The people who live in the northwest corner of New Mexico consider Darlene Arviso to be a living saint.
“Everybody knows me around here. They’ll be waving at me,” she says from behind the wheel of the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission water truck. “They call me the water lady.”
That’s because Arviso hauls water for tribe members of the Navajo Nation, where, on average, residents use 7 gallons a day to drink, cook, bathe and clean.The average person in the U.S. uses about 100 gallons a day.
Arviso drives to 250 homes a month, filling residents’ plastic barrels, buckets, jars and any other containers the families have. When people see the giant yellow truck coming down the road, Navajo member Georgianna Johnson says, it’s as if they’ve seen Santa coming down the chimney.
“You know what we do? ‘The water truck’s coming! Get the buckets ready!’ We get all happy. Today’s the day I’m going to take a bath,” Johnson says.
About 40 percent of the Navajo Nation has to make their water stretch. The water here in Smith Lake comes from the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission well, about 50 miles away.
For more than three decades, the mission has provided water to this Navajo community.
But the once-a-month water truck deliveries are far from the perfect solution. The roads often become impassable in the winter, and barrels run dry. Many resort to melting snow or collecting water from livestock basins.
So the mission has sought help from George McGraw, the founder of a nonprofit called DIGDEEP.It provides water systems to developing countries.
“It really is an incredible injustice. If you’re born Navajo, you’re 67 times more likely not to have a tap or toilet in your house than if you’re born black, white, Asian- or Hispanic-American,” McGraw says.
DIGDEEP is currently working in this corner of the Navajo Nation to find a solution to provide clean, running water to Navajo families in the area as well as blankets. DIGDEEP is non-profit, so every donation is precious. All proceeds go directly to project costs and donors will receive progress reports via email. You can also donate by buying handmade Navajo blankets, bracelets or artwork through DIGDEEP’s website.
Clickhere to view DIGDEEP’s website, read their story and see how you can help.
EMMONAK, Alaska — She was 19, a young Alaska Native woman in this icebound fishing village of 800 in the Yukon River delta, when an intruder broke into her home and raped her. The man left. Shaking, the woman called the tribal police, a force of three. It was late at night. No one answered. She left a message on the department’s voice mail system. Her call was never returned. She was left to recover on her own.
“I drank a lot,” she said this spring, three years later. “You get to a certain point, it hits a wall.”
One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department.Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service.
Here in Emmonak, the overmatched police have failed to keep statistics related to rape. A national study mandated by Congress in 2004 to examine the extent of sexual violence on tribal lands remains unfinished because, the Justice Department says, the $2 million allocation is insufficient.
But according a survey by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the rate of sexual violence in rural villages like Emmonak is as much as 12 times the national rate. And interviews with Native American women here and across the nation’s tribal reservations suggest an even grimmer reality: They say few, if any, female relatives or close friends have escaped sexual violence.
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
Women say the tribal police often discourage them from reporting sexual assaults, and Indian Health Service hospitals complain they lack cameras to document injuries.
Police and prosecutors, overwhelmed by the crime that buffets most reservations, acknowledge that they are often able to offer only tepid responses to what tribal leaders say has become a crisis.
Rape, according to Indian women, has been distressingly common for generations, and they say tribal officials and the federal and state authorities have done little to help halt it, leading to its being significantly underreported.
In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests. Women’s advocates on the reservation say only about 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
Nationwide, an arrest is made in just 13 percent of the sexual assaults reported by American Indian women, according to the Justice Department, compared with 35 percent for black womenand32 percent for whites.
In South Dakota, Indians make up 10 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of the victims of sexual assault. Alaska Natives are 15 percent of that state’s population, but constitute 61 percent of its victims of sexual assault.
The Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of the rape cases on Indian reservations in 2011.And though the department said it had mandated extra training for prosecutors and directed each field office to develop its own plan to help reduce violence against women, some advocates for Native American women said they no longer pressed victims to report rapes.
We originally woke up at dawn to photograph Monument Valley, but heavy snowfall made the road unmanageable. So we came back later to find the tribal land covered in fog. It was a eerily beautiful sight.
A friend of mine posted this and tagged my old instagram account, asking me to share it. I figured sharing it here where I actually have a following, would be far better.
Please remember that just because the government is giving into pressure and greed, that doesn’t mean that any of this is getting any better, in a lot of ways it’s getting worse. And even if you yourself aren’t being as heavily affected anymore, there are people and communities that are.
Stay safe Darling ones, and help others remain safe too.
NDN RELATIVES, STAY HOME + SAVE LIVES! We love you. We need you. Please, protect yourselves and support one another from a safe distance. XO!
The image above is a map from 1933 that shows the Navajo and Hopi tribals lands.
Art by RISE: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment. The following text is taken from a post by Klee Benally and Indigenous Action and features Diné and English translations (by Alfredo Yazzie) on how to protect yourselves throughout and beyond this pandemic:
Wash your hands! Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol- based hand sanitizer.
Trip of a lifetime! We finally got to see Antelope Canyon & Monument Valley, both within the Navajo Nation (the rez had been closed for years due to Covid & still requires masks). Words can’t do these magnificent sites justice! And the kindness of the Navajo people always touches our hearts ☀️
Teaser trailer for my exclusive video for Patreon supporters and my first YouTube travel vid, which chronicles my epic 2021 astrophotography roadtrip into some pretty remote areas in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona.
TONALEA, Navajo Nation- The Navajo Nation government issued a shelter-in-place last week and now the curfew has been issued for the nation. These actions were taken to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus within the four sacred mountains. Many people were pulled over by police and ordered to return home in accordance of the curfew.
Skinwalkers were also honoring the curfew despite their nightly activity. Many have stopped their nocturnal escapades to slow and lessen the spread of the coronavirus. Tlo’chi’iin spoke to a few about their decision to protect public health.
“Many people think we are monsters but we aren’t assholes” one said. “I go for a run to witch the person I need to but thats about it”. “I am not trying to spread a virus to others for no reason” he said confidently. “I only go after the few that I am paid to or ordered to witch”. “It is an asshole thing to do, potentially spreading a virus that can ruin a lot of people’s lives”.
“I think the curfew is good despite it financially hurting my wallet but its for the collective good”, he said.
He decided to stay in and catch up on his netflix shows. Others decided to honor the curfew for similar sentiments and some took a more pragmatic approach.
“A virus that has the potential to target the young and old and limit the population is bad for business” another said. “I need people to want me to witch and I need people for me to witch”. “Who am I going to witch if people are succumbing to something else”? “The economy is already in the shit hole and I need to eat”.
The curfew applied to all Navajo citizens and implicitly included skinwalkers. Police officers were planning to issue harsh discipline on any skinwalkers who would be running at night pass the curfew. The police chief said he issued an arrest with long jail time and steep fines for all witches caught at night.
“I don’t have time for such nonsense especially when we are dealing with this pandemic” he said sternly. “Witches do not need to add to this”.
There are 241 cases on the Navajo Nation. Covid-19 demands a cooperation between traditional and western medicine to stop its spread to others in our nation. This isn’t the first time both forms of medicine cooperated. It occurred in the 1960s. It isn’t by chance that the person who lead this cooperation was a Diné woman.
Annie Dodge Wauneka, a Navajo leader, became the Chair of the Health and Welfare section of the Community Services Committees in the 1950s. She worked to expand tribal control to mitigate spread of viruses and diseases, pressed for more hospitals to be built in the Navajo Nation, and challenged traditional medicine practitioners to work with western medicine.
As a result, material conditions improved for Diné people. Now is the time for all types of medicine to work together and that includes not alienating either form of medicine when mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.
Update: there are over 1500 cases of COVID-19 on the Navajo Nation now.
A Dineh child learns the basics to Navajo String Games during the 2013 Navajo Nation Museum’s Diné String Game educational event in Window Rock, Arizona.
Navajo Code Talker, Thomas H. Begay, salutes Major General James A. Kessler during the 2012 Navajo Code Talkers Day celebration in Window Rock, Arizona.
A Navajo elder patiently waits for her children and grandchildren to visit her. Never forget our indigenous elders that endured the harsh assimilation of this American/Canadian life.
![Tamara Gray, Former Miss Western Navajo Pow Wow Princess [2012-2013]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7de360dd83a93a76b78ca0b10f1cd311/tumblr_ocuagydUHX1qgkujco1_1280.jpg "Tamara Gray, Former Miss Western Navajo Pow Wow Princess [2012-2013]")
