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The Navajos Sea of Sand Dunes

Abstract

When you’re living in the desert, you don’t expect it to get even worse,” Russell Begaye, a Navajo Nation Tribal Council Delegate from Shiprock, N.M. told the Indian Country Today Media Network. Laura Paskus reported that “He pointed out that reservoir levels are dropping, farming plots are becoming sandier, and the rain- and snowfall have declined” during a drought that, punctuated by a few flooding rain and snow events, has now stretched for twenty years. “We know what the long-term effects are going to be: We’re going to be out of water. That has to be everybody’s concern,” said Navajo Department of Emergency Management’s Rosalita Whitehair. Persistent drought in the U.S. Southwest is forcing Navajos who have no indoor plumbing to travel several miles for water as their wells run dry, while also forcing early sale of livestock as former scanty pastures turn to naked dirt. “Perhaps among the worst of those impacts,” wrote Terri Hansen in the Indian Country Today Media Network

Bruce E Johansen

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