We're two months into our trip. We've travelled over 1,300 miles, crossed 14 mountain ranges and have made it into Northern New Mexico.
I'm writing you from the gymnasium of Cuba Middle School in Cuba, New Mexico, about two hours north of Albuquerque. It's been snowing on and off — windy and cold enough that even I, who have only slept indoors a couple of times on this trip, elected to take shelter out of the weather.
So, I gotta tell you that I just had my first little emotional breakdown yesterday. I've certainly had my moments on this trip, but it seems I hit overflow mode and the tears just started to come — right there in the cab of Kathleen's truck as we were on our way to a mandatory walker meeting.
Hard to say what it was all about – probably a combination of things; group dynamics, the weather, not much sleep over several nights in a row. But my friend Gwen (from good 'ol Portland) pointed out something I hadn't thought about. She said, “You know, Nik, you're also spending pretty much every day listening to really intense stories from all the people you are meeting. You're absorbing all of that.”
She's probably right to some degree. From environmental destruction to human rights violations, there hasn't been a nation or a reservation we have passed through that hasn't experienced some sort of degradation to their lands or persons, and generally, because the two are necessarily connected, it's both.
Just yesterday we heard about the uranium mining that has taken place in the Navajo Nation, the destruction left behind, the proposals for more mining in the future, and how little control these people have to stop such madness from happening literally in their backyard. There are over 1,100 abandonded mines on the Navajo Reservation alone, leeching poisons into groundwaters and soils and causing serious health problems. Private companies who have extracted this highly toxic substance are under no obligation to contain these hazardous wastes due to antiquated mining laws still in effect. Therefore you have children playing in uranium tailings and people living within 1,200 feet of abandoned mines. And in 50 years of mining history in this area, there has never been a study within the Navajo Nation regarding the health effects associated with uranium poisioning. Not one.
That was just one story from a panel of 5 different groups who had come to Navajo Technical College to talk to the walkers — have us hear their concerns and take those concerns to Washington. Take their words, spoken with sometimes hearbreaking conviction to Senators. In a week we can hear a dozen different issues, the last as serious as the first.
We've also heard of the fight of the Havasupai and their water rights. And the struggle of the Fort Mohave tribe to have companies cease further exploratory drilling within their sacred lands. The Save the Peaks coalition of Flagstaff are trying to stop reclaimed water from being used to make recreational snow on the San Francisco Peaks, a sacred site to the Diné people. And there's the fight of Eloise Brown to stop the Desert Rock Power Plant from going up not 20 miles from her home, where the emissions in this pristine desert area would be the eqiuvalent of 12.5 million cars per day. And the people of Canyon de Chelly, who are in danger of losing their land to the National Park Service as it looks to expand park boundaries.
These are just a handful of issues and we aren't even halfway through our walk. So what wearies me isn't the miles we walk, or the pace of our days, or the sleeping in a new city every night. What tires me is knowing that all across this country, I am witnessing a pattern of environmental and social injustices placed on our Native peoples and the fight seems neverending.
But there is a hopefulness to this — that's what we bring to these lands — to these people. We hear their plight and take their concerns to heart and place it in the ever-growing file that will become our Manifesto that we're presenting to the House and to Congress when we arrive in D.C. Somewhere, somehow, someone is going to listen and work with us for change.
And that's why we're here, that's why we're on the road. And how do we process all this information in our hearts? We walk. We walk the miles and we pray along the way — we pray for all those suffering, we pray for healing of this scarred planet and we pray that there are allies that can and will fight with us.
And yes, there are times when it gets overwhelming and you have to reach down and pull up something stronger than you to keep going. Keep walking, keep listening, keep praying. “Your strength will come from others,” we are told time and time again, and that much is true. When I am hitting mile 15 and it's windy and cold and I feel done — I think of all the people we are walking for, I think of the Earth and it quickens my step for the last miles.
And I think of the words of Dennis Banks when he tells us:
“Their struggle is our struggle. You are the prayer, you are the Eagle feather. You are Mother Earth.”
And we wipe the tears and straighten up and get back to it.
