<
https://e360.yale.edu/features/navajo-natural-infrastructure-dryland-streams>
"Here in Burnt Corn Valley, smack in the middle of the Navajo reservation’s
vast Black Mesa region, the hilly land both craves water and is brutalized by
it. The sandy Arizona soil cracks under a punishing August sun as red-striped
blister beetles search for moisture across its baked surface. Cottonwood trees
and sagebrush rise from deep gullies carved by floodwaters that, during the
intensifying summer monsoon, sluice off surrounding mesas and wash away fragile
topsoil — reminders that with climate change, even quenching rains harbor
powers of destruction.
This portrait of climatic havoc belies a softer reality, though. Farming once
thrived in this parched region and could once again — if the right practices
are adopted. Exhibit A: The crops on Roberto Nutlouis’s 12-acre Sliding Rock
Farm, in his reservation hometown of Piñon, a five-hour drive north of Phoenix.
“The corn is actually pretty big and thriving,” Nutlouis says. He believes —
and both Western science and the lived experience of his Native elders affirm —
that the traditional rock and stick structures he’s built on his property,
which help store water and prevent erosion, have a lot to do with it. These
structures, similar to those used by Native peoples long before Europeans
arrived on the continent, are not only delivering water to crops (the broader,
27,000-square-mile reservation has the highest reported rate of food insecurity
in the U.S.). They are also restoring Nutlouis’s watershed and those of his
neighbors, helping to sequester carbon, and reviving this high-desert
ecosystem. It’s all part of a bigger effort among a range of local and regional
grassroots organizations to build back the reservation’s fragile, depleted
ecosystems and bring greater sovereignty over food, water, and health to its
communities."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
