Hydropanels Bring Water to Navajo Nation

In the Navajo Nation, sometimes a single spigot on an empty road is the only water source around for hundreds of residents. Others have to drive from their rural homes into towns miles away to buy all the water they need for cooking, drinking, cleaning, and livestock, because there's no infrastructure to bring it through pipes. About 40% of households in the Navajo Nation live without running water. But now, at a few houses, panels positioned on the ground pull moisture from the air, connecting to a tap inside the home and providing up to 10 liters of water -- or about 20 16-ounce bottles -- a day, at no cost to the family.

The panels come from Zero Mass Water; the company's Source hydropanels use sunlight to absorb water vapor from the air, even in arid climates. Zero Mass Water partnered with local Navajo governments and Navajo Power, a public benefit corporation working to install solar panels on tribal lands, for an initial demonstration project in which 15 homes received two Source panels each, for a total of 30 panels. Those initial panels were funded by Barclays and The Unreasonable Group, an accelerator for socially minded startups.

Each Source hydropanel can make up to 3 to 5 liters of water a day; with two panels, a home can get up to 10 liters a day, and each panel can store 30 liters of water, or 60 16-ounce bottles of water, for when cloud cover may affect production. The panels last for 15 years.

The Navajo Nation has at points during the pandemic had the highest COVID-19 infection rate per capita in the U.S., worsened by the fact that residents can't easily access water to wash their hands and have to make frequent trips into town to buy water. Zero Mass Water first started communicating with the Navajo Nation about three years ago, but the pandemic has heightened the urgency for this partnership. The company worked with chapter leaders -- the Navajo Nation has 110 chapters, which are geographical divisions like counties -- to find the people most in need.

"Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream"

"Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream" is the latest music release from Native American artist Louie Gonnie. Gonnie is Dine from the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Gonnie admired his father and uncles and wanted to be like them so he began to sing in the Native American Church. He is also a well rounded artist, expressing himself in music, art and writing.

Gonnie started singing for family and friends. Eventually, people were recording his music and he realized that he could have a career as a recording artist. His albums started out as Peyote songs of the Native American Church. Since then he has created a more contemporary style.

Gonnie is the exemplar of a creative artist. While very much a part of Dine traditions and very much living its values, Gonnie has an artist's desire to find personal expression within the world of his community. His first two recordings -- Sacred Mountains and Elements (my personal favorite) -- were explorations of the music of the Navajo people in which traditional experience was the foundation for this artist's unique music.

Gonnie's latest album, "Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream," is a direct return to his roots in the Native American Church. The recording of peyote songs is always a controversial issue within the Native American Church. Some practitioners feel that the songs, as they are intrinsic to a sacred ritual, should never be recorded, while many others feel that recordings are important for disseminating their songs throughout the community.

Even as he lives in respect for NAC values, Gonnie takes the songs for the peyote ritual to a new place. While his song forms are very traditional, the means of producing those songs (extensive studio multi-tracking) is not. Nonetheless Gonnie's compositions and layered harmonies are reverent, spiritual, and achieve transcendence. Anchored by a water drum and sustained by waves of his flowing vocals, Gonnie leads an inner voyage from dreams to actuality, from earth to sky and from the past to eternity.

The Dalai Lama's First Musical Album

"Inner World," the Dalai Lama's first musical album, is a sacred offering of mantras and teachings set to music. In "Inner World," Tibet's leader, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, chants key Buddhist mantras and delivers his insights that trace much of the world's pressing concerns to the spiritual malaise characterizing life in the new century. In short, much of the world's problems owe much to its neglect of the soul: the "Inner World."

Released July 6 when the Dalai Lama celebrated his 85th birthday, "Inner World" consists of 11 tracks along the New World music genre written mainly by New Zealand composer Abraham Kunin, a follower of the Tibetan leader. Kunin's compositions are similar to Tibetan religious music; the main instruments seem to be the bamboo flute, biwan fiddle, Zhannian zither and dungchen or Tibetan long horn. Since this is Tibetan music, it is also Shamanic or meditative music with its use of continuous sounds, some of them natural, such as running water or fountain.

One of my favorite tracks is "Compassion," in which the Dalai Lama intones the famous "Om mani padme hum," the six-syllable mantra associated with the bodhisattva of compassion. In his best-selling books, the Dalai Lama refers to the mantra as a purification on the path to enlightenment -- to "transform your impure body, speech and mind into the pure exalted body, speech and mind of a Buddha."

In "Humanity," we hear the Dalai Lama blaming violence and injustice to "a lack of human compassion . . . a lack of oneness as brothers and sisters." He explains that a "self-centered attitude" puts "too much emphasis on we and them, (which is the) basis of killing, bullying and exploitation." "All injustice is based on too much concept of we and they," the Dalai Lama declares.

Toward the end of the record, he says that whether believer or nonbeliever, "we are the same human beings (who want) a happy life, a peaceful life." This could be attained only by inner conversion. "We have to make every effort to promote through education about inner values," he concludes.

The Dalai Lama's renewed calls for "inner values" and "compassion" are peaceful and nonviolent exhortations that are addressed as much to modern mankind as to Communist China, which has been enslaving Tibet for nearly 70 years now.

Major DAPL Victory for Standing Rock

A message from Madonna Thunder Hawk, The Lakota People's Law Project

On July 6, District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to be shut down within 30 days! In this momentous ruling, Judge Boasberg found that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to fully consider the environmental impacts of Energy Transfer's crude oil pipeline, and that there were too many safety concerns to allow its continued operation. While this order only shuts DAPL down for 13 months while the Army Corps completes additional environmental assessments and safety planning, there is a good chance that when the oil is drained in 30 days, that oil will never flow again!

We commend the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and their legal team at EarthJustice for years of dedication and persistence in this struggle to defang the Black Snake. And we are proud of the amicus brief that our legal team submitted in the lead up to this decision. We're also elated that Judge Boasberg cited many of the questions we and our allies have raised since the beginning of the NoDAPL struggle. First, that it's simply wrong to conduct an environmental assessment of a pipeline after it's already been built. Second, that DAPL's leak detection abilities are so poor it could be leaking more than 6,000 barrels of oil every day without detection, and Energy Transfer's abysmal pipeline safety record raises that risk even further. Third, that there is no proper cleanup plan for a wintertime spill, when freezing Dakota winters make response the most difficult. Boasberg even went one step further, concluding that the drop in oil demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic makes shutting down the pipeline now less harmful to North Dakota's economy.

So what comes next? First, Energy Transfer has to drain and shut down DAPL by August 6th. The Army Corps of Engineers then has 13 months to further study potential pipeline leaks and the dangers they pose. This ruling could still be appealed in the Federal District Court of D.C., but our analysis tells us that such an appeal is unlikely to succeed. Thank you to each and every one of you for your tireless support, and for staying with us throughout this journey.

Wopila tanka -- Thank you for standing with us to protect our water, our land, and our families!

Madonna Thunder Hawk

Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Victory in US Court

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the very tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 1600s, is at risk of losing what is left of their homelands due to a determination made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On June 5, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., blocked the federal government from revoking the Massachusetts tribe’s reservation status, ordering the Department of the Interior (DOI) to reexamine a decision that sought to take the tribe’s 300+ acres out of trust. The judge hearing the case called the efforts against the Tribe as "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law."

While this decision is an important step toward righting centuries of wrong against the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, our collective work is not finished. Many who stand in solidarity with the Tribe await a final positive determination on Mashpee’s homelands once and for all. We must stay vigilant to ensure that the Department of the Interior recommits itself to the restoration of homelands, the trust obligation, and Tribal sovereignty. What Can You Do To Help? Sign the petition to protect the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's reservation land.