WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – Growing up in Utah Navajo, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was surrounded by oil wells and pads.
President Nygren knows the environmental concerns and benefits of energy development.
One of the priorities of President Nygren is the protection of land, water, and natural resources. When he met Diné filmmakers Angelo Baca and Sahar Khadjenoury in Navajo Mountain, Ariz., during Ééhániih Day, he immediately connected with their film, “Navajo Solar Sunrise.”
The film is a documentary that officially started in the fall of 2023 about giving solar-powered panels to families in need, with priority going to elders and veterans.
“We were focusing on areas of need in the Navajo Mountain, Red Mesa, Montezuma Creek, and Aneth areas,” Baca said. “A lot of people don’t have a connection to electricity or water, but we were trying to help them out with this additional resource.”
Protect Our Winters, Patagonia, C 4 Ever Green, Utah Diné Bikéyah, and Weaving Cultures Media are the main funders behind the film, Baca said.
A living project helping those in need
The solar-powered panel kits could help families get their cellular devices charged, Baca said, and even possibly give power to run a small refrigerator.
Khadjenoury said she and Baca partnered with Utah Navajo Health System, Inc., to identify those who have medications or need the power to charge machines for their health conditions and get a power pack.
Khadjenoury grew up in the Aneth Chapter living like most Navajos, without running water and electricity.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal, I didn’t think it was uncommon or not ‘normal,” said Khadjenoury. “When I moved back home and started working in Montezuma Creek, especially during COVID, we had been doing a lot of food care package distributions and a lot of our deliveries were to elders who didn’t have running water or electricity.”
And so, the partnership between Khadjenoury and Baca naturally led to the distribution of 100 solar unit kits.
The kits are about the size of a lunch box with rechargeable 12-volt, 100-watt solar panels that feed into a portable power generator, built by Lion Energy.
Throughout summer, the Montezuma Creek area saw power outages and Khadjenoury was relieved for the families who had their power packs because they were not as impacted by monsoonal flooding. However, she saw the need to deliver more packs to others in the community who had not received them.
“The project is a living project, it’s taken on a life of its own,” said Khadjenoury. “My job is to make this film come to life and figure out ways to distribute these kits.”
Partnerships help power to ‘just transition’
Khadjenoury and Baca continue to drop off these solar packs across Utah Navajo in San Juan County.
Norman Lameman, founder of C 4 Ever Green, and his team distribute these solar packs around the Navajo Mountain and Red Mesa areas.
“We go door-to-door,” said Lameman. “Word is out there so the people in the community contact us and call us and I’m sure it’s being shared by chapter officials because they all know what we’re doing.”
The Navajo Nation spans the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.
Lameman grew up in a rural area and knows from working in the community that many families all over the Navajo Nation struggle with limited to no power source.
The solar panel packs, Lameman said, power devices like cell phones and offer a sense of security during emergencies.
Meanwhile, Baca said the solar kits are a tool to help Diné families begin their “just transition” away from fossil fuels, especially in San Juan County. The region is known for oil wells and pads.
“As we know the contamination left on Navajo Nation and on our lands and bodies has impacted us negatively with coal, oil, and uranium, and it’s also left a hole financially on the Nation,” said Baca.
According to the National Institute of Health, exposure to uranium mining and transportation can cause lung cancer and kidney disease. Exposure to coal mining can cause various cancers, cardiovascular diseases, kidney, and respiratory diseases.
A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute for the Environment, Boston University School of Public Health, and The Environment Defense Fund, found remnants from oil and gas venting and flaring have resulted in $7.4 billion in health-related visits to hospitals.
The Environment Defense Fund reports that those exposed to oil and gas drilling have shorter lifespans attributed to asthma and premature death.
‘Mining is not the answer’
Baca’s mother is a nurse who has had to work closely with those exposed to uranium and has seen the harmful legacy of uranium mining and milling across the Navajo Nation, he said.
“It’s tough because you can’t do anything to help them,” Baca said. “That’s another major reason for us to do that work because we are Navajo filmmakers and we are from there, we do live there and it’s personally important to us.”
Lameman thinks the solar panel kits will help the Navajo Nation move towards remediating the damage mining has caused and show others that there is another way to get energy. Mining isn’t the answer, he said.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said clean energy is the next step to a better future for not only the Navajo people themselves, but for the land.
“Our people have been long underserved and neglected,” said President Nygren. “We need to uplift organizations and the people like Angelo and Sahar who aren’t waiting for help. They put their minds together to get things done.”
President Nygren recently signed an executive order to temporarily halt uranium transport until a legal agreement is in place to allow the transport on and across the Navajo Nation. An agreement for uranium needs to be written so that the transport meets federal and tribal regulations, President Nygren said.
“It’s for the health, safety, and welfare of the Navajo people,” President Nygren said. “The executive order I signed exercises our tribal sovereignty which was blatantly disrespected. The transport of uranium across our lands needs regulations.”
The energy company transporting the uranium did not provide any details of their transportation to the Navajo Nation, including President Nygren and community members directly who publicly protested its transport last month.
President Nygren said if anything were to have happened like a spill and because he wasn’t notified, he wouldn’t have the proper resources to keep community members safe.
For Baca, the stance by President Nygren sends a message to the world that the solar panel kits are about thinking for future generations.
“To me, the President supporting that (clean energy) is giving the positive message to everyone else to start thinking about the future in a better way instead of being stuck in the past where we’re trying to climb out of this difficult extractive contamination legacy that exists,” Baca said. “We’re trying to think about the next generation.”