Ojo Encino, which carries the Navajo name Tse'chizhi' Bito', sits on the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. The Ojo Encino Chapter, a form of municipal government, was recognized and certified as a Navajo Nation chapter in June of 1957. A cluster of homes and government buildings sit centrally, surrounded for miles by farms, on a mixture of arid deserts and alpine forests with high plateaus, mesas and mountains. Interspersed throughout the homes are oil and natural gas wells, as the land is rich in underground resources and leasing it for fracking is one of the few economic opportunities available to these communities. The lands here represent a deep cultural significance and intrinsic value to the Navajo people, which extends far beyond sacred sites. Extraction is destroying vast areas of culturally significant landscapes in the region.
The Navajos, who call themselves and their language Diné, are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. The situation in the Navajo Nation (in Diné called Naabeehó Bináhásdzo) is complicated by geography and history. It is in an extremely rural area that covers twenty-seven thousand square miles and sits in three states — Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Throughout the territory, over fifteen-thousand families or sixty thousand people are currently living without access to electricity.
Solar spring break…
is an initiative at Fort Lewis College, the school with the highest rate of graduating Native American students in the sciences, in Durango, Colorado, USA. Led by project manager, KeNeda Randall, the volunteer team is comprised of primarily Navajo women. Most of them grew up on the Navajo Nation across New Mexico and Arizona, many without access to electricity or running water. As engineering students they aim to use their passion & newly developed skills to give back to their people. Over the school year they learned to design solar-panel array systems and during their Spring Break, instead of taking vacation as most students do across the USA, they spent the week installing systems in homes and community buildings.
““It’s important for us to be role models for women, and more importantly, Native American women who are still very underrepresented in the sciences.””
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An all female group of students from Fort Lewis College volunteered their time and energy to install a solar array system at the Chapter House in Counselor, New Mexico. These women are all Navajo, and from different towns throughout the Navajo Nation such as this one, but have met and come together through their pursuit of higher education. For the last school year they've studied and designed solar panel array systems. During their Spring Break, rather than choosing to take a vacation as most US university students do, they have gone to the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation installing solar power systems in residences and government buildings. Grid connected solar provides economic relief to individual families with limited opportunities, and gives the Chapters the ability to redistribute much needed resources to other community programs. This is a central and personal issue for these women from their own stories and experiences, that has inspired them to work with their community to create tangible positive change.
Residents of Ojo Encino, New Mexico on the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation meet at the local Chapter House, which serves as a government building and community center. Chapter President, Gloria Chiquito, oversees a counsel meeting where energy policy and resources are reviewed. Since the early 1900's, land leasing for oil and gas production has been an important source of revenue on the Navajo Nation. The royalties earned provide necessary economic stimulus to communities with extremely limited resources and support public services, education and infrastructure. The Environmental Defense Fund has recently released a report stating that oil and gas companies waste approximately 5.2% of the gas extracted, 65% higher than the national average, which results in around $850,000 in lost royalty payments in addition to environmental consequences.