Hey listeners! We've sharing the first episode of another podcast we think you'd love: As She Rises. On the latest season, we're traversing the Colorado River Basin – understanding water through a new lens and centering stories of resilience in the face of the drought. Hosted by Leah Thomas, eco-communicator, author, and founder of the non-profit Intersectional Environmentalist, each episode focuses on a different corner of the basin, beginning in the river’s reservoirs on the borders of Arizona and Utah, and finishing in the dry delta in Mexico.
Hey listeners! We've sharing the first episode of another podcast we think you'd love: As She Rises. On the latest season, we're traversing the Colorado River Basin – understanding water through a new lens and centering stories of resilience in the face of the drought. Hosted by Leah Thomas, eco-communicator, author, and founder of the non-profit Intersectional Environmentalist, each episode focuses on a different corner of the basin, beginning in the river’s reservoirs on the borders of Arizona and Utah, and finishing in the dry delta in Mexico.
In this episode, we’re starting our journey just south of Lake Powell, in the Navajo Nation. Today, Lake Powell is around a fifth of its original size. Pools that used to be deep enough to dive into have turned into puddles of mud. And as the water disappears, the forgotten canyon beneath reemerges. Over the years, the U.S. government has signed a number of treaties with the Navajo Nation, promising certain amounts of water, and water infrastructure. But, as they struggle to reallocate water in the face of drought, the government still tends to leave indigenous communities out of the conversation.
Poet Kinsale Drake reads her poem, “after Sacred Water,” about how the U.S. government drowned an ecosystem to create a dam that is now shrinking fast. Emma Robbins, director of the Navajo Water Project, explains how her organization ensures households have running water, and that the Navajo Nation has a seat at the table.
Wondery+ subscribers can listen to all of season 3 of As She Rises early & ad-free. Find Wondery+ on the Wondery App or Apple Podcasts.
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As She Rises Season 3: The Colorado River Basin
Episode 1: The Source
KINSALE DRAKE:
after Sacred Water
I.
we inherit:
every gathering pool a blessing
formed by careful hands each monsoon
a heartbeat turquoise vein
the sound of underwater
brimmed with mosses
here laps the quiet tide of
II.
in the summers we would flock to my great-aunt’s
swimming hole down the canyon
dizzy from the jumbled journey in a truck bed
poke at the tadpoles squirming in the red clay
my mother watched from orchard shade
she had been down here many years before
with her sisters her brothers
picking apples, following the bend
of the river leading the goats to the wayside to drink
now the water glooms
with cow manure uranium
we trace the mud with our eyes
watch the petroglyphs stretch in the shadows
miss the feeling of the sun wicking river from our skin
III.
in 1956/ the glen canyon dam began construction/ with an explosion/
was hit with a demolition blast keyed/ by the push of a button/
in the oval office/ the bottom of the canyon/ dotted by navajo/
ute/ paiute footprints/
still cooling/ the explosion/ a scar in the earth still aching
with uranium mines/ yellowcake/ yellow corn/ tumbled
in the runoff/ what do you call ancestral homestead/
stopped like a kitchen sink/ the water/ of your people
redirected to ranches/ fatten cattle that render the san juan undrinkable/
quench the white men in bars that don’t admit ndns/ water
and mineral/ packed into bombshells/ how do you drown
by your own artery/ today
the lake has never been shallower/ a drought
of its own becoming/ not even time to weep/ before the crossing/
before the fleeing/ marina of familiar fossils/ zebra mussels
scour the bones of old adobe/ stilled
beneath the surface/ the ancient sun rendered closer/
every day/ as the ranchers lament the withering/ the tourists
sticky with sun/ dock their houseboats/ the people who have known
this land/ see the slickrock
still emerging
IV.
in the third world, coyote took the water monster’s baby
so the water monster decided to make it rain endlessly
the water rose and flooded and choked the peaks
of sacred mountains
the beings that lived there
did not know where to escape the flood
what saved the world was a reed curling
into the sky a way to climb out into a fourth world
there are things that remain stolen that holy people
weep for and others look to us with upturned hands
ask where the reeds come from flee to the highest peaks
dream of another world they can scurry into
through a wound in the sky they created
we have no answer for them we have known this the entire time
tell our stories go to the water
tend this land
and remember
LEAH THOMAS:
In 1956, President Eisenhower pressed a button in Washington D.C. An instant later, 2000 miles away in the southwestern American desert, an explosion shook the air.
The explosion was in Glen Canyon, a ravine located near the border of Utah and Arizona. Like the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon was carved out by the Colorado River. Centuries ago, the Ancestral Puebloans grew crops at the bottom of the canyon. They would chisel footholds into the nearly vertical sandstone walls to climb up and down. The canyon’s red rock holds a whole people’s history. But for nearly half a century, Glen Canyon’s walls have been hidden from sight.
That’s because that day in 1956, Eisenhower’s explosion kicked off the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. The dam worked like a kitchen sink stopper, preventing the Colorado River from flowing through Glen Canyon. Eventually, the entirety of Glen Canyon was submerged underwater. An entire desert ecosystem, drowned. The body of water the dam created was named Lake Powell.
The poem you heard at the top of the episode, called after Sacred Water, is about Lake Powell and the canyon it covers. It was written and read by Kinsale Drake— a Diné poet who used to spend summers with her family by Lake Powell.
Like the canyon it covers, Lake Powell is long and thin. It snakes through the red-desert, running southwest through Utah, ending at the top of Arizona. Curving in concert with the huge sandstone walls that hem it in.
From above, it looks like a human artery. From the inside, it's idyllic. The water is crystalline. Every year, millions of people flock to the lake to fish, canoe, and hike. If you decide to take a swim in the lake’s waters and look up, a couple hundred feet above your head, you’ll see a stark white line running along the red sandstone walls. Locals call it ‘the bathtub ring.’
The bathtub ring marks where the lake’s water used to sit. The line is a visual reminder of the fact that the lake is shrinking. Fast.
Right now, the American Southwest is in a megadrought— a regular drought made way worse by the effects of climate change. The longer this megadrought continues, the more water disappears from the Colorado River.
Today, Lake Powell is around a fifth of its original size. Pools that used to be deep enough to dive into have turned into puddles of mud. The water that American policy-makers have been trying to control for decades is slipping out of grasp. And as water disappears, the forgotten canyon beneath reemerges.
And as the drowned Ancestral Puebloan footholds slowly come back into view, we’re pushed to remember the stories of the people who have lived in the southwest for millenia. And ask— what can we learn from them about how to restore and renew our relationship with the water we all depend on?
I’m Leah Thomas. I’m the founder of Intersectional Environmentalist, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of communities of color fighting against environmental injustice. And I’ll be your host for this season of As She Rises.
This season, we’re listening to stories of resilience from the Colorado River Basin.
The Colorado River is a vast, and powerful body of water. It’s the main source of water for 40 million people living in the American southwest. And it connects us in ways we don’t often realize. The river is responsible for watering 90% of America’s winter vegetables. If you’ve eaten broccoli or lettuce in the past few months, you have the Colorado River to thank. And now, it’s in crisis— a crisis we all have to contend with.
Today, we’re starting our journey just south of Lake Powell— on the Navajo Nation, the homeland of our first guest, Emma Robbins.
EMMA ROBBINS:
The sounds that I remember growing up specifically are when it rained and that sort of sound when it hits the sand. And I think where I am today, it's raining and it's something that always transports me back to home. And it's related, you know, not only to water, but our interaction with land.
[Emma introduces herself in Navajo language]
My name is Emma Robbins, and I am the executive director of the Navajo Water Project, and I am the founder of the chapter house. I am originally from the Navajo Nation, and I live here on Tongva Land or in Los Angeles. I always say, you can't be native or you can't be Indigenous and not have some sort of connection to water. Um, you know, I can only speak for my own tribe, but being a Diné woman and growing up traditional in our culture and our beliefs, we're so tied to our land and we're so tied to our water. And that's something that you just can't separate with who you are.
LEAH:
The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the United States. If it were a state, it’d be the 10th largest in the country. The nation’s northwest border is partially shaped by the Colorado River.
There are many different communities within the reservation— some people live in rural areas, others in more urban areas. And each different community has its own unique relationship to water and land.
Emma grew up in Tuba City— the largest community on Navajo Nation. Tuba City has a pretty robust water infrastructure, which means most residents have access to running water. But just thirty miles south in Cameron, Arizona, that’s not necessarily the case.
EMMA:
I grew up with two sisters and my parents, and we were very fortunate enough to have running water and a flush toilet in our homes. And on the weekends I would spend time, um, with my grandparents in Cameron, and that was a really special time for me. They did not have running water. They used an outhouse and you know, it wasn't really something that I thought about growing up, it being an issue. There are so many people who are like myself, who would spend weekends with their grandparents, or the evenings. And I think most of us, until we got older, didn't realize that not having access to running water was a problem. There are 30% of people on the res who don't have access to clean running water, and so it's a big part of everybody's lives. It's not like there are the others who don't have water and there are some who do. You're always intertwined in that.
LEAH:
It’s not a coincidence that so many people who live in Navajo Nation don’t have running water. It’s a direct result of US government water policy.
Over a hundred years ago, the U.S. created the Colorado River Compact. The Compact was created at a time when colonial settlers were moving west en masse, and everyone was trying to stake their claim to the Colorado River’s water.
So the government stepped in, and drew an invisible line through the middle of the river— right around where it crosses from Utah into Arizona. The states above the line— Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming— were called the ‘Upper Basin.’ The states below the line— Arizona, California, and Nevada— were called the ‘Lower Basin.’ The Upper and Lower Basins were each allocated 7.5 million acre feet of water per year. That’s enough water to turn the state of Delaware into a 5-foot deep pool.
The Colorado River Compact had a huge impact on how states treated the river. Lake Powell was created in part to hold all the water promised to the Upper and Lower Basins. And today, the compact still governs how much water each state gets.
But here’s the problem: the people indigenous to the land the Colorado River runs through weren’t included at all in the Compact’s negotiations. And they weren’t included in the Compact’s allocations.
Over the years, the government has signed a number of treaties with the Navajo Nation, promising certain amounts of water and water infrastructure. But as they struggle to reallocate water in the face of drought, the government still tends to leave indigenous communities out of the conversation.
Today, 29 Native American tribes in the Colorado River Basin technically hold senior rights to 20% of the water in the basin. But in the Navajo Nation— land that sits right up against the river— many people still have no access to clean, running water. Here’s Emma.
EMMA:
I think first and foremost it's important to know that this is a direct relation to violation of treaty rights and not respecting our sovereignty and the federal government not following through with promises. And so that includes, you know, keeping us so spread out from each other, not having infrastructure like roads or systems that make it easy to transport things. Lack of funding is a really big thing for putting in water lines. It, it's something that also affects people who don't have water is generally they don't have electricity as well. And so seeing a lot of these elders grow older and not have running water in their home really played a big part in the way that I thought about it because, you know, Navajos really believe in caring for the elderly and taking care of those people who took care of us. And so seeing them having to do things like haul water or travel far distances, um, it took a toll on them physically and mentally and it took a lot of their time. And so I, I think growing up I always knew that I wanted to help change that because I did want to help care for our elders.
LEAH:
But Emma wasn’t sure exactly what that would look like. Until she learned about a non-profit spearheading an exciting new project.
We’ll be right back after a word from this episode’s partner.
[MIDROLL]
LEAH:
While Emma was working in Chicago as an artist and art gallery director, she found herself daydreaming about going back home and working on the reservation.
And then one day she came across an article about Dig Deep, a human rights non-profit working to get running water to the over two million Americans that live without it. Emma learned that Dig Deep had just started a new branch called the Navajo Water Project, which was created specifically to supply running water to the 30% of folks on the reservation who live without it.
It was the exact kind of work that Emma was interested in. So she reached out to Dig Deep – and several months later, she became the director of the Navajo Water Project.
Today, the Navajo Water Project has 40 employees and has brought running water to hundreds of households on the reservation. They do this by installing what are called ‘home water systems.’
EMMA:
And what that looks like is digging a hole and dropping a cistern or a tank, which is 1,200 gallons, and then hooking that tank up to a series of plumbing, a pump, a filter, a water heater, and then a sink. And along with that goes a greywater drain field. And we have two different types of systems. We have systems that are hooked up to electric lines, and then we have systems that are hooked up to solar panels.
LEAH:
The whole process takes only 24 hours. When it’s finished, there’s a working sink with running water inside the house. Which means there’s no longer a need to haul water back and forth.
EMMA:
We are generally working in very, very, very remote areas. So we have the water truck operators who are bringing water from safe sources because that's very important to us to make sure that people are not only getting water, but they're getting water that is free of contaminants. And so it's something that we need to make sure that we are following up with maintenance with. And I really stress that because people who are interested in starting any sort of project, working with communities that have had, um, so many promises made and so many promises broken, really important to make sure that there's follow up to these things. A big part of what happened when I came on was not only speeding up these installations and making sure that people were getting water, but rather that we were doing it in a way that was decolonized but also indigenized, Navajo-ized, for lack of a better way to say it.
LEAH:
Navajo-izing the Navajo Water Project meant taking the unique needs of every community into account. It meant resisting one-size-fits-all solutions, and finding ways to really listen and engage with them— showing up in ways that centered the community, even when it was difficult.
EMMA:
At the very beginning when I came in, definitely Dig Deep was working to work with the communities. But then I started to realize, like, maybe the best way is not for them to come to us, but for us to go to them, to individualize this outreach and these connections. And so we started to do things like going to the chapter house, which is a physical location where people actually come together, and you know, hosting dinners and talking with people. And it's not just people, it's elders of the community and people who are community leaders, and Navajo culture is a matriarchal one. And so making sure that we're also specifically listening to the women of the communities because oftentimes we're the caregivers and we're the leaders ourselves.
My favorite project that I have ever worked on in my entire career, honestly, was with a school called SMASE or St. Michael's Association for Special Education. They had a school for students ages six to 18, and then an adult residency program. All of the community members there have disabilities, and the water project was really important because some people had medical needs, like were using a G-tube or a tracheotomy tube. And so it was really important that the water was clean. But because their infrastructure was so old, we were seeing a lot of high levels of things that shouldn't be in water that were appearing, and they needed water heaters and filters. And so we worked for several years with them, but it wasn't just like coming in and saying, ‘Hey, we're gonna do these tests, or we're gonna have engineers or consultants come in and tell us what the problem is.’ It was about really embedding ourselves there. And so some of my favorite parts of building community with SMASE was taking part in their Dr. Seuss Day and helping organize an art exhibition where the artists at the school had their work included in a show in Chicago at a museum. And I think sometimes people see those as not important projects or not important events, but those make such a difference when not only you’re building trust, but also you're really getting to know people who are already working on these issues.
LEAH:
The Navajo Water Project blends creative expression with public service. This is a radical departure from how water is typically managed in the U.S. Usually, sweeping treaties like the Colorado River Compact lump a bunch of states together and ignore all the intricacies of the communities that populate the land.
These sorts of policies erase the wisdom and the stories of the people who know their land’s water better than anyone. And they’re part of the reason why today, Indigenous people are faced with problems like lack of water infrastructure in reservations.
The U.S. government’s approach to water policy has, in many cases, severed the centuries-old ties between humans and water— dehumanizing people in the process.
EMMA:
Oftentimes, and not only with Navajo people or not only people on reservations, we're so dehumanized in so many ways that it's like, we are still mascots, right? We're still jokes in Hollywood. And so it's like, if you're still seen in that way, shape, or form, oftentimes that can take a toll on you mentally, and it might start getting to the point where you're like, I don't deserve things like water, or I don't deserve things like electricity or internet connectivity. And it's like, water is actually a human right. You know, all living beings need water whether you're human or not. And so I think we need to shift from talking about it as if it's like this thing that only some people can have. It's something that everybody needs and everybody should have. And so I think it definitely requires shifting in other ways. And by that I mean the federal government honoring treaties and taking our opinions and our needs seriously. Changing all of that will help people get access to running water.
LEAH:
Today, a recent lawsuit from the Navajo Nation to expand their access to water from the Colorado River is in front of the Supreme Court. They contend that the lack of water available to them means the U.S. has fallen short of its treaty promise to give the Navajo Nation a, quote, ‘permanent home.’ Shouldn’t a ‘permanent home’ include water?
The lawsuit is one small step towards reconnecting the Navajo people with water. The Navajo Water Project is another step in that direction.
EMMA:
I've been working on the Navajo Water Project for seven years at this point, and it can be really emotional work, and I think it's something where it's not just about water. It's like, you really start to learn a lot more about the community, and you start to learn people's names, and you start to learn their families. All Navajos have four clans and it's the way that we identify ourselves with people and you know, traditionally we have something that's called k’é, and k’é means kinship or family or the way that we all relate to each other. And so when you start working in these communities, you realize who you are related to because you have the same clans. And so they're not just people whose name are on a piece of paper or on a commuter computer screen, and it's like, ‘Hey, here's the data. These people don't have water, here's the GPS coordinates of their homes.’ It's like, this person is my grandma, or this person is my dad, you know, by clan. And so you get really invested.
LEAH:
The impact of the drought seeps into every corner of Emma’s life. It becomes harder to fill up the trucks used to deliver the water to the reservation as watering sources dry up. And while Emma travels to the Navajo Nation for work, she lives in Los Angeles, just like me. In this city, we see signs of the drought everywhere.
EMMA:
When I first moved here, I would drive over this bridge, and I would look at a map and I'm like, why is there a blue line on here? And then I started to research and it's like, the L.A. River is here. And I started to research how that was affected by treaties. And then I started making art, because I'm an artist, I started making a body of work, um, about treaties in California and how those relate to L.A. and then really started making friends with people who are Tongva or native to this land, who are still here, obviously, and their relationship to the water.
LEAH:
Emma’s thinking eventually led to her to create an organization called the Chapter House— a space where Native artists can come together. It’s another manifestation of the same goal— connecting Native people with water, and restoring community ties.
EMMA:
Figuring out ways to not only work with people to get basic needs like water, but also finding ways to take care of ourselves, where it's not like we're in this constant survival mode or we're in this mode where we have to fight for clean water. But coming together to just be Native and make art and take care of one another and be in a restful space. Because I think once we work on these solutions, other things come up like, ‘Hey, can we just, like, hang out and have an art exhibition, and can the art exhibition be centered around water?’ So constantly thinking about how these things come together is really exciting for me.
LEAH:
The poet you heard at the top of the episode, Kinsale Drake, worked with the Chapter House last year on one of their exhibitions. Kinsale was actually the one who recommended we speak to Emma. So in a way, this episode is a continuation of a Chapter House partnership— proof of the ripple effect that collaboration between Native artists can have.
The drought is forcing us to contend with the fact that how we manage our water right now just isn’t working. As the man-made Lake Powell shrinks, Ancestral Puebloans’ footholds come back into view, reminding us of the knowledge that we’ve forgotten— or intentionally buried underwater. Organizations like the Chapter House are vital storehouses of Native knowledge, joy, and hope. They challenge us to reimagine our relationship to water. What could happen if instead of treating water like a luxury to be hoarded, we understood it as a resource that’s meant to be shared? As a sacred element that ties us all together?
This season of As She Rises, we’re asking those questions. As we travel down the river, we’re centering the voices of the people who have borne the brunt of colonial water practices, and sharing stories of their resilience in the face of the drought.
Next episode, we’re following the river through the Arizona desert, down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon where one tribe is fighting the extractive uranium mining industry.
You can support the Navajo Water Project by visiting their website, which is navajowaterproject.org, and follow them on Instagram @digdeepwater and on Twitter @digdeeph2o.
If you want to learn more about Emma’s art organization, the Chapter House, you can find information on them at chapterhouse.org, and follow them on Instagram @thechapter houseLA.
And if you want to support Kinsale Drake, check out her NDN Girls Book Club. You can find more of her poetry on kinsaledrake.com, and follow her on Twitter @kinsaledrake.
All these links can also be found in our show notes.
Thanks to Utah Diné Bikéyah for their cultural sensitivity training.
As She Rises is a Wonder Media Network Production. Our creator and editor is Grace Lynch. Our executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Emily Rudder is our Head of Development. The show is produced by Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Ale Tejeda, Brittany Martinez, Adesuwa Agbonile, and Sara Schleede. Original music by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Jessica Jarvis.
Until next time.