Healing The Sacred Bond

Water is Life. It’s a resource essential for survival, but for Indigenous cultures across the Americas, it is so much more. Water is a being filled with spirit and sentience who has generously shared her abundance with her children. 

For Diné and Mexican Water Specialist Carmen Gonzales, her life is water. As a permaculture designer, she works to restore systems through earth-centered solutions that strengthen the soil microbiology to maintain humidity and recharge water systems slowly over time. After living most of her life in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, the water is slowly calling her back home to her roots in Navajo Nation.

“I went to college and studied water, and I've been helping tribes with water ever since then,” Gonzales said. “It's always broken my heart that all the spring I remember that I used to go to when I was young dried up. My grand vision is to restore one watershed in the United States, because if we can restore one watershed with nothing but rain water, the whole world will change."

Indigenous Philosophy 101

In his book “Indigenizing Philosophy Through the Land: The Trickster’s Methodology to Decolonizing Indigenous Futures and Environmental Ethics”, Cherokee and Diné author and professor Brian Burkhart states that Indigenous philosophies vary depending on their locality, the manner in which being, meaning, and knowing are rooted in the land. 

He explores how Indigenous philosophy views the land, water, and animals as both physical and spiritual relatives. There is great significance in maintaining reciprocal relationships, and relationship with Water is one of the most sacred bonds.

“Locality is the way the human voice as the conveyer of human meaning arises from the voice of the land (knowing-from-the-land or meaning-from-the-land)—as in the manner of the Diné landscape whereby the wind gives rise to breath and makes the human voice quite literally an extension of the voice of the land,” Burkhart writes.

With the arrival of the first conquistadors and colonizers in North, Central, and South America, European colonization removed the water sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples through genocidal practices. The land and water went from sovereign beings to objects of personal property.

“There was never a word in any native language for ownership. The concept didn't even exist,” Gonazales said. “You can't own land, the air, or the sun, so when the White man came to us and said, ‘Can we own this land?’ We're like, ‘That’s ridiculous!’

What Happens When Water Becomes A Commodity? 

Modern water management systems reflect the idea that water is a commodity instead of a common good. In 1913, civil engineer William Mulholland inaugurated the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which sourced water from the Owens Valley 233 miles away. According to Gonzales, that model of importing a region’s water from a low-use area to a high-use area is now used across the United States based on its profit model of creating high value on a scarce resource,¹ not its water sustainability. 

“It’s a terrible water model. It dehydrates the land. Even Aquifers on the east side of the United States are starting to dry up,” Gonzales said. “ If you can make water a limited resource, it becomes a valuable commodity. That is how this system works. It makes the best money when it’s about to run out.”

Carmen spent her early childhood in Hard Rock Mission, Navajo Nation. But her family was forced to leave their homelands as the result of the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, in which the US government redesignated jointly used Navajo-Hopi tribal land to that of the Hopi and relocated thousands of Diné families. Gonzales’ family never signed the agreement along with hundreds of others, but because of The Bennett Freeze, a 1966 ban on building or repairing homes, farms, and other infrastructure, dignified living conditions were impossible. 

“My grandma was a resistor but the rest of my family didn't have the will or energy. They were non-signers, but they gave up and left. They were so beat down and sick and depressed,” Gonzales said. “We all have lung problems because of [Peabody’s mines]. I decided being Indian sucks. I didn't even want to be Navajo. I just wanted to be normal. So for a long time I didn't think about it at all and I stopped going home because when I would get to the land, I'd get the flu. There's a lot of spirit sickness because of the removal from the land.”

Despite the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the resolution has no legal binding and tribes struggle to win legal cases against a government or private company for their water sovereignty. This year on June 22, 2023, the Navajo Nation lost a Supreme Court Case that could have granted them legal water rights to the Colorado River. Yet, Native people like Gonzales remain globally determined to reclaim the sacred relationship with the Water their ancestors held for generations.

“We are now at this time of crisis where it's not a Navajo crisis anymore. Salt Lake is going dry. There’s fires in Louisiana because the wetlands are dehydrating. It is a time of crisis when things can change,” Gonzales said. “I noticed that every job I've taken has been getting closer to Navajo Nation. I feel like every step of the last three years of my life has been guided by spirit. I'm not even making decisions anymore. Spirit just puts the people in my face when it's time to do something.”