CSE's Projects and Focus on Water Issues
Student Research on the N-Aquifer

Throughout the Fall 2002 semester, a group of three students--two graduates and one undergraduate--have been gathering information related to the N-Aquifer that underlies the Hopi and Navajo reservations. This aquifer has provided water for coal mining in the area for over 30 years, and has therefore indirectly contributed to the economic stability of both tribes, but it also provides some of the highest quality drinking water available in North America. Even more importantly, this source supplies most of the culturally significant springs in the area, springs which the Hopi, for example, consider to be living beings or "breathing holes" for the earth. Springs and their associated flora and fauna literally define lifeways in this arid land through ceremonies, names, and daily practices of indigenous peoples. They are cultural landmarks that orient people and place both spiritually and physically, and their continued existence is intimately tied to human existence and identity in the Black Mesa area.

In recent years the springs in the area have shown a severe decline in viability--water levels are dropping without recovery, and some springs have dried up completely. People close to the situation have diverging opinions of the causes of this impending cultural catastrophe, but the severity of the impacts on indigenous peoples in the area cannot be debated.

To address this problem, the Center for Sustainable Environments has been gathering information on the N-Aquifer and associated springs in order to attempt to get a series of the springs listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hope is that we not only succeed in getting them registered and subsequently recognized and better protected, but that we set a precedent within the Register designation process to include large-scale bioregions. We hope that this designation will also lead to future work that enables agencies and decision-makers to embrace broad and often misunderstood inter-connections between cultures, practices, and places.

Research for this project continues, and we welcome comments and offers of assistance in the forms of scientific findings, cultural research, and any other types of information gathering.

-- David Seibert, NAU/CSE Ethnoecology Lab
 

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