Spiritual gathering to heal the Earth begins Thursday

A television camera operator films near the Dooda Desert Rock camp occupied Elouise Brown on September 23. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

BURNHAM — David Nez was living in Florida when he first heard about the Dooda’ Desert Rock resistance movement and its opposition to the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project. Now, he has returned to his home at the base of the Chuska Mountains to support those he calls “modern-day warriors.”

Beginning Thursday and continuing through Sunday, organizers are hosting a four-day spiritual gathering at the Dooda’ Desert Rock camp near Burnham for people of all faiths.

“The purpose is to pray for Mother Earth, that she may begin to heal,” Nez said recently. “There are scientists that are saying that already we have too much CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere and that we have reached the point of no return.

“Maybe some way, somehow, through prayers, we can undo that, because we want our future generations to live. That’s what the prayer is for,” he said.

Last Thursday, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid released a report documenting the adverse effects of coal power plants on water resources, saying that throughout the West they “hurt our ability to ensure access to water.”

Reid said coal power plants consume more than 650 million gallons of water per day throughout the interior West and discharge water that is often highly toxic — containing high levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, and other chemicals — and are a major contributor to global warming.

He cited information released in February by the National Resources Defense Council which stated that coal-burning power plants produce 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year and a Department of Energy forecast that many of Earth’s high mountain ranges could lose much of their seasonal snow cover by the end of the century.

A 2007 report by Western Resource Advocates and Environmental Defense said, “Unless we take aggressive action, scientists expect global warming to have profound consequences across the Southwest in this century.

“Changes to the amount and timing of precipitation and snowmelt could dramatically alter the availability of already scarce water resources and increase seasonal flooding.

Droughts could also become more frequent and extreme.”

This past winter, snowmelt in the Chuska Mountain range and Defiance Plateau peaked out several weeks early.

The 1,500 megawatt Desert Rock project is expected to use 4,500 acre-feet of water per year — a drop in the bucket compared to older, existing plants in the Four Corners area, and proponents say that its state-of-the-art technology also minimizes the amount of CO2 emissions.

Still, the resistance movement sees it differently and says that one more power plant in the region is too many.

Though Nez is a Dooda’ supporter, he doesn’t consider himself one of the front-line people. But he does what he can, he said.

A member of Native American Church and a sun dancer who has participated for nine years at the annual sun dance held in South Dakota by Lakota medicine man Leonard Crow Dog, Nez has kept the fire going at the Dooda’ camp since his return to the reservation.

He saw a picture of grandma Lucy Willie on the Internet, and when he returned to Navajoland, went to the campsite last winter after Navajo Nation Police relocated the resisters.

“I drove over here and I saw the grandmas here and what was going on. I just thought to myself, ‘How can I help?’ I noticed that their woodpile was really small. It was right in the middle of winter and it was really cold out here.

“I have a sweat lodge in my back yard and I had a big pile of wood there. So I went home, got a load of firewood and came back down here and brought them some firewood.”

Throughout the winter, he continued to haul wood. “Fire represents life, so we kept that fire going,” Nez said.

Nez said he believes the Navajo people need to make a stand and go back to what their grandmothers taught them. “We all had grandmothers that taught us how to pray, that taught us about Mother Earth, that she’s alive, that it’s not just a dead piece of rock or dirt that we live on.

“Our Creation stories tell us that all these things have spirits, all these things are living — and if you heard these stories, you know the truth,” he said.

“We want people to come here and pray with us. We’re going to set up a women’s sweat lodge and a male sweat lodge, and we’re going to set up some teepees. So whatever ceremonial way of life that people believe in and pray, we want them to come here and pray with us.

“Even Christian people, if they want to come here and set up a tent and pray here, we welcome them. We welcome all denominations because what we believe is there is only one God, there is only one Creator.

Having a good quality of life means having good air, good water, and good scenery to look at, according to Nez. He is tired of seeing people all over the world being “brainwashed by commercials that advertise if you’re going to have a good quality of life, you need to have fancy clothes, you need to have fancy cars, you need to have all these material things in order to be happy, in order to be content in this life.