Changing Woman: One Navajo's Fight for a Just Transition
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2020
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we have a special episode about the long and winding energy transition in an often overlooked place: the Navajo Nation—the largest Indian reservation in the United States.
Journalist and climate policy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat is our guide.
Ten percent of Navajos lack access to electricity. Some spend up to $700 per month on fuels to travel to places with electricity, or charge electronics in their cars and trucks.
But the Navajo Nation isn't exactly an energy-poor place. In fact, until recently, the reservation was home to two of the largest coal strip mines in the world. In recent decades as many as five coal-burning power plants surrounded Navajo lands. For many Navajo, power lines connecting coal to major cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, have come to symbolize this vastly unequal system.
We'll look at the deep history of energy extraction and colonialism that led to the current clean-energy transition for the Navajo people.
Featured in this episode: Wahleah Johns and Andrew Curley.
Follow our co-hosts and production team:
A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's a story among the Navajo people. |
| 0:03.0 | It's about a girl, the daughter of first man and first woman, |
| 0:08.0 | who grows up to be revered goddess in a time when monsters stalk the earth. |
| 0:13.0 | With a young man named Jonah A, the son, she gave birth to twin boys. |
| 0:20.0 | Her name is changing woman, and she She gave birth to twin boys. |
| 0:30.4 | Her name is changing woman, and she helped to guide them and raise them in a way that they became warriors. |
| 0:37.6 | But before they went to the sun, they had to go through so many challenges, but also to prove to the son that they were the children of the sun. |
| 0:44.1 | The woman speaking, that's Wahela Johns. She's a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She's also an advocate for climate justice and solar energy. The story she's telling, it's part of the Navajo's |
| 0:49.8 | genesis. Yes, and then the sun gave them tools and weapons to come back to our home to defeat the monsters and slay the monsters. |
| 1:01.1 | And there's teachings where as the twins, the hero twins were slain, these monsters, some of them went back into the earth. |
| 1:10.3 | At risk of giving too much away, it's also metaphor and allegory. |
| 1:19.6 | And a lot of teachings come from that. There's teachings there that say, |
| 1:23.6 | we're not supposed to dig in the earth, we're not supposed to extract anything from |
| 1:28.1 | the earth. If we do that, it's going to harm us. They say the oil, the coal, all of these |
| 1:33.8 | deposits of ore and minerals, we're not supposed to bother them. And that they're supposed to be |
| 1:40.8 | left alone. If we do, that's going to create the harm. |
| 1:45.6 | It's going to create all the monsters again. |
| 1:52.2 | This is a matter of degrees. |
| 1:54.2 | I'm Dr. Leah Stokes. |
| 1:55.6 | And I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. |
| 1:57.7 | My name is Julian Brave Noisecat. |
| 1:59.4 | And together, we're telling stories for the climate |
... |
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