roots in Navajo Nation.
Story by Lorena Bally
As the sun rises over Black Mesa, Diné elder Salina Begay opens the gate to release her bleating herd of Churro sheep, who immediately run towards the golden warmth of the East. They are pursued by two 20-something supporters who herd the sheep all day as they graze throughout Black Mesa’s undulating hills of sandstone washes dotted with sage and juniper. Another handful of supporters greet a car that rolls in, loading its trunk with bags of grain, salt blocks, and boxes of food.
Herding sheep, hauling firewood, distributing animal feed, and planting corn may not be the first images that come to mind when picturing a resistance movement, but for Begay, these daily activities are at the core of Black Mesa Resistance Camp’s activities that help maintain Navajo (Nah-vah-ho), or Diné (Di-Nay), ancestral ways of living in resistance on Hopi (Ho-Pee) Partitioned Land.