Arvol Looking Horse. Photo COURTESY/knewways.com
‘Summer of Solidarity’ to combat world water crisis
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Health & Environment Editor EAGLE BUTTE - The Tatanka Wakpala Tiyospaye kicked off the Mni Water Summit May 22-24 with an invitation “seeking a ‘Summer of Solidarity’ to combat the world water crisis, the impacts of climate change, and environmental racism.” Harvesting the rain and other actions to address water scarcity, access and security were the topics of concern at the event, organized by grassroots activists of the Hohwoju Lakota Nation, or Cheyenne River Indian Tribe. The summit attracted indigenous leaders, youths, naturalists, scientists, technicians and policy makers, who proposed everything from building micro dams to waterless toilets as means to conserve and respect the water, or mni. “My friends and I can go out and do it, but it’s not going to have as much impact as it would if we get it going on a tribal level and with indigenous people everywhere,” event organizer Candace Ducheneaux explained to the Native Sun News. Award-winning micro-dam builders Michal Kravcik from Slovakia and Valer Austin from Arizona presented examples of successful small-scale rainwater retention projects that could be replicated on the reservation and elsewhere. “At this point we already have a lot of small projects around the world,” Kravcik told the Native Sun News. “We need to start a new multi-sector movement to harvest water,” he said. An engineer, Kravcik won a Goldman Environmental Prize in 1999 with his Blue Alternative, which provided a water supply option to the Slovakian government. In lieu of the government’s initial plan displacing five 700-year-old villages with a large dam and reservoir, he created a network of 35 small dams and ponds that revived agriculture while protecting the traditional hamlets and wetlands. Austin, who has built 30,000 micro dams and soil settling ponds for erosion control in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, described the dikes as looking like “beaded necklaces across the hillsides.” The structures can be made by hand with teams of people or with machinery, using local materials including earth, wood, and stones, she noted. As runoff flows down gullies, the dams slow the water speed and the rate of topsoil loss. “Soil moves into the ponds behind the rocks, filling them up, creating areas that stay damper than surrounding lands, like sponges, allowing seeds to sprout in the soil and grow grasses, and even trees,” Austin explained. A typical stone micro dam might be 6 feet high and 24 feet long. “Its rock science,” she said, noting that she learned her methods by experimenting, without any formal training. Later, she taught the Mexican Army the technique, which can be used not only to convert runoff into wetlands, but also to stabilize water tables, create springs and artesian wells, regenerate dry rivers, increase river volume, produce humidity through evaporation, moderate heat exchange to decrease extreme weather events, supply domestic and business consumption, and capture carbon for the purpose of slowing global warming. Laurence de Bure, French founder of WaterRock LC3, which sponsored Austin’s visit, emphasized the opportunities for community involvement in the conservation technique. “All you need are gloves, a shovel, a crow bar, water, and a good leader,” she said. “You don’t need to be strong. You don’t need to have big muscles. “We talk to the kids at high school about what we’re doing and what our responsibility is to the community and the earth, because when you restore the watershed, you restore the community,” she said. Waterock and Austin’s Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation are committed to the mission of assisting in the re-introduction of ancient Native American rain water harvesting techniques to restore eroded grazing and community land where water once ran and will again, “for seven generations,” according to an organization mission statement. Kravcik and his team at Ludia a Voda (People and Water) first visited the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in 2012 at the invitation of Ducheneaux. They paid their own way and helped Zintkala Luzahan Community in Swift Bird District present a jobs program based on rainwater harvesting. They sought funding under the Tribal Equitable Compensation Act (TECA). The act provided the tribal government federal reparations for some 525 families forced to relocate from the Old Cheyenne River Agency because of Missouri River mega dam building that created the Oahe Reservoir in the 20th Century. The Cheyenne River Tribal Council members, seated as the interim TECA board with authority to disburse more than $430 million, rejected the $3-million Phase I of the overall $24-million jobs-and-conservation proposal, envisioned for a five- to 10-year period. Meanwhile, other communities around the world have been buying into the idea, which has been gaining traction since Bill Mollison of Australia advocated it as part of his permaculture approach to making homes and gardens environmentally friendly and sustainable by designing them to work as integrated systems. In 18 months between October 2010 and March 2012, 488 Slovakian towns involved in a government program Kravcik conceived and managed built some 100,000 rainfall gathering places in degraded landscapes. The project created 7,700 seasonal jobs, mostly assumed by long-term unemployed people. The result was restoration of 10 million cubic meters of water retention capacity, the equivalent of 4,761 Olympic swimming pools or the delivery capability of 100 gallons per second. Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) in India has implemented projects in about 2,500 rain-dependent villages during its 20-year history. Some of these have helped the village of Kachner in the drought-stricken Marathwada region of Maharashtra provide water for its people, cattle, and plants while neighboring towns lose thousands of trees in lime orchards due to lack of water. The federal government and funding organizations are sponsoring watershed development programs linked to climate change adaptation programs all over the country. Water conservation mitigates global warming when conducted with the entire water recharge cycle in mind, Kravcik noted. Extreme weather events such as the hail in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, during the week of the water summit can be decreased, he argued. “With more water filtration to the soil, you get more evaporation, more humidity, more clouds, more soft rain, a larger rainwater harvest, and everybody will be happy,” he said. “We protect life if we protect water in systems.” Stable micro climates, water production and energy savings can be created by building series of small berms that cost one-tenth of large dam projects and employ many more people to produce a better result: Food crisis, loss of biodiversity and problems of security can be addressed with this new water paradigm, he told summit participants. Green Grass resident Arvol Looking Horse, keeper of the sacred spirit bundle said to have been brought to the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation) by the White Buffalo Woman, noted that water is necessary for both spiritual and physical survival. “The water of life is a spirit that we all have to respect,” he said. We know that we can’t exist on Mother Earth without it. When the creation story was made about the Iya and Mni Wiconi, the stone and the water, when these two people came together it created energy and from that time there is energy,” he told the audience. “I hope and pray that the water will be good for our children,” he concluded. (Contact Talli Nauman, Native Sun News Health and Environment editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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